His Majesty's Dragon

What if the Napoleonic Wars, but dragons? There, I just saved you 300 pages.

Temeraire is a meringue of a book, a thin foam of historical fiction style over a puff of air. In a world exactly like our own, except there are dragons, Royal Navy Captain Will Laurence captures a dragon’s egg from a French frigate. The creature inside bonds with Laurence, and he is out of the Navy and into the Dragon Corps, a distinct social step down.

The meat of the book is the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire (the dragon), who is quite intelligent, speaking English and French, and descended from a precious Chinese bloodline. Dragons come across quite like multi-ton speaking cats. Now, I have a dog, who I love, but I’m not sure I’d inflict a novel about our relationship on the world. And beyond that pair, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about any of the other characters. It’s like Novik heard somewhere that British people of the time were reserved and proper, and skipped character traits other than a “devoted to duty score.” Dragon combat could be a highpoint, but feels very much like contemporary naval combat, but faster. At no point did I sense any bit of risk or danger in the story.

I’m not going to judge anyone who likes these books, because I’m a sucker for the Honor Harrington series, but I’ve got literally nothing good to say about this book, aside from readability.