His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

During the Napoleonic Wars, a British ship engages a French frigate. The British board, the French fight valiantly, but the British crew overcomes them. They then discover what the French had been fighting to protect: an unhatched dragon’s egg. Since Britain has fewer dragons than the French, this is indeed a great find. At worst, it’ll add more variety to their breeding stock; at best they may have a new fighting dragon to add to the British aerial corp. They quickly head back toward a friendly port, but it soon becomes apparent that the egg will hatch before they arrive. Since dragons, if they are to bond with a human at all, bond just after hatching, the officers all wait around, to see who the dragon will chose. (Nobody is anxious, because it means a major change in life and the need to give up thoughts of family and so on.) The dragon hatches, and chooses the Captian, Will Laurence, who gives it the name Temeraire.

Thus starts the new fantasy – His Majesty’s Dragon (called Temeraire in the UK) – by Naomi Novik. It’s her first novel, and I hope that it’s an indicator of things to come, because it is indeed very good.

When I first heard of this fantasy, I began looking for it in the bookstores. I’m very interested in the early 1800s – it’s history and literature, as well as fiction set in that period. I’ve read a lot of histories of the Napoleonic wars, and am a fan of historicals ranging from those of Patrick O’Brian (whose works go beyond others of the genre and rank among the best fiction of the 20^th century) and C. S. Forster to those of Bernard Cornwell. Likewise, I love Jane Austen (and much of the literature of the rest of the century, both British and American: Dickens, Melville, the Brontes, George Eliot, and so on. So I was anxious to read a fantasy set in the period.

I wasn’t disappointed. It’s well written, with well drawn and engaging characters, an interesting story line, and a marvelously thought out setting and background. While a dragon-based air force is clearly fantasy, the details of how it would work – from the various breeds of dragons to the history of human interaction with them – is so intricately detailed and convincingly portrayed that it seems very real.

The dragons are intelligent creatures, and Temeraire himself (who turns out to be a rare Chinese breed) is the best character in the book. Picture a very bright, very personable adolescent. He becomes fast friends with Captain Laurence, who, among other things, reads to him. Temeraire loves listening to history and then, eventually, mathematics and science. (Laurence can’t understand all that he reads to Temeraire, who, as I noted, is a very bright adolescent, and absorbs the math read to him.) He starts out bright but naïve, but grows in character and true understanding as the novel progresses.

The dragons that form the air corps can best be viewed as ships. They have a captain as well as a small crew that rides on them and a ground crew that services them. The various breeds engage in combat or fly scouting or escort missions. Dragons, in fact, play an integral part in major naval battles. The Battle of Trafalgar comes about because British dragons are able to force the French fleet out of port, allowing Nelson to engage them. The relationship between the men and women and their dragons is also compelling and believable.

Throughout, Novik does a great job in portraying the details of the world – not just her added fantasy elements, but the world of the early 1800s. The characters and much of their dialog remind me of Patrick O’Brian. Some of the phrases see uses when characters address one another or express their feelings are those that O’Brian was fond of, though her prose style apart from the dialog doesn’t have the early-19^th century feel of O’Brian’s prose. The world of the Navy, of the air corps, and of England in general, is well drawn, as are the bits of back history that she fills in. The way the dragons fit in and the changes that they’ve caused over the actual early 1800s are well thought out. It all feels utterly convincing.

The next book in the series is due out next week, and I plan to immediately buy and read it. This looks to be a well written and imaginative series, and I look forward to more.

One side note. Don’t be put off by the blurbs on the book. If you are like me, blurbs from Anne McCaffrey and Terry Brooks are more likely to drive you away from the book than toward it. McCaffrey, in particular, has taken to praising so much schlock fantasy that I tend to ignore anything she blurbs. But this is an exception