Naomi Novik

Temeraire — (2006-2010) Peter Jackson has “optioned” the Temeraire story. Omnibus editions are available. Publisher: Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors rise to Britain’s defense by taking to the skies ... not aboard aircraft but atop the mighty backs of fighting dragons. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes its precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Capt. Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future–and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

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In His Majesty's Service

In His Majesty's Service is an omnibus edition containing the first three novels in Naomi Novik's TEMERAIRE series. (These 3 novels were also released in a Science Fiction Book Club omnibus edition called Temeraire: In the Service of the King.) Aside from these three books, Naomi Novik has written two more novels in the series, Empire of Ivory and Victory of Eagles, with Tongues of Serpents being the working title of the forthcoming sixth book. There's also a short story entitled "Feast or Famine," which is available on Naomi Novik's website, as well as two "outtakes" or deleted scenes from other books in the series.

The first book in this omnibus edition, His Majesty's Dragon (the title is an obvious reference to the term His Majesty's Ship or HMS), is an enjoyable alternate history fantasy in which the Napoleonic Wars are changed by the addition of an air force consisting of domesticated dragons. His Majesty's Dragon is an enjoyable and tightly written book, well researched and written in (what appears to my layman's eye) a historically accurate style. I enjoyed the story of Laurence, a naval captain who accidentally captures a rare dragon egg and involuntarily becomes Temeraire's (the dragon's) captain and companion.

However, in book 2, Throne of Jade, the story loses much of its tight pace, turning into a loose and sometimes dragging travel narrative. The novel gives a very interesting look at life aboard a large ocean-faring ship as Laurence and Temeraire travel to China, but completely falls apart at the end with an improbable and downright silly ending.

Book 3, Black Powder War, unfortunately combines most of the flaws of the second book with very little of what I enjoyed in the first book. In this novel, Temeraire and Laurence are summoned from the Chinese court to Istanbul. The result is another meandering travel narrative. Most of the last third of Black Powder War consists of long and overly-detailed battle descriptions, some of which I ended up skimming over. Improbably, Naomi Novik comes up with a deus-ex-machina ending that is even sillier than the second book's. There are some bright points in this novel, but it's nowhere near as good as the first book.

I enjoyed meeting Temeraire and Laurence, but in retrospect I wish that I'd stopped reading at the end of His Majesty's Dragon, and I am not planning to read any further books in this series. Still, I would recommend His Majesty's Dragon to any fantasy fans who have an interest in the Napoleonic era, dragons, or (ideally) both. —Stefan   Comments

His Magesty's Dragon: Fantastic concept

Naomi Novik deserves a lot of credit for coming up with a fairly novel concept to write about in Temeraire. The idea that dragons could exist as a natural creature is good, and the way that she explains it is logical. I like the fact that she has given the history of the species enough thought to figure out how they would become a part of the society.

Her characters are good, but a little flat. By that I mean that they seem to go through the motions of being who they are without understanding them really. The main character should be a poster boy for the duty-bound soldier of the day.

His Magesty's Dragon was fun and I am really looking forward to Throne of Jade to see how Novik keeps things going. Hopefully the main character will be something more human and less of a cardboard character.   —John H.   Comments

His Majesty's Dragon

One of the very first things I learned about Naomi Novik is that she got her start writing fanfiction. Naturally this piqued my curiosity, since I did as well. She seems to have a really good attitude about a lot of things, which I like in the authors I read (though I rarely go seeking such information actively, because mostly I'd rather not know). So even though alternate history fantasies aren't generally my thing, I figured I'd give it a try.

Naomi Novik seems like a very down-to-earth, genuinely nice person. Unfortunately I can't say I felt so warmly inclined towards her writing though. There were simply too many things that didn't gel. For starters there were the punctuation problems. A lot of authors have trouble with commas and this, while annoying, was hardly surprising. I've certainly seen authors do a much bigger hack job of comma placing than Novik does. It makes for choppy reading, but worse than that was the semi-colons. They're positively everywhere. I've counted seven, eight, nine or more on single pages, many of them intersecting dialog. They're in so many places they absolutely don't belong and most of them can't even be justified stylistically. I found it very difficult to focus on the story.

One thing there isn't anything of is contractions. Especially not in the dialog. Every single character speaks in the same overly formal, stilted way. Even if there were no contractions at this point in history, people would still have different speech patterns. Some would be better educated and sound that way while some wouldn't. But no, here they all sound exactly the same. Even the dragon! Temeraire speaks perfect English right from hatching. And okay, fine, he's a dragon, a different species, I suppose I can bite the whole instinctual language capabilities thing. But being as he's a Chinese Imperial shouldn't he then speak Chinese or Mandarin as his instinctual language? At the very least he should speak French, as his egg was on a French ship for months.

And of course there is the death knell: Characters. Temeraire has his charm despite the jarringly perfect speech, but the good captain Laurence? Not so much. In fact, he has shockingly little personality for a man who spends so much time wound up in his inner thoughts. So much time is spent on Laurence's inner workings that when he visits his home, hardly any description of the land, the house, and the people is given. Not even his parents! I don't care for too much description but come on...give me something, would you?

I don't think it would have mattered though. I couldn't care a wit about the characters and so naturally, when I put the book down with intentions to pick it up again later, I never actually did manage. Oh well. One star.    —Beth   Comments

Empire of Ivory: Mixed results

When last we left our characters, they were trapped with the Prussian Army running for their lives in the face of Napoleon's Army. Returning home they are confronted by a disaster of cataclysmic proportions as a illness is rapidly decimating the dragon populace of England. Harrowing stuff....

Empire of Ivory really takes quite a while to get going and seems to find greater quality in its depiction of events rather than characters. The main character remains an almost cardboard character for the greater portion of the book and, while this may be accurate for the historical period, it leaves me uninterested in him. The internal conflict that he is certainly feeling is not very well felt by the reader. By the end of the book things begin to improve, but still he just seems too cold by half.

Naomi Novik is growing this alternate history/fantasy by leaps and bounds, so the book is worth reading for that fact alone. The dragons almost seem to have more personality than most of the characters, though. This is a flaw that her editors can help out with by giving her better feedback. This series simply has too much potential and, if the characters can improve, then it will be a truly wonderful read.  —John H.   Comments