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

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
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