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jeriendhalDuring the Napoleanic wars in an alternate universe where dragons are real, Royal Navy Captain Will Lawrence captures a rare dragon egg from a French frigate. Glad for the prize, Lawrence finds to his dismay that the egg will hatch before they can reach port, and worse, the dragon bonds to him, stripping him of his Navy commission and dropping him into the freewheeling ranks of the Royal Dragon Corps.
This book is bloody nonsense. Fun bloody nonsense, but unlike other worlds I've read about, I couldn't really suspend my disbelief when I was reading it. Maybe it comes from reading too much O'Brien, but it was hard for me to believe that a RN captain during the Napoleanic Wars would so willingly give up his naval commission for an equivilent rank in a service little better (from the initial descriptions) than being in the Army, even if he had just gotten a 20 ton puppy in compensation.
Other points in no particular order:
1. He didn't even whine about losing the chance for prize money, a vital source of income for RN captains. Admittedly he got 14K pounds worth of prize money for finding the dragon, but still...
2. Much is made about how isolated dragon riders are from the need to care for the mounts, and their inability to have a stable family life. Unlike those RN officers who make it home every weekend...
3. I wish Novik hadn't used the "flying gasbag" explanation ala A Flight of Dragons to try and put a plausible veneer on her beasties. It just doesn't work, especially when overlaid with her descriptions of dozens of men clambering over and under a dragon in flight, never mind the bit at the end where we see flights of four dragons carrying "ships" with 2,000 men plus artillery aboard across the Channel.
4. Boarding actions - Leaping from ship to ship with the icy sea below: Believable. Unlatching your safety harness and jumping onto the back of a hostile dragon (plus his crew) thousands of feet in the air: Act of suicidal insanity.
5. Situation: You've got a badly wounded dragon who needs vital care after encountering hostile action. Do you A) help it land immediately after reaching dry land and then fly in the surgeon and supplies, or B) Fly your dragon underneath the critter so it can glide halfway across England to make it to its home base? Guess which option is standard procedure...
6. Female dragon riders being treated with anything close to equality with the boys? Even if they're the only ones that can ride a certain valuable breed of dragon? In the Age of Napolean? No. Just no.
7. And on that note, there's also a big point about dragons being basically treated clever animals most of the time. Aside from the ones doing the flight training at a major base... Frankly, if you're going to breed creatures that are sentient, and can spit acid nasty enough to dissolve rigging at 400 feet with deadly accuracy, you'd better be prepared to start paying them a stipend.
8. One wonders if the newly formed United States has its own dragon corps. And what the dragons that live west of the Missippi think of it?
Hmm. Inuits on ice dragons. Lakota Sioux with obsidian axes on fire breathing dragon. Heh...
That said? It's still a fun read. Just don't make the mistake of taking it too seriously.
This book is bloody nonsense. Fun bloody nonsense, but unlike other worlds I've read about, I couldn't really suspend my disbelief when I was reading it. Maybe it comes from reading too much O'Brien, but it was hard for me to believe that a RN captain during the Napoleanic Wars would so willingly give up his naval commission for an equivilent rank in a service little better (from the initial descriptions) than being in the Army, even if he had just gotten a 20 ton puppy in compensation.
Other points in no particular order:
1. He didn't even whine about losing the chance for prize money, a vital source of income for RN captains. Admittedly he got 14K pounds worth of prize money for finding the dragon, but still...
2. Much is made about how isolated dragon riders are from the need to care for the mounts, and their inability to have a stable family life. Unlike those RN officers who make it home every weekend...
3. I wish Novik hadn't used the "flying gasbag" explanation ala A Flight of Dragons to try and put a plausible veneer on her beasties. It just doesn't work, especially when overlaid with her descriptions of dozens of men clambering over and under a dragon in flight, never mind the bit at the end where we see flights of four dragons carrying "ships" with 2,000 men plus artillery aboard across the Channel.
4. Boarding actions - Leaping from ship to ship with the icy sea below: Believable. Unlatching your safety harness and jumping onto the back of a hostile dragon (plus his crew) thousands of feet in the air: Act of suicidal insanity.
5. Situation: You've got a badly wounded dragon who needs vital care after encountering hostile action. Do you A) help it land immediately after reaching dry land and then fly in the surgeon and supplies, or B) Fly your dragon underneath the critter so it can glide halfway across England to make it to its home base? Guess which option is standard procedure...
6. Female dragon riders being treated with anything close to equality with the boys? Even if they're the only ones that can ride a certain valuable breed of dragon? In the Age of Napolean? No. Just no.
7. And on that note, there's also a big point about dragons being basically treated clever animals most of the time. Aside from the ones doing the flight training at a major base... Frankly, if you're going to breed creatures that are sentient, and can spit acid nasty enough to dissolve rigging at 400 feet with deadly accuracy, you'd better be prepared to start paying them a stipend.
8. One wonders if the newly formed United States has its own dragon corps. And what the dragons that live west of the Missippi think of it?
Hmm. Inuits on ice dragons. Lakota Sioux with obsidian axes on fire breathing dragon. Heh...
That said? It's still a fun read. Just don't make the mistake of taking it too seriously.
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Date: 2007-05-28 10:36 am (UTC)