By now, the idea of a let's play is famous. I'm not much of a gamer and I find watching others play games just a bit dull. But you know what I love? Books. I love reading them, and discussing them, and having other people read them to me. For this post, I'm going to read the first few pages of Naomi Novik's book, Uprooted.
"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley."
Any fantasy book that begins with the word dragon is automatically interesting. Some prove terribly disappointing (Eragon). Some are incredible (The Malazan Books), and some pass beyond the words of mortal men (The Hobbit, also the Malazan Books). Already, I'm predisposed to like this book.
Also, what is this about eating girls? I suppose that's a good ploy to keep you reading, but in reality it sounds like a frightfully inefficient operation. Women aren't very nutritious, you see. For the same mass, you could eat a few sheep and lamb is delicious. Humans are mostly overgrown monkeys, which is poor eating and a lot of muscles. Or so I'd imagine. I'm not a dragon and don't eat people.
But also, why is it always women? Why do dragons have a gender preference? Is this the patriarchy(TM)???? I already know that feminism and gender analysis are central to Novik's writing style. Surely she's setting us up for a patriarchial society that will be contrasted with something feminist later?
Then there's this concept of "our valley" versus, well, everyone else. I'll be interested to see how she explores provincialism and cosmopolitanism in the development of the book.
The narrator, as yet unnamed, goes on to defend the Dragon for a few sentences before saying, "He protects us against the Wood, and we're grateful, but not that grateful." Ah, there we go, the patriarchy at work. I knew it would show up. This is going to be fun in a deconstructionist sort of way. All of this leaves me wondering just when we will meet this Wood, and why it is evil, and especially why they need the Dragon to protect them.
"He takes a girl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she's someone different." The concept that the Dragon is ruining girls, smirching their honor, runs through the first few chapters (I read ahead, I'm sorry). The girls all swear he isn't sleeping with them, but in the patriarchy, how can you really know? And if a girl isn't a virgin, what is she really good for anyway? Paternity is the only thing that matters. Besides, the girls don't want to marry anyone anymore. That alone shows that they are something hideous and awful, something distinctly unfeminine.
Which is why the first piece of dialogue is so interesting. "They forget how to live here," the narrator's father says. This is important on several levels. First off, it's a father, in fact her father. I suppose we must assume the narrator is a woman, although I forget if that is ever actually revealed. And the father of the series is saying something distinctly empathetic, and perhaps just a bit subversive. He is acknowledging that the girls aren't fit for life in the valley (wherever that is), but he explains it less as a loss of honor or a lack of marriageability, and more like a form of feminine amnesia. It's as close to neutral as the top of the patriarchy will get for awhile. I have no idea if this father is significant later on, but he's the first voice we hear and it is subversive.
And then a few paragraphs down it's revealed that most women went to University and became scholars and shopkeepers. I will be interested if Novik takes this in a conventional rural patriarchy/urban egalitarian direction. Knowing that you can rarely trust the first two pages, however, I'm thinking not.
We get some background information and are introduced to Kasia. I find this order very interesting - we meet the narrator, the Dragon, the father and Kasia. I know for a fact (again, I read ahead) that their relationships become a bit tangled up later. However, we are supposed to encounter these four people first, and they stand vaguely for the Innocent Viewer, A Threat, Sage Advice, and the Beauty. We're supposed to believe Kasia is going to be taken by the Dragon.
Also, it is so refreshing to have a fantasy novel cover popular revolt without some sort of dramatic entrance by a hero. Popular revolt is dismissed in these few pages because the Dragon really isn't too bad, he just takes virgins and requires almost no other taxes. This attention to detail has won me over, despite my initial skepticism of a book described as "the Polish version of Beauty and the Beast." Keep on going, Novik.