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A review by daumari
Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan
5.0
This was delightful. I haven't read [b:Voyage of the Beagle|183645|Voyage of the Beagle|Charles Darwin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309211714s/183645.jpg|177481] by [a:Charles Darwin|12793|Charles Darwin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1398693802p2/12793.jpg] yet, so I'm not sure if I missed references (and I imagine actual Victorian travelogues are more verbally dense, but then again it might be analogous to her in-world book, Around the World in Search of Dragons).
I'm a fan of natural history, so combining natural history and fantasy means I adore this series. And in the third installment of the memoirs of Lady Trent, we go seaborne: first towards the arctic in search of sea serpents, then to not!South America where we meet our new archaeologist friend who happens to own a diving bell, and then through a bit of sailing and political strife end up in not!Hawaii. All the while, Isabella struggles over how dragon taxonomy should work: do the classical bins fit, or are there more subtle gradients, especially given sea serpents and fire lizards have some features but not all? I cannot recall other fiction books that consider their zoology like this and if anyone knows of any, please mention them in the comments!
As in [b:The Tropic of Serpents|17910078|The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #2)|Marie Brennan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372990377s/17910078.jpg|25095531], analogues to real world cultures are done well, with shades of historical attitudes but without making our heroine either a historically accurate but not fun jerk or out-of-place with modern sensibilities. Gender and roles in not!Hawaii in particular are handled gracefully-
I'm a fan of natural history, so combining natural history and fantasy means I adore this series. And in the third installment of the memoirs of Lady Trent, we go seaborne: first towards the arctic in search of sea serpents, then to not!South America where we meet our new archaeologist friend who happens to own a diving bell, and then through a bit of sailing and political strife end up in not!Hawaii. All the while, Isabella struggles over how dragon taxonomy should work: do the classical bins fit, or are there more subtle gradients, especially given sea serpents and fire lizards have some features but not all? I cannot recall other fiction books that consider their zoology like this and if anyone knows of any, please mention them in the comments!
As in [b:The Tropic of Serpents|17910078|The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #2)|Marie Brennan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1372990377s/17910078.jpg|25095531], analogues to real world cultures are done well, with shades of historical attitudes but without making our heroine either a historically accurate but not fun jerk or out-of-place with modern sensibilities. Gender and roles in not!Hawaii in particular are handled gracefully-