I’m beginning to think of this series as sort of eating M&M’s. That are good for you. I kinda want to give them 5-stars, and maybe I should, but reading them tires me in some way. Maybe that is because I stay up late into the wee hours reading them. I really like inserting dragons into history, and this series does it well. But it is much more than just making sense (and fun) of Victorian sensibilities. Actually, the author does a very good job of putting you inside the head of someone who believes dearly in honor, the Crown, and the superiority of British civilization, while having him over time come to the realization that many of these very conventional foundations are rotten. Civil rights for dragons. For women. And he comes to realize that in this book via his exposure to Chinese civilization – which, if my stereotypes hold, was and is not the most favorable toward women…but in this book, women’s rights in China are a byproduct of the Chinese reverence for dragons…so, take it where you can get it.
In between the (aerial, as in on the back of dragons in flight) swordfights is political intrigue – the rather obvious plodding politics of Britain in the Victorian age, the more sophisticated politics of the Chinese Emperor’s Court (which are complicated by the related dragon issues, as compared to the British who assume they are superior to dragons, just like they are to everyone and everything else on the planet) play out. (Someday, I’ll figure out a way to express my run-on parenthetical thoughts without destroying the underlying sentence, but obviously, that day is not yet here.)
So, enjoyable and a lot of food for thought. Will Laurence, the annoyingly endearing British Naval officer converted to dragon handler, is moving through a lot of evidence to refute his heretofore unassailable belief in everything he has held dear and it will be interesting to see if he will use this knowledge to better the situation of dragons and women in Britain, or at least try. And for his dragon Temeraire, this is a nice if very unusual coming-of-age story….imagine a brilliant mind and adolescence in a 20 ton dragon and you get the idea….but Temeraire has a much clearer view of the world, and it is through his questioning of duty and Crown and everything else that Will is growing beyond what he has always “known” as the truth.
I look forward to the other books in the series, but I need a break from dragons for a couple of days…the (necessary) slaughter of many beeves, sheep, and tunnies (tuna) that is required to sustain dragons wears on me. And I’m not even a vegetarian….