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A review by viiemzee
A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
4.0
This is the first in a series of books I’ve read that are part of a series. I bought a bunch of books that came first in a trilogy or series and decided to see if I wanted to continue the series. This book is the first from those that I bought.
This book is one of the best examples of low fantasy I’ve ever seen. For those of you not privy to the lingo, there are two kinds of fantasy – low and high. High fantasy is Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, fantasy that takes place in a world that exists outside of ours, such as Middlearth or the Seven Kingdoms. Low fantasy is fantasy that takes place in our world, such as the Harry Potter series. This series if low fantasy at its finest, incorporating elements of Victoriana society with magic.
Well, not really magic. Just dragons.
The world in this series is a world almost exactly like ours, with a lot of Victorian society being exactly as we know it to be from the history books. This society forces expectations onto women that we are familiar with from that era – marry, have children, look after the house, be a lady. But our lovely main character, Isabella, doesn’t want that. Isabella wants to study nature, but specifically she wants to study dragons. She starts young, capturing small dragons and dissecting them, preserving them in jars and taking notes and sketches on them. Her father disapproves, especially when she almost gets killed by a rather large dragon as a teenager, and she eventually has to start ‘conforming’ to society’s expectations of her.
And then she meets Jacob.
Jacob not only wants to give her the life of a lady, but also indulges her interests in the study of dragons. And that leads to them joining an expedition in a far off land to study dragons.
This book is fantastic in so many ways, but it does have a few short comings. For starts, the writing style often felt forced or rather strange and it took me a while to get properly into it. But the amazing story actually makes up for that tenfold.
Another criticism I have is that the book had many opportunities to delve into racism and colonialism as themes and really dig deep into them, but it didn’t take them when I thought it did. However, it did have decent critiques of themes such as society and travel writing, and I can appreciate what she did there.
All in all, this is a fantastic first book in a series, and if the rest of the series are like this book then I am ready for it! I give it a 4/5.
This book is one of the best examples of low fantasy I’ve ever seen. For those of you not privy to the lingo, there are two kinds of fantasy – low and high. High fantasy is Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, fantasy that takes place in a world that exists outside of ours, such as Middlearth or the Seven Kingdoms. Low fantasy is fantasy that takes place in our world, such as the Harry Potter series. This series if low fantasy at its finest, incorporating elements of Victoriana society with magic.
Well, not really magic. Just dragons.
The world in this series is a world almost exactly like ours, with a lot of Victorian society being exactly as we know it to be from the history books. This society forces expectations onto women that we are familiar with from that era – marry, have children, look after the house, be a lady. But our lovely main character, Isabella, doesn’t want that. Isabella wants to study nature, but specifically she wants to study dragons. She starts young, capturing small dragons and dissecting them, preserving them in jars and taking notes and sketches on them. Her father disapproves, especially when she almost gets killed by a rather large dragon as a teenager, and she eventually has to start ‘conforming’ to society’s expectations of her.
And then she meets Jacob.
Jacob not only wants to give her the life of a lady, but also indulges her interests in the study of dragons. And that leads to them joining an expedition in a far off land to study dragons.
This book is fantastic in so many ways, but it does have a few short comings. For starts, the writing style often felt forced or rather strange and it took me a while to get properly into it. But the amazing story actually makes up for that tenfold.
Another criticism I have is that the book had many opportunities to delve into racism and colonialism as themes and really dig deep into them, but it didn’t take them when I thought it did. However, it did have decent critiques of themes such as society and travel writing, and I can appreciate what she did there.
All in all, this is a fantastic first book in a series, and if the rest of the series are like this book then I am ready for it! I give it a 4/5.