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hargora 's review for:
His Majesty's Dragon
by Naomi Novik
DNF'd at 75%
why?
THE DRAGONS WERE JUST TOO FUCKING BIG
i know this is absolutely a me problem, however I feel the need to do some explaining.
there is a limit to how big a creature can get before it can no longer be sustained by its environment. the largest predator on land is the polar bear, at approximately 1 ton, also known as *half the size of the smallest dragons in this book*. and polar bears are an outlier, as they are the subject of what's known as Arctic gigantism, where creatures will get larger in cold environments due to losing less heat per square inch.
the dragons in this book get up to 50 tons. you know what weighs 50 tons? a fucking blue whale. y'know what definitely cannot fly? a fucking blue whale.
blue whales get so big largely due to their choice of food, which is krill. the difference between krill and , say, a herd of cows, is that krill are obscenely abundant and only take 10 days to hatch. female krill can lay up to 10,000 eggs at a time, multiple times per 3 month spawning season, which can equal up to 100,000 babies.
cows on the other hand, typically only have one calf per pregnancy, and take two years to get to slaughter weight. the largest dragons will eat herds of them at a time. can you see how this starts to get inefficient? the amount of food required to sustain one large dragon, let alone several, would quickly become absolutely disastrous for the ecosystem and economy.
of course, I doubt many people who read this book were looking at it through a speculative biology lens, but I think those who were would also have noticed Novik's lack of research on that front. it's particularly irritating due to how much thought is put into both the variation and lifestyle of the dragons, but their practical applications as well. those aspects make this book feel otherwise very grounded, which makes the sheer size of the creatures feel very jarring.
why?
THE DRAGONS WERE JUST TOO FUCKING BIG
i know this is absolutely a me problem, however I feel the need to do some explaining.
there is a limit to how big a creature can get before it can no longer be sustained by its environment. the largest predator on land is the polar bear, at approximately 1 ton, also known as *half the size of the smallest dragons in this book*. and polar bears are an outlier, as they are the subject of what's known as Arctic gigantism, where creatures will get larger in cold environments due to losing less heat per square inch.
the dragons in this book get up to 50 tons. you know what weighs 50 tons? a fucking blue whale. y'know what definitely cannot fly? a fucking blue whale.
blue whales get so big largely due to their choice of food, which is krill. the difference between krill and , say, a herd of cows, is that krill are obscenely abundant and only take 10 days to hatch. female krill can lay up to 10,000 eggs at a time, multiple times per 3 month spawning season, which can equal up to 100,000 babies.
cows on the other hand, typically only have one calf per pregnancy, and take two years to get to slaughter weight. the largest dragons will eat herds of them at a time. can you see how this starts to get inefficient? the amount of food required to sustain one large dragon, let alone several, would quickly become absolutely disastrous for the ecosystem and economy.
of course, I doubt many people who read this book were looking at it through a speculative biology lens, but I think those who were would also have noticed Novik's lack of research on that front. it's particularly irritating due to how much thought is put into both the variation and lifestyle of the dragons, but their practical applications as well. those aspects make this book feel otherwise very grounded, which makes the sheer size of the creatures feel very jarring.