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A review by toggle_fow
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I have to officially apologize to this series and also admit to being a total hypocrite.
I resisted reading it for so long because I "don't like the Napoleonic era" and I "don't like sailing stories." WELL.
First of all, I love Pride and Prejudice AND also I loved A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians which is both (almost) this exact era and on top of that has vampires, which of all things I hate the most. Hypocrisy! After all, WHO CARES about the setting of a book, when the characters and relationships are good?!? I can't believe I forgot this most important of all fiction rules.
Second of all, dragons as ships with crews is brilliant and I'm an idiot.
This book is SO GOOD. It's so good.
Almost nothing happens until the sixty percent mark, and by "nothing" I mean "very little violence" because a WHOLE LOT is happening on the relationship side of things and it's AWESOME. Temeraire is a newly-hatched dragon. Laurence is the luckless sailor chosen by baby Temeraire to be his soul-bonded rider for life. (They're not really soul bonded except they actually kind of are!) This leads to shenanigans, as you might expect, as they train in Britain's dragon corps.
Things I loved about this book:
I resisted reading it for so long because I "don't like the Napoleonic era" and I "don't like sailing stories." WELL.
First of all, I love Pride and Prejudice AND also I loved A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians which is both (almost) this exact era and on top of that has vampires, which of all things I hate the most. Hypocrisy! After all, WHO CARES about the setting of a book, when the characters and relationships are good?!? I can't believe I forgot this most important of all fiction rules.
Second of all, dragons as ships with crews is brilliant and I'm an idiot.
This book is SO GOOD. It's so good.
Almost nothing happens until the sixty percent mark, and by "nothing" I mean "very little violence" because a WHOLE LOT is happening on the relationship side of things and it's AWESOME. Temeraire is a newly-hatched dragon. Laurence is the luckless sailor chosen by baby Temeraire to be his soul-bonded rider for life. (They're not really soul bonded except they actually kind of are!) This leads to shenanigans, as you might expect, as they train in Britain's dragon corps.
Things I loved about this book:
• All the dragons and their different personalities.
• The whole dragon crew thing, like I mentioned. I am still struggling exactly to imagine it, because I think my mental picture of a dragon is too small. The whole thing where there's rigging and a gunnery crew and a lieutenant, etc, is genius. We've seen dragon riders before a ton of times, but never this!
• I don't want to call Laurence a dandy, but his fastidious personality is really funny.
• THE WHOLE THING WITH Granby and Rankin where Laurence totally misjudges Rankin just based on his high-class manners. And then eventually he totally switches them in his estimation of their character and Granby becomes his right hand man. Perfect. Amazing. Stupendous. It's extremely Pride and Prejudice.
• Speaking of which, the whole secret social rules and Laurence's visit to his family and their extreme politeness and the formal way they speak... VERY Regency and I love it. I love the entire vibe. It's amazing.
• The way he calls Temeraire "my dear" all the time LOL.
• Was it just me or did the Choiseul affair seem really understated? Maybe it's just because I've read too many grimdark books lately, but I can't believe he crumbled and sang all his secrets instantly when merely confronted with the SHAME of Harcourt's VERY PRESENCE. Gasp.
• I love Emily and her captain mother. The whole community and culture of the aviators just seems, frankly, awesome and I don't know what Laurence was thinking at the beginning of the book.
• Dynamics of loyalty and leadership 👌👌👌👌