Random Babblings

His Majesty’s Dragon is the first adventure in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. It’s probably the last one in the series I’ll read for for a while. This was a quick read, coming in at only 342 pages, and was engaging enough in of itself, but there were a few things that make me shy away.

The first is perhaps a great failing of the genre it is in. This is an alternative history novel. Set in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s the main characters are members of Aerial Corps who fly Dragons. Dragons however are not a new introduction to this world. There are references in the novel going back to the times of the Crusades. The problem is, despite 600 years of human interaction with intelligent dragons we’re exactly where we would be without them. Napoleon has seized the throne of France and has waged is war against Britain and most of the rest of Europe. A key off stage event is even the Battle of Trafalgar, though Admiral Nelson does manage to survive this one. Too much is status quo, as if except for the existence of dragons, the divergence doesn’t start until the first page of the book. Now yes if you subscribe to the Multiverse theory, which would make this world possible in the first place, the possibility does exist for a world exactly like ours with dragons that haven’t influenced anything. But to me some universes are more likely than others.

My second problem with the book seems small, but to me is indicative of lack of thought. In the climatic battle at the end of the novel a French dragon has been attacked by a British acid spitter. The acid is all over the head of the dragon, and he is in great pain. The acid is eating into him and it is only a matter of time before it eats through to his brain. The crew abandons “ship” to nearby dragons. The captain, in an act of mercy, shoots the dragon in the head to save it a slow death, but now plummets down to the ocean with his beast.

As yes, a good captain goes down with his ship, and by showing his dragon mercy he denied himself the option of jumping to another dragon. Bullshit. I don’t doubt that people are incapable of mercy or sacrifice, and the relationships that exist between the dragons and their captains in this book are capable of making that sacrifice realistic. The problem I have is while the mercy was warranted, the sacrifice was completely unnecessary. The man should have been wearing a parachute, but then nobody is.

The book is set in 1805, and the invention of the parachute is credited at 1793 even though sketches and rough prototypes go back hundreds of years. While the invention of the backpack style parachute does not occur until 1913, Novik already shows dragon related acceleration of technology in the form of the carabiner which was not invented until 1915. The men and women of the Aerial Corps are regarded as a valuable resource, one would think that more effort would be put into protecting them from mishap.

In all not a horrid novel, but enough problems to keep me from continuing to read the series. Rating: 2.5/5