His Majesty’s Dragon

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

Been playing a lot of Guitar Hero. Finished Hinterland (4/5) and am on to the next Honor Harrington novel. Saw Sweeny Todd (3/5), and played quite a few games at Game Day.

I’ll try and expound on these over the next few days.

Ashes of Victory

The Honorverse as it is called is a series of Science Fiction war stories, mostly space battles, but the political and individual stories that go behind them as well. The main character is Honor Harrington a commander in the Royal Manticoran Space Navy. The series mostly follows her progression though the war, and her rise through her birth nation and a local allied nations navies.

By Ashes of Victory, Honor is an Admiral in the RMN and due to some injuries sustained in the previous books is working as an instructor at the navies Officer School. This represented a great shift in the series. For the first time 90% of the action of the book does not involve the lead character. To that point over half of the book doesn’t even include her. Even further the list of “lead” characters is somewhat long.

I don’t usually have a problem with multi-lead books, but this time I did. I’m not sure if it was a sense of disconnect, for eight books we’ve had one lead character with the occasional aside for some other characters or other settings. Now we have the traditional multiple leads, and switch perspective between them every chapter or so. I think one of the problems, is that some of these characters just weren’t strong enough. Most of these new “leads” were the supporting role characters that we’ve seen and heard from every now and then, but their personalities weren’t strengthened into lead characters. Not enough to turn me off, but enough to reduce my enthusiasm for the book.

Overall I’d rate this as a 3/5. For the moment though I’m going to set aside the series, but I’ll be back soon.

Next up: Hinterland: Book Two of the Godslayer Chronicles

Ashes of Victory

So I plowed through the science fiction titles of the local book store and landed on Webber. I had heard of him before but being into fantasy more than SciFi had kinda passed him over. I’m not sure that I completely escaped the rut. Honor is still a reluctant hero, though perhaps that’s not quite fair. The series is a SciFi Space Military drama, and I’m sure most commanders in the military accept possible hero status at least a little reluctantly. Sure some revel in the power, but I guess they wouldn’t make interesting enough characters to last as long as this series has.

So that gets back to the fantasy. Are the heroes reluctant because they have to be? Do power hungry heroes just not work, does it just turn them into villains. Maybe I just need to read more anti-hero novels, not that I have any desire to read Thomas Covenant.

In the end, I’ve enjoyed this series, and will probably try and read more SciFi in the future, but perhaps I’ve realized to take the stories for what they are.

So read some books and play some games.