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Book review: His Majesty's Dragon
Jul. 22nd, 2007 09:28 pmToday's book review is His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik.
This book's up for a Hugo this year, so I guess pretty much everyone who's at all interested has already read it.
This is the first book in the Temeraire series. At this point, to the best of my knowledge, there are two more books in the series; I have no idea if there are more coming. But, though it's part of a series, the book stands alone well enough; it's not, as sometimes happens, the first arbitrary chunk of a larger story chopped off at a random or even deliberately frustrating point. The basic concept of the series is the fight between Britain and Napoleon, with dragons. As alternate history, it's silly, and as high fantasy, the world isn't really solid enough to be examined too deeply, but as whimsy, it works. The author's bio says that she's seriously interested in the Napoleonic period, so the historical background is probably very good, but I know so little about the period that I can't tell. Except for the dragons and the obvious implications of dragons, there's nothing that I can recognize as not being period. And it's a story that appeals so strongly to my own inner child that I'm not sure how meaningful it is that I loved it. (In fact, I couldn't put the doggone thing down; I had a lot of other stuff I needed to do yesterday, and instead I was reading.) The (human) characters are kind of odd, but they actually fit my vague impression of the time pretty well, and for me at least, their behavior and actions does shine light on our modern society, even though the exact way they live their lives is really quite strange.
But mostly, it's about dragons. A version of dragons that are some of the most appealing since Pern.
Definitely fluffy, but delightful, and not completely without some real meat. Fast and engaging, but probably not enduring prose for the ages. 9 out of 10.
( plot summary )
This book's up for a Hugo this year, so I guess pretty much everyone who's at all interested has already read it.
This is the first book in the Temeraire series. At this point, to the best of my knowledge, there are two more books in the series; I have no idea if there are more coming. But, though it's part of a series, the book stands alone well enough; it's not, as sometimes happens, the first arbitrary chunk of a larger story chopped off at a random or even deliberately frustrating point. The basic concept of the series is the fight between Britain and Napoleon, with dragons. As alternate history, it's silly, and as high fantasy, the world isn't really solid enough to be examined too deeply, but as whimsy, it works. The author's bio says that she's seriously interested in the Napoleonic period, so the historical background is probably very good, but I know so little about the period that I can't tell. Except for the dragons and the obvious implications of dragons, there's nothing that I can recognize as not being period. And it's a story that appeals so strongly to my own inner child that I'm not sure how meaningful it is that I loved it. (In fact, I couldn't put the doggone thing down; I had a lot of other stuff I needed to do yesterday, and instead I was reading.) The (human) characters are kind of odd, but they actually fit my vague impression of the time pretty well, and for me at least, their behavior and actions does shine light on our modern society, even though the exact way they live their lives is really quite strange.
But mostly, it's about dragons. A version of dragons that are some of the most appealing since Pern.
Definitely fluffy, but delightful, and not completely without some real meat. Fast and engaging, but probably not enduring prose for the ages. 9 out of 10.
( plot summary )