Uprooted
"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that's not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he's still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of use every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we're grateful, but not that grateful."
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
3people
2016–2021years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really enjoyed:
"Uprooted" by Naomi Novik.
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory
- Wow, that's interesting. We must have approached Grossman from completely different perspectives. Last year (2017) I read the entire Magicians series and thoroughly enjoyed them because they made me uncomfortable. I was trash, in the same way that Quentin was trash, so following his arc was introspective. At the time I contrasted it to the optimism in "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (if you're familiar)
What was your experience like?
For reference, my most recent fiction is:
- "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami
- "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik
- "God Emperor of Dune" by Frank Herbert
- I keep an active list of books I've read, along with my reviews at my book review website, https://books.brianseitel.com. One of the benefits of this is that my favorite books automatically populate on the left. In 2016, I read over 60 books. My top 10 for 2016 (so far) are, in rough order of favorite-ness:
- "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders
- "The Shards of Heaven" and its sequel "The Gates of Hell" by Michael Livingston (fictional story set in Roman times)
- "The Last Breath" by Charlie Magee
- "The Guns of Empire" by Django Wexler (Book 4 of The Shadow Campaigns series, which I highly recommend)
- "The King's Traitor" by Jeff Wheeler (original take on Arthurian legend)
- "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik
- "End Game" by Lindsay Buroker (Book 8 of her sci-fi series, The Fallen Empire, which is a pretty fun series overall. Short and sweet adventures.)
- "Soulblade" by Lindsay Buroker (Book 8 of her fantasy series, Dragon Blood, which is another great series. All of Buroker's books are good, imo.)
- "Ghost Talkers" by Mary Robinette Kowal (It's WWII, ghosts are real... and they're spies.)
This year I also read books 1-3 of The Expanse, and I think they would also be in this list, except I haven't reviewed them yet. I'm currently reading Book 4, with the recently published book, Babylon's Ashes, in the queue. I fully expect these to make it into the top 10.
Obviously, I enjoy sci-fi / fantasy the most, but across a wide range of sub-genres. For non-sci-fi, my top read was "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi, which really changed the way I organize my finances.
