LibraryReads Favorite Wins Nebula
Naomi Novik’s Uprooted (PRH/Del Rey; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample; now available in trade pbk) has won the Nebula Award, one of science fiction’s top honors.
The stand-alone fairy tale for adults, a departure for Novik after her historical fantasy series Temeraire, was a hit with librarians early on, taking the #1 spot on last year’s May LibraryReads List.
In her LibraryReads annotation Lucy Lockley of St. Charles City-County Library (MO) summed up the plot: “A young girl is unexpectedly uprooted from her family and becomes involved in a centuries-old battle with The Wood, a malevolent entity which destroys anyone it touches.”
The novel also won Fantasy top honors from the librarian-selected RUSA/CODES Reading List.
Other groups took note as well: it was an Indie Next pick and made this year’s list of Hugo Award finalists.
The NYT said that “Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise” and creates a “very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic.”
io9 offered more fulsome praise:
“Novik’s writing is sharp, dense, and very funny. It’s also dark, violent, and sexual. Which is a reminder that “fairy tale” doesn’t mean clean, easy, and happy. Novik recaptures the original flavor of fairy tales in the Grimm sense, but puts her own original spin on it … I’d recommend setting aside a large chunk of time to devote to Uprooted. I didn’t intend to, but once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down.”
It’s also caught on in Hollywood, he film rights sold in a bidding war with Ellen DeGeneres set to produce.
The short list is always a good RA resource for creating genre lists, finding read-alikes, and building displays:
Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (S&S/Baen)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit)
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Hachette/Orbit)
The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (S&S/Saga)
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Macmillan/Tor)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Macmillan/Tor)
io9 offers a full summary of all winners and short list titles, pointing out that women swept the awards, winning every print category.