I just started reading
His Majesty’s Dragon on my lunchbreak.
I admit it, I expected to dislike it. But I was/am trying to branch out (within genre I know I know, shut up and take your peanuts!), so I dove in.
1. It’s a “historical” novel – kinda. It’s set in, I dunno (or care) the 1700s or 1800s or something. Except with dragons. Don’t get me wrong, DRAGONS are cool but, you know? HISTORY = boring (in fiction). I know that doesn’t make sense. Don’t ask for sense unless you want eggs.
2. It’s historical. Did I mention that yet?
I picked it up because I read an interview with Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files fame…. I’ve reviewed 8 or 10 of his books on this blog) and someone asked him the standard “What series should people be reading?” or something like that, and he mentioned this one. And I was trying to fill up a nice to read pile for the new year, so this one got thrown on there.
And you know what?
Yes, I’m starting many a sentence frequently with ‘and’. But not that.
I’m enjoying it so far. There were two lines of dialogue that struck me and nearly threw me out of things… maybe because I watched too much Monty Python as a kid, and forget that people actually talked like that at some point (someone literally says “What’s all this then?” or something, which I’m sure is totally normal Britspeak or some jazz, but me the ignorant Americano can’t separate it from classic Python). I’ve already forgotten the other so it can’t have been that big of a deal.
70 pages in on my 30 min lunch break, so it can’t be that bad. I hope the last 80% or so continues at the same quality level.
Well, I may just have to pick this one up. Truth time – I LOVE historical fiction. I think it’s because I’ve always been interested in learning about the people and relationships of certain historical periods. In school (yes, kids history existed when I went to school) they only ever covered the boring crap – dates, battles (to me, boring), and oh yeah – more dates. I don’t recall learning about the people involved other than – uh, when they were born and died (more damn dates).
So, when I get a chance to read historical fiction I usually take it. It makes the more interesting aspect of history come alive.
Thanks for the review!
Cat
I’ll do a review when I finish, this was just more of a “reading journal” type thing. I enjoy reading straight history non-fiction stuff – I’ve got a decent stack of that on my shelf. And I enjoy fantasy. But somehow when they meet it usually drives me crazy. I suspect this annoyance may taper off the more I immerse myself in the UF genre/phenomenon as it’s basically the same thing.
There’s stuff in here about class and nobility in Britain and a bunch of other things that are completely and utterly uninteresting to me as a reader, but I know lots of readers may dig that. I just ignore it. The dragon stuff is fairly interesting. Although the MC calls his (male) dragon “dear”, which I really don’t like. I guess this could be British too? I dunno, I tend to give authors a huge “benefit of the doubt” type thing and pretty much never fact check them about stuff like this. I mean, what’s the point? It’s their world.
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