10. His Majesty's Dragon

By Naomi Novik


When I was loading up on books to bring back to China, I had picked up and put down His Magesty's Dragon twice. On the one hand, this trilogy looked like an interesting new twist on the dragon theme- it takes place during the Napoleonic wars. On the other hand, I find that I have very little patience for mediocre fantasy/sci-fi novels. If I don't love them, I'll probably hate them (which is why, as geeky as I am, I've never read a Star Wars novel).

However, shortly after returning to China, I read that Peter Jackson was considering making The Termiere Trilogy his follow-up to Lord of the Rings. Later that week, I found it at the English Bookstore. So, I figured, if its good enough to be considered by Pete Jackson, its good enough for me to read.

Well.

It gets off to a great start. Laurence, the captain of a British ship, has just defeated a French ship in battle, boarded them, and taken their cargo. In the hold, his crew find a dragon egg. This event introduces us to a world in which England and France are fighting on two fronts- on the sea by ship and in the air, by dragon. The acquisition of this rare dragon egg changes the life of Laurence and the direction of the war.

Once the book gets underway, Novik has this annoying habit of resolving problems as soon as they arise. Its the strangest problem to encounter in a novel about war, dragons, or dragons in war. The dragon won't let itself be harnessed on page 6? They figure out how to woo it properly on page 7. Laurence is not accepted by his new aviator companions on page 28? He wins them over on page 29. Again, and again, its as if Novik doesn't like to see her characters endure the slightest inconvenience for any length of time. Perhaps she cares too much for her characters to see them in pain, or perhaps I read too much into it. Not sure. Either way, only the final battle creates a problematic situation that lasts for more

The final air battle, although only a few pages long, is as good a read as the beginning, and its only by virtue of those two sequences that I could envision a movie being made from this book. The visuals of seeing an all out war with people riding dragons, firing muskets and dropping bombs on each other would be quite a Hollywood sight. Unfortunately, I think they'd have to draw out the tension throughout the other 90% of the story.