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WoGF Review: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Daniel Roy (Triseult) is a writer, slow traveler, backpack foodie, endurance runner, and SF junkie. He has lived in Canada, China, and India, and currently resides in South Korea.
Now that’s what I call a fantasy adventure! The premise—Napoleonic Wars with dragons—is a bit over the top, but there is enough genuine emotion and excitement on display to suspend disbelief without any second thought. I mean; who needs verisimilitude? There’s dragons fighting over the Channel!
“It’s just some light reading” is a phrase often heard when defending books that lack depth, tight plotting, or engaging characters. His Majesty’s Dragon is the proof that a lighthearted tale is no excuse for shoddy writing. Yes, the story of Laurence and Temeraire is a light read: there is no philosophical treatise on the meaning of existence, no innovation in the turn of a phrase. But that doesn’t make it “just” a popcorn book. The characters are engaging, and the story is written with enough tenderness and care that it is easy to fall in love with the characters.
What really anchors the story is the relationship between Captain Laurence and his companion of fortune, the dragon Temeraire. It’s heartwarming to see them grow closer together, and their friendship is often touching and genuine. Let’s call it what it is: an inter-species bromance. Laurence by himself is not that engaging a character; he’s a bit stiff-lipped, and always offended by this or that breach of etiquette. But his genuine love for Temeraire, and the way this love ends up affecting other dragons, is really great to read. I couldn’t help laughing at the gruff relationship between Maximus and Berkley, for instance, or shed a tear for poor Levitas.
WoGF Review: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Nathan Barnhart (Skynjay) is one of three reviewers for Fantasy Review Barn. Though he read Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books as a kid, he didn’t really get into the genre until a few years ago, at which point he started reading any speculative fiction he could get his hands on. If not reading or playing with his kid, you can find him at the rec getting beat in basketball.
Oh friggen sweet. Ok, so here’s how it is. This stuffy British sea captain wipes the deck with a Frenchie ship (ha, wipes the deck). When they take control of the ship it has this giant egg on it, because it turns out there are dragons. This egg is about to hatch so he makes his crew draw straws on who is going to be its best bud because these crazy people don’t want their very own dragon and it is a punishment or something. But when the egg hatches and the loser kid tries to talk with him the dragon is like, oh hell no I ain’t running with no lackey, where is the big dog on this boat? He finds the captain and talks to him in perfect English saying, you and me man.
So Captain Laurence has this dragon, and doesn’t know what to name him, so he calls him Temeraire after some lame ship or something. And the dragon is really smart, but because they are new they have to go off and train on how to be a useful in a fight. Which is awesome, because I totally read all the Pern books and those dragons NEVER fought, they just flew around people and shot falling strings out of the sky. But in this book Europe is at some war between the English and the French, and they totally load the dragons up with gunmen and bombs and attack ships and other dragons with them.
