Temeraire
Naomi Novik
327 pages
published in 2006
So that’s why the Temeraire series is so popular. I had heard of it of course, the first novel in the series (called Her Majesty’s Dragon in the original American edition) having been the subject of much hype and enthusiastic reviews when it first came out, but I had been skeptical. It had all sounded too high concept to me: Horatio Hornblower with dragons? Interesting, but it all seemed a bit too slight to hang a novel on. As I quickly found out when I flipped through Temeraire in the library, I was wrong. Naomi Novik knows how to tell a story, to keep you turing the page until it’s finished and leave you wanting more.
Frigate captain William Laurence manages to capture a French blockade runner but is puzzled why it resisted so fiercly when it was clear it could not win the fight. His puzzlement ends when he discovers it’s transporting a dragon, one near to hatching to boot. Dragons are rare and valuable, both as status symbol and instrument of war. Because it’s clear that the egg will hatch before his ship will be back at base, Laurence knows it’s his duty to get the dragon to imprint on one of his men, to get it into service for England, notoriously weak on dragons. Imagine his surprise — if not the reader’s — when it turns out the dragon imprints on him. It means the end of his career in the navy and the start of a life in the country’s most despicable arm of service, the Aerial Corps.
Laurence, who’s very much the perfect Napoleonic Wars era gentleman, has a lot to learn in his new career. Not the least important of which is learning how to deal with his newfound companion. Temeraire, as he has called his dragon, turns out to be intelligent, very intelligent, much more than just an animal, but a person in his own right. It doesn’t take long for Laurence and Temeraire to become friends, companions. Naomi Novik takes her time to establish this relationship, developing it naturally.
This is a very leisurely book in general, as we follow Laurence and Temeraire to their training post in Scotland, where they meet other, more conventional dragon/rider couples and get introduced to the ways of the Aerial Corps. I always like that sort of thing, as I also mentioned in my review of Sheepfarmer’s Daughter. Novik does provide a proper plot and climax in the second half of the book however, as of course Temeraire and Laurence are instrumental in foiling a Napoleonic plot against England.
As should be obvious, Temeraire should not be taken too serious as alternate history. From the backstory given in the book, it’s clear dragons have always existed through recorded history, yet it developed along generally the same lines as in the real world. In fact, there’s even a mention of the Battle of Trafalgar that happened almost entirely the same way as in real life, save for the presence of dragons. This didn’t bother me too much, as it’s clear that Novik never intended this to be a “serious” alternate history, rather than a cool setting to have the adventures in she wanted to write about.
What did bother me a bit was the subplot about Laurence’s supposed betrothed, who he has to say farewell too as he becomes a dragon rider. It’s all done in pseudo Jane Austen language and doesn’t convince at all, but luckily Laurence gets better and less uptight in the later half of the novel. A minor flaw in an otherwise excellent adventure novel.