A Natural History of Dragons

I really ought to have picked up this book ages ago. I loved Marie Brennan's Onyx Court series, and this one has dragons. I put it off because it got somewhat mixed reviews. But then the good ones started to outweigh the bad ones and I decided to give it a shot. The good news is that now I don't have to wait too long for the final book to come out. I can read through the whole series pretty quickly.

The series is about dragons, but from a scientific perspective and with a Victorian slant. As such, it's a bit slower than a typical dragon story.  The focus is more on learning and discovery than fire and treasure. But that doesn't mean there isn't action. The book has more than one thrilling dragon attack, it's just that the dragons are treated as animals rather than mythical creatures. Like big cats or bears.

The book is structured as a memoir. The aging Lady Trent is finally telling the truth about her youthful adventures and how she came to be a leading expert on the subject of dragonss. She interjects a lot of fun commentary about hindsight. It also goes a long way to smoothing over some of her ruder behavior that she's ultimately ashamed by it.

I really enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. The marriage of dragons and science hit a perfect sweet spot for me. There was also a fun nod to Dracula, which basically cemented my love for this book. I'm excited to read about the rest of Lady Trent's adventures with dragons.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Crown of Swords

Image
The seventh book of the  Wheel of Time  series is where many people agree that the series takes a dive in quality. Although I think it's less that anything changes significantly and more that people get tired of how stagnant the books are becoming. Nearly nothing happens in this book. Jordan still has serious issues writing female characters and romantic relationships. The world is continuing to be expanded on, and the rules of the magic system are slowly (so slowly) becoming more clear. But this is also a step down in terms of length. We go from a few 1000 page books in a row to one that's only 850 pages (and the next is less than 700!). Combine that with my brilliant idea to read  A Tale of Two Cities  right before this book, and I positively flew through it. I think you have to reach a sort of zen state to get through this series. There are a lot of side plots, a lot of world building, a lot of descriptions of clothing. Rather than just hating certain characters, you hav
Read more

The People We Keep

This was a really sweet coming of age tale about finding your way and finding your family. Aprils' mother walked out when she was little and her father wasn't much more present. By the time she's sixteen, April is basically on her own, stuck in a small town where everyone looks down on her and even her father mostly pretends that she doesn't exist. And then she realizes that she can leave, too. So April heads out for life on the road, working odd jobs, writing and singing songs, making friends and fleeing before anyone can get too close. And through it all her music sustains her. My favorite part of this book, hands-down, was the soundtrack. April's love of music, and the way the author uses it to set the scene and drill right into her emotional state was fantastic. I kept having to put the book down so I could bring up songs on youtube and listen to them while I read certain passages. This was just an overall enjoyable book. I had a lot of sympathy for April being
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more