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His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, #1)

Naomi Novik

Start date: December 8, 2011

Finish date: December 31, 2011

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Aug 07, 2016 Scott Firestone rated it it was ok

His Majesty's Dragon takes place during a time of conflict between England and Napoleon-led France. The difference here being that dragons exist, and they fight for and with humans in our conflicts.

The book starts with a British ship capturing a French vessel, and finding a dragon egg aboard. It hatches, and the dragon bonds with the reluctant captain. The rest of the book is him coming to terms with being removed from his position in the Navy and moving, with his dragon Temeraire, to the Aeria His Majesty's Dragon takes place during a time of conflict between England and Napoleon-led France. The difference here being that dragons exist, and they fight for and with humans in our conflicts.

The book starts with a British ship capturing a French vessel, and finding a dragon egg aboard. It hatches, and the dragon bonds with the reluctant captain. The rest of the book is him coming to terms with being removed from his position in the Navy and moving, with his dragon Temeraire, to the Aerial Corps. And training. And finally fighting.

Novik's a good writer. Not flashy or profound, but she gets the job done in an "easy" way that's not actually easy at all, but takes great skill. Her battle sequences were especially vivid and well done. Unfortunately, there are a number of things that struck me as not-thought-through, and even silly. And they take away from the story. Here are a few...

1) The biggest, and most egregious, is that we don't know anything about the dragons outside the military. I don't mean it's barely mentioned. I mean there's NOTHING. Are there dragons in the wild? Do they live in their own societies? They're intelligent, so how did we come to
"domesticate" them? And since they're so smart, why in the world do they fight for us? What's in it for them? I don't like info-dumps, but it would have been easy to include even a little information on dragons. You're asking me to suspend disbelief, so help me in my disbelief. Make this phenomenon seem real by telling me about it.

2) Dragons are very smart (mostly), and Temeraire pops out speaking English. I'm not sure I can buy dragons being able to physically talk, but I'll go with it. Novik has a character explain that dragons pick up language while still in the egg. Okaaaay. You're making me work really hard to believe this. First, a creature can pick up language just by hearing it spoken, and with zero visual reference at all. But even better: Temeraire was only on the British ship for two weeks before hatching. But picked up the whole language in that two weeks. Riiiiiiight...

3) Laurence calls his male dragon Temeraire "my dear" throughout the book, but he doesn't use this phrase with anyone else, so it sounds silly.

4) Speaking of Laurence, he has the personality of a boiled cabbage.

5) I don't get the contempt for the Aerial Corps. The Navy (and those civilians who associate with them) completely look down on them. THEY HAVE FREAKIN' DRAGONS! That save your butts! Why would everyone not be their biggest fans? It's more than just rivalry between military branches, like we see in modern times. But we get zero explanation.

6) How can these countries afford to feed all of these dragons? Livestock, which don't grow overnight, will feed a lot of people. Or one meal for one dragon. That's SO expensive! And there are lots of dragons. And those that aren't on the front lines are used for tasks such as delivering mail. "Hey, thanks for carrying my letter up to Scotland. Here's a COW." What?! It's just something she should have thought through, and then given an explanation that made my "?!" go away.

Anyway, I've been harsh, but, again, my friends gave this 4 and 5 stars and I DON'T GET IT! It was a okay book. I'll likely even pick up the next one in the series to see where it goes. But it had better get better quickly. ...more

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