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His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

I was handed this book by my husband and was told that I would like it. I was a little unsure ofthis since there were many history references along with many battles, which I thought I wouldbecome bored with. This turned out to not be the case, however. Yes, there are manyreferences to history as this takes place during the Napoleon wars and mainly focuses on theEnglish side of things. However, the fantasy that is thrown into the story makes the events ofhistory a lot more interesting to read about. It is almost too bad that there were not dragons tomake our history more interesting.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik is the first book in the Tremeraire series. Starting, itshould be noted, that the story takes place during the Napoleonic Wars with the English beingthe main focus. It begins with Captain Will Laurence taking the sword of a French Captain whothey had just defeated in a battle. At the time Laurence did not understand why the FrenchCaptain had engaged them in battle when it was very obvious that the French ship was in badshape as were the men aboard. It is soon discovered, however, they are carrying a treasure onboard which had been worth fighting for…a dragon’s egg. The naval men find the egg to be awonderful bounty, but are afraid if it should hatch. The aviation department of the military is notlooked upon kindly, as they seem to be more barbaric in manner than the very polite andrespectful naval men, who normally come from better off families. Aviators come from, normally,lower class families and are considered outcasts by the general populace due to the need toseclude themselves to take care of their dragons.

The egg hatches and a black dragon is born into the midst of the naval men. A harnessing ofthe dragon is supposed to take place, but this dragon is smarter than most dragons and hasdeclined the normal ritual. The naval men unsure what is supposed to be happening look to thecaptain for his advice and the dragon says he chooses him for his Captain as he would not haveanyone else. To Captain and crew this is as if the dragon has just killed him in front of them.But, the Captain accepts his new position and leaves the Navy to raise the dragon who nameshimself Temeraire.

At first the aerial corp are cold to Laurence because normally you are born into or at least areraised in the aerial corp. It was very abnormal for such an older gentleman to become a part ofthe corp. However, both Laurence and Termeraire grow throughout the book and grow throughthe obstacles. After participating in a few battles it is soon shown that while Laurence andTermeraire have a different look on how to deal with their new lives they are good at what theyhave been thrown into. Because of this, they soon gain friends in the other captains and theirdragons.

As Temeraire grows, he is given a crew to take care of him, which includes a girl who Laurencedid not realize was a girl since she dressed in boy clothes and worked with the boys.Laurence’s upbringing gets in his way in the corp throughout the book and he still has troublewith it at the end, but begins to accept how different the naval life and the corp life are.

There is so much more to tell you about this book and the relationship which Laurence and

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Temeraire have, but it would be ruining the enjoyment of the book if I told you everything. Istrongly recommend this book and the others in the series to anyone who loves characters whogrow and seeing how cultures can clash.

I really enjoyed this book due to many factors, but mainly because it was easy to follow whilestill giving an authentic feel of the accounts to battle. The battle scenes were not stuffy nor werethey too long. There were sections, which seemed to drag on, but they were necessary for thestory and due to the fact of the perspective we are seeing, that of a well-bred naval officer, itmakes perfect sense for those scenes to be slightly less entertaining and more stale feeling.There are many more books Naomi Novik has written for this series and I hope you will pick thisone up and then continue on further with the others.

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