This month only, we’ll be spending our Saturdays on this, because Farla has to finish her gift fanfics before the deadline and that takes free time.
His Majesty’s Dragon is honestly a really easy book to describe.
Do you like historical British people being historical and British? Would you like it even more if there were dragons that don’t really affect that historical Britishness in any way and also the main character immediately converts to modern social standards whenever challenged rather than spend time prejudiced? Do you like stories about a lot of decent people with occasional bad ones everyone doesn’t like, and with everything working out neatly?
Then off you go! You’ll enjoy the book thoroughly.
The book is very fanficcy in style – there’s a lot that’s just characters being cute and nice to each other, which is something I can rarely find in normal published books.
I’d say the first half is the stronger portion, focusing on just Temeraire being a dragon. It’s sort of like the first half of the How to Train Your Dragon movie, all naturalist info. The second half is more about dragons fighting for the glory of the empire so that the evil French don’t invade and impose social reforms. There’s a lot of humans dealing with other humans and violent battles between two groups of perfectly nice people. It’s not bad but I don’t think it’s as good.
It’s very much a light read. Nicely written with everything running on because logic. The very nice British main character is extremely proper, but his desire for propriety never gets in the way of him being nice and he has no problem with other people not following those rules when he sees they don’t mean any harm. He loves being a navy man but when he ends up with a dragon he realizes he loves his dragon more and so he’s fine with his life being completely changed. There’s one point where his sense of how the rules work and proper behavior makes him unable to deal with a huge and obvious problem, but luckily it takes care of itself violently by chance, and he never so much as considers if maybe things might have been better if he’d intervened, nor is anything really done so there’s a way of dealing with it next time.
The dragons are all insanely devoted to whoever they pick and are happy to kill each other in human wars, so there’s no tension there about asking them to do that. They’re also fine with being bred according to human plans and reassigned wherever with no regard to their friendships. (Despite the fact they breed extraordinarily slowly and show an amazing amount of variety, crossbreeding seems to all end well – crossing a big and small dragon gets a giant dragon with lots of airsacks to support its weight well. It never seems to produce dragons crushed by their own weight because they have too few. Disproportionate wings are only ever extra large for better flight. None of them seem to have any organ problems. There’s one dragon that’s not very bright, but no sign anyone’s considered breeding them to be dumb on purpose to make them more tractable.)
Supposedly they were domesticated in European countries by the time of the Romans and the Chinese have had them far longer, but this hasn’t impacted things in any meaningful way. The dragon riders are basically irreplaceable because dragons rarely accept a new rider and Britain is particularly strapped for dragons, so members are above the law, but all this means is there are women riders who get to be treated like men and can have out of wedlock babies, not men raping and murdering and getting away with it because they’re so valuable. Also, girl cadets are around and no one does anything bad to them because they just don’t! Midway through the book the main character has not only accepted the existence of female cadets and captains, but sleeps with one without the slightest qualm and doesn’t lose any respect for her. There is really nothing here but endless wish fulfillment.
If I had one real complaint, it’s that while the book is obviously trying to be inclusive of women, what it actually does is divide up women into the society ladies and the good ones. The main character’s fiancee leaves him over his getting a dragon, and while he takes it well and the book doesn’t demonize her, the whole book is all about how dragons are awesome and only dumb people don’t love them. The other society lady to exist is treated as obnoxious, and the one bad aviator is like that because of his mother’s influence on him. (Another bad character has the fact his mother was a bad woman referenced as well. There are men portrayed as bad as well, of course, but they’re balanced out by the swarms of good ones, and none get blamed for their children being assholes.) The only regular woman portrayed positively is the main character’s own mother. The aviator women, in contrast, are all awesome and happy to be treated exactly like men, down to being referred to as gentlemen in ordinary conversation and being unable to walk straight when they have to wear skirts. And of course they’re fine with it being a big secret that there’s aviator women at all and never getting recognition for what they do, and only being able to show up in public by pretending to be the wives of aviators.
(I also noticed that the main character’s string of experiences in confronting/erasing his prejudices did not include homosexuality. His dragon does get obsessed with another male dragon right after beginning sexual maturity, but to my disappointment it was just a straight rivalry.)
It has a bunch of different covers, it seems:
TEMERAIRRREEEEE. I really love it as a contrast to Pern and other, grodier, dragonrider books, but MAN does it get depressing in later books. 1 is like WHEE DRAGONS TEMERAIRE IS ADORABLE, 2 is like WHEE CHINA, but by the third book the tone seriouses the fk up. I had to mentally prepare myself to read the latest book, although luckily it wasn’t *quite* as depressing as the two previous.
As the series goes on it does deal with some of the concerns you’ve brought up, and they’re not resolved neatly. I agree that it’s unrealistic to have Laurence take on modern-compatible attitudes so easily to be palatable to the reader, although he remains prudish (played for laughs) and paternal (and gets called on it by Captain Roland) through the books. And for the female characters to not be in emphasized danger of sexual violence, but to be honest I like that the author just never went there.
Slavery (of humans, of dragons) is a major theme. It’s interesting to see attitudes change because of Temeraire and import of ideas from China, and how they treat dragons there. It’s also neat as an alternate history; military engagements are dependent on dragons and the europeans don’t get to completely steamroll the new world.
So yes. Sorry to gush all over your analysis. DRAGONSSSSSSS. ^.^
And for the female characters to not be in emphasized danger of sexual violence, but to be honest I like that the author just never went there.
I’m good with that, I just wish things were better set up so it’s not a handwave. Actually, I guess I’d prefer it to be more alt than history – the fact it’s the British, but with dragons, puts all this extra baggage in.
Interesting! I like how you’ve balanced the good and bad of the book. I see some reviews where all it is, is bashing about what’s bad about a book, and they’re really off-putting for me. I personally think that there’s good and bad in every book, even if the good part is only something minor. :)
Regarding how the girl cadets apparently get left alone, I have a feeling that the author may have thought that, if the girl cadets were caught in any harm, that people would have made accusations about them being weak female characters. But, then again, if they were to end up in some sort of trouble, it would have given the author the chance to portray them as being able to defend themselves, possibly, and then there would be less problems. Might have made for some interesting conflict, too.
‘The dragons are all insanely devoted to whoever they pick and are happy to kill each other in human wars, so there’s no tension there about asking them to do that. ‘ Reminds me of what you said about Pokemon fanfiction- that a pokemon won’t always say ‘yes’ to becoming a trainer’s pokemon. I see what you mean, though- if one of the dragons were to disobey their human, then that might have been interesting.
I think it’s really just that the book is generally happy and perky and the aerial forces are the best and nicest people. I don’t mind the lack of “if you’re a girl your life will always suck in all universes” but when it’s in a setting with huge issues with sexism, and then adding that the dragon captains in particular are above the law and no one outside even knows that anyone female is there, so they’re especially vulnerable…there needed to be something suggesting they’d taken steps to prevent it.
And yeah, it’s the same issue as with it is with pokemon, people are here for the story of magical animals and humans, so there’s not too much time spent on why.
I remember jumping to the same conclusion about the nature of Temeraire’s obsession. Five books later, while the ranks of interesting and mostly relevant women and characters of colour have steadily increased, there still isn’t a queer person in sight. It’s quite annoying to say the least, especially considering all the deliberate slasher bait and the author’s own fanfic-writing past (this does explain the “fanficcy style”, though).
A couple of the things you mentioned get explored later, like better ways of handling dragons and integrating them into society or how female captains fought for their current place in the corps, but Laurence and his immediate companions remain almost perfectly aligned to modern sensibilities. On the rare occasion that someone does sway towards a thought actually characteristic of 1800’s public opinion, Temeraire jumps in with some dragon!logic so the reader doesn’t start getting confused or uncomfortable. Really, that’s probably how I’d describe the series as a whole: very comfortable. And lots of fun, but then I really do enjoy historical British people being British and ~historical~.
Good to hear there’s eventually something about how the gender stuff works, shame gay people never appear. I was hoping that’d pop up later when she realized she’d missed something for Laurence to suddenly realize is totally fine and acceptable.
Actually, it does come up in the most recent book, Crucible. Despite his being an easily flustered prude being a running joke, Laurence’s response is pretty much “Sexual inverts? Yeah, that’s a thing that happens in the navy.” No one even has to convince him he’s wrong.
Oh well, book 7 is better than never, I guess. : |
Man, of all the things for Laurence to have a valid reason for his prejudice, that’d be the one.
I guess it’s not acceptable to be saying that gay Navy sex also tended to involve rape and pedophilia and probably wouldn’t be something a kid on those boats would recall fondly. (I mean, if it’d been like this from the start I’d have been better able to swallow it as “alt historical Britain is fine with gay navalmen and therefore consent and no childfucking” but the longer things go the more I assume it’s otherwise like actual historical Britain, with all the awfulness.) (Actually it would have been kind of funny if the navy was the secret place for gay people, in the same way the aerial forces are the secret place for women, and then he could shock the dragon people back by being casual about that.)
Well, at least it exists unlike all the other books that take place in an alternate reality with the alien race of humanlike creatures that are only interested in the opposite sex.