Anne McCaffrey meets Susanna Clarke! While I read and enjoy quite a bit of fantasy fiction, I have not had much experience with the alternate history sub-genre, so I’m quite excited by the Temeraire series, and though I’ve not quite finished this first one, I had to comment about all I really like about this. For one thing, as with McCaffrey, I am touched deeply by the bond between the aviators and their dragons, and I love that these dragons speak! Though it’s been decades since I first read McCaffrey, I think the communication was telepathic in her series. So for animal lovers, this love and shared loyalty is a deeply emotional pull in this book. Personally I thought Susanna Clarke over-wrote some of the military meets magic parts of Jonathan Strange, but Novik avoids this for the most part. And perhaps it’s because I live, as we all do, in such an uncertain global climate,both politcally and ecologically, that the formalities of social exchange, and Novik’s great ability to render this into believable dialogue, along with an almost comforting feeling from the structure of the 19th century English military make me feel "all’s right with the world". She manages to give us Europe as we expected it, with the twist of the dragon race having been there all along. Great fun! Highly recommended.

posted Feb 28, 2007 at 11:59AM

His Majesty's Dragon is one of the only alternate history novels I've read that I actually enjoyed. Dragons fight each other in the skies in the Napoleonic era.

posted Jun 16, 2010 at 3:07PM

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