Onefinemess

His Majesty’s Dragon
by: Naomi Novik

Since I already used the US paperback cover in my previous post on this book, I went with a random foreign cover.  So there!  Although… the dragon in this image looks a little sloppy/shoddy/ugly.

So.  In the final analysis, what have we got here?  Is it an updated version McCaffrey’s The White Dragon, except instead of a small, sickly, white dragon the hero has an uber, elite, giant black dragon?   I can’t say, as it’s been 20 years since I read latter.  What I can say is that it’s a book where the basic premise is “Everything is just like it was in the 1700/1800/whatevers except there are dragons.”  And the countries all coincidentally wound up with about the same borders and rulers.

Hmm, I just realized that this review may come across as negative, so I’ll just say ahead of time that I really enjoyed the book and will pick up the others in the series.  Also, the writer is/was a computer game designer/developer, so she automatically gets props there.  Although I see the blurb about her reading Lord of the Rings at 6 entirely too much.  This seems like the whole “X has been writing since they were 10″ thing to me, and I’m not sure what it brings to an author bio other than sounding like bragging.  It’s a perfectly fine thing to say in an interview I think, but just listing it along with your other job related credits comes off odd.

Onto the book itself.

It follows the tried and true path of introducing us the world at the same time as the MC, which works pretty well, although it can be frustrating at times, especially when limited by the “rules of polite society”/Jane Austen vibe.   The “rules of proper conduct and conversation” are an obstacle into themselves.  It felt like a good deal of the conflict comes from the people being unable to say what they “should” due to social conventions.  I’m sure this was intentional, but it was frustrating for me.  I know some people like this.  Many people seem to like Pride & Prejudice, etc., but I would rather read the King James bible in Spanish.  Maybe backwards.

The structure of the plot seems very much one of the MC just being drug along by outside forces.  I don’t really get a sense of agency from him at all.  NOW, given his character this makes sense BUT then I wonder about the character itself.  He’s a gentleman of the time (about 1800ish I guess, since Napoleon figures so largely into things),  and a real gentleman to boot.  IE he’s actually a nice guy and believes in the gentleman thing.   And so there’s all these rules of proper behavior and whatnot.  Duty.  All the major plot points seem to either hinge on duty – there’s no question about what he will do because you know what duty demands, and thus what he will do – or being drug along by fate and circumstance.

Even his acquisition of the dragon is an accidental result of duty/drug along by fate bit – he does what is proper, and as a result, hijinx!  Even when he finally acquires a romantic interest (or rather, it acquires him), there seems to be no agency on his part.  She decides she wants him, so she has him.  And indeed, this seemed like – in light of every other freakin word of his internal monologue – that it would be something against his character.  Yet, it just happens, then we skip ahead a few months and it’s been happening for a while and… how the hell did he adjust his world/gentlemanview to deal with this?  I mean, normally I wouldn’t care, but Novik spends so much time on the MC being a certain kind of person then just…skips most of the internal turmoil this should cause?  *confused*  Normally I could care less for the romantic angles, and this book gives me a sense that Novik may have similar tastes, because it’s not nearly as fleshed out as I would expect.

Now.  I can’t decide if the duty/circumstance is good or bad characterization or maybe just a style of plot structure I’m unfamiliar with.  Or, maybe it’s completely common and I just never noticed it before… but it seems like in most of the stuff I have been reading lately – even the Elric stuff, which is ostensibly completely about being drug along by fate – the MCs make choices that affect and drive the story.  Then again, maybe him “choosing” to do the dutiful thing is the same?  I can’t recall reading anything about someone in a similar military/servant of the crown type position so maybe that’s it.

However, in the long run it didn’t really matter, as I still enjoyed the book.  It did make me question some things about my own writing, which I think is always a good thing.

Oh, and the whole gentlemanly thing introduced some weird tension points where I wondered if the men involved were suddenly going to kiss or something.  Or the men and dragons.  Having the MC call his (male) dragon “dear” all the time still annoys me.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

This is a stellar first novel, maybe more technically proficient than the first Dresden novel (the only other debut novel I’ve read in the last year),  but not as compelling (to me) due to the issues I’m having with agency as described above.  If Novik’s work continues to improve, as Butcher’s has and as I would expect it to, then I think the series has a ton of potential (I mean, it does anyway but MORE GIANT BLAH you know?).  The fact that I’m going to pick up more books set in the Napoleonic era should be positive review enough, really.

NOTE:  Next book on my reading pile: nonfiction, subject: the American Revolution.  So it may be another month before the next book review :).

Tags: His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik

This entry was posted by onefinemess on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 8:46 am and is filed under Book Review, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.