Will you choose winter or summer? Will you walk with friends or alone?

[sovay]

So I'm pleasantly surprised: I read Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon yesterday, and liked it well enough that I have just returned from the bookstore with Throne of Jade. Yes, yes, I'm behind the times; everyone else has read these already; I needed something to read while curled up in bed, all right? And it was much, much less like Anne McCaffrey than I'd feared.

I suspect that I can't appreciate the books fully, since my knowledge of Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forester is nonexistent, unless one counts Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, but I am fond of the slightly archaic style and the alternate natural history is very neatly worked in. Of course, I couldn't reconstruct even the real-world Napoleonic Wars if I was hit with a treatise on them, so I can't tell whether any striking political-military changes have taken place (beyond the basic existence of the Aerial Corps, which I'm very sure I would have remembered), but I don't think that's critical to the plot as yet. I am enjoying the ways in which the mythology of dragons has been tinkered with. History? History's flexible. But if someone botches the myth . . .

I probably should have saved myself the trouble and bought Black Powder War this afternoon, but this way I can at least pretend that I am exercising self-restraint.

Comments

[larryhammer]

I cannot recommend being hit in the head with a treatise on the Napoleonic Wars. Very little knowledge transfer happens that way, in my experience, and you can get a nasty bump.

Just sayin'.

---L.

[sovay]

Very little knowledge transfer happens that way, in my experience, and you can get a nasty bump.

Oh, now you tell me . . .

*unsteadily returns volume to its shelf*