Here be dragons

Imagine a novel that takes the World War 2 rivalry between the RAF and the Royal Navy and then places that context in the Napoleonic era. Now, replace the airplanes with dragons and you have Naomi Novik's novel Her Majesty's Dragon. I'd heard good things about the book, but it was Peter Jackson's decision to option the book for a film that clinched my reading decision.

The story starts with a British naval boarding party seizing a dragon's egg from a French frigate. The captain of the ship is chosen by the dragon to be its rider and the Captain soon finds himself transferring from the Navy to the Aerial Corps. Much is made of the cultural clash, with the Navy man shocked at the loose ways of the airedales and even more shocked that some of the officers are women!

As a Napoleonic era novel, there is of course combat and it is well described. The dragons are crewed like WWI fighters with hand bombs and personal firearms used to attack other dragons or the enemy. Of course there are also claws and the occasional breath. The combat is actually de-emphasized as much more of the novel is about training and the bonding that comes to dragon and captain.

While a bit light, this is certainly entertaining and will appeal to non-doctrinaire fans of the Aubrey-Maturin series as well as fantasy readers.