ANOTHER BOOK REPORT

My sister Gale told me about these books. This is book 1 about Temeraire and Captain Laurance of His Majesty's Navy and how they meet. The Author is Naomi Novik.

The story is set in the Napoleonic era roughly 1805 to 1815. In this alternate universe there be dragons. And all the worlds great powers (France, Spain and England) possess aviator corps of these dragons. And if you remember your history at all, those powers are at war.

Our hero, Laurance is captain of a ship sailing from the south Atlantic to England. They encounter a French ship of 36 guns and after an extensive chase, the French ship surrenders being almost out of water. They board the ship and discover a dragon egg in the ships hold. The physician knows a little about dragons but he says that since the shell is quite hard it is very close to hatching.

This is not good news to Laurance as he knows he must sacrifice one of his crewmen to partner with the dragon and this means a lifetime of dedication to the aviator corps and there is a deep rivalry between the Navy and the Aviators. Laurance advises his men of the situation and asks for a volunteer. One young man does so knowing that life as he knows it is ruined, Aviators are not very high in the social structure within Regency England and he will likely suffer much as a result.

The egg hatches and a little black dragon tumbles out and promptly wanders about silently looking things over. The dragon wanders back and suddenly speaks. He asked Laurance why he was frowning. Laurance was surprised to be spoken to so intelligently by this dragon and his heart sinks to his boots. This is the method that dragons choose their partners. Laurance very politely responds, the conversation develops and he asks if he may name the dragon Temeraire, after a French ship he once admired.

The adventure begins. Right away the Aviator corp wants to reassign someone to Temeraire and that attempt fails so it is off to dragon boot camp in Scotland.
Eventually they both learn that Temerarie is a Chinese dragon the most intelligent of all dragons.

During their training Laurance learns that some dragons require females as partners so there is a mixture of women captains and cadets. The Aviator corp is much kinder to its youth than the Navy ever was.

Laurance is initially befriended by an Aviator Courier named Rankin, who treats his dragon partner with a rather remote disdain. His dragon of course cannot think of anything but his captain. Ultimately Laurance learns that this is not acceptable behavior of a captain towards his dragon. During a later battle scene the little dragon is severely wounded and Rankin goes off to celebrate the victory. Laurance grabs the guy and forces him to tell his dragon that he had been very brave in the battle. The dragon died and I bawled my eyes out at 3 in the morning.

I highly recommend this book, it is dragon born swashbuckling, Laurance learns some things from the Aviators and the Aviators learn some things from Laurance.

Very satisfying read. I can hardly wait to read the next book in this series.

At one point Temeraire muses that he certainly would enjoy flying to China to meet another dragon like himself. He is so going to China in one of these books.