Ed: N is for Novik

I like Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels a bunch. Not that they’re perfect, but they are enjoyable—they play to her strengths, and her strengths happen to coincide nicely with my Sources of Reader Pleasure. On the other hand, I have been feeling that the Temeraire story is getting played-out; I don’t look forward to the new books the way I might. I was somewhat ambivalent about the new non-Temeraire novel, then, mostly eager, but a little concerned that Ms. Novik would abandon the plot-driven incident-packed style that I like so much.

Well, Uprooted is certainly packed with incident.

It is also powerfully evocative, and the world of Fantasy Early Modern Poland is a magnificent creation. The magic, as well, is lovely, and the core of the book is in Our Hero, a young woman with a talent for magic, as apprentice to an older (but dead sexy) man whose talent for magic appears at first to be utterly incompatible with hers… yes, you can certainly tell where this is going. But while it does have some of the tropes of Romance that get up my nose, it manages to avoid other ones that get even further up my nose, so that’s all right, d’y’see? And while I don’t know that I think the characters, as such, are brilliant inventions, the relationships between the characters are compellingly drawn, and drawn in such a way as to propel the plot, and that’s most certainly all right.

I’m wondering, though, whether the inclusion of a scene earlyish in the book where a Bad Guy attempts to rape Our Hero is the sort of thing that the article I can’t seem to find now was on about—I mean an article I can’t seem to find now, that says more or less if you are including a rape scene just to show that the villain is a Bad Guy, please don’t. But there have been lots of notes recently about the inclusion (or not) of rape scenes in movies, books, TV and comics; the question really ought to be in people’s minds. And while this scene is handled quite well, it really isn’t necessary from a plot point of view, and is of questionable value from a character point of view—that is to say, nothing of the decisions she later makes seems informed specifically by her experience as a survivor of sexual assault. Of course, there are lots of things in books that aren’t necessary, and perhaps sexual violence does not, in fact, constitute a special category such that an author must justify its presence by necessity. I am inclined to think it does, by virtue of the history of the trope, but your mileage is likely to vary. I’m not angry at Ms. Novik for including the scene, I’m just a trifle uncomfortable with it in the otherwise terrific book.

Digression: I am, however, really angry with Google right now. In an attempt to discover whether other people had been musing on this question, I typed [novik uprooted rape scene] as my initial search, without quotes, and Google seems to feel that rape and sex are synonymous. In addition to making YHB angry, they boost to the top of the search discussions of an entirely different scene, consensual in nature, effectively obscuring any articles that I’m actually looking for. But mostly, that’s just bad and wrong, Google. Boo. End Digression.

Anyway… Uprooted is a terrific book, one of the best I’ve read in a long time. One of those when-can-I-get-back-to-my-book reads. On several occasions I responded aloud to an event in the book; a couple of times with an ewwww but at least once with a yesss!

Thanks,
-Ed.