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Saturday, January 4, 2014

His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik

This is a BOTM club read.  It was described "Alternate history during the Napoleonic Wars -- really?  I know, I know, BUT it's got TALKING DRAGONS!! Trust me, this is a fun and enjoyable read, not truly weighed down by war talk" by our  moderator.  And she was right that it isn't weighed down by a war talk and it was a fun light read.  I liked the read.  I found the story to be very predictable, Laurence does't want to have a dragon but Temeraire chooses him and wins him over.  All the supporting characters are predictable and boring too.  There is a class issue and the characters are a lot of snobs, I guess it would be most likely historically accurate, if there had been Dragons in 18th century England. But they are still really stuck up!  I think I went into this read expecting too much.  I was expecting a book that matched Eragon or Pern.  In my opinion this just did not meet their standards.  The writing was solid and the story line was well written, even the betrayal was predictable.  Reading some other reviews it appears the battles are historically accurate.  If I had been more interested I many have followed up to see if they were, but I wasn't.
It's an easy read and fun, but not an "Oooh I can't believe I didn't know about this book" read.  If you want a light read with some history and some fantasy this is a good choice, and maybe I would have liked it better if I had discovered it on my own and had no expectations going into the read.

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