Book Review: A Natural History of Dragons
Dec. 24th, 2018 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookhobbit Well, I promised myself that I would do book reviews over here, and I've finally read something I have an Inclination to review. That is A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan. I'm gonna try to establish a precedent for future formatting here.
Overall opinion: Good enough that I've started on the second one in the series. Not good enough that I feel the need to recommend it to everyone I know. Fun, enjoyable, but not sparkly. (I'm going to call things sparkly if they feel revolutionary or like I can't stop thinking about them or if they give me something that I really longed for but never knew.)
This was recommended to me by one highlybread over at tumblr. I am always looking for good alt-history, which is what I'd call this. Overall, like I said, it was a good read. There's dragons! They're cool! I'm a simple asexual who loves a good dragon.
This book fits my dragon opinions reasonably well. I'm very picky about my dragons - less now than when I was a child, but still pretty picky. I don't like mind-reading dragons. I don't like soul-bonded dragons. I like dragons that are more or less straightforwardly animal-like in their anatomy. Naturalistic dragons, rather than mystical dragons, if you will. That's probably very boring of me but ANYWAY my ur-dragon should be able to talk and should have some kind of dragon-like personality in some respect but I can endure dragons that are basically just Big Lizards. And above all, I want there to be T Y P E S of dragons. BREEDS of dragons. How To Train Your Dragon is among my top Dragon Medias despite my lack of attachment to any of the characters because even though they don't talk they're like....cats, you know, and I like that. ANYWAY ANYWAY A Natural History Of Dragons (hereafter NHD) fulfills all these except the talking and the personality (so far) so it's about 8/10 on Ideal Dragons. So, nice.
Sadly, I can't say that for its alternate history. It has my least fave fantasy world conceit: "the countries are more or less the same as in our world but the names are different."
I hate this. This isn't the only book that does it so this isn't an @ for the author, I just hate it. It's exhausting because I have to try to guess WHICH countries is which more or less just using national stereotypes. I can't just ignore the coding because the book will be slightly confusing without it, since the author intends me to pick it up. But trying to guess all the time is SO TIRING. Like, with a second-world fantasy you just accept that everything is weird and strange and not-here, with a straight up alt-our-world you don't have to guess anything except where history and fantasy join up. This is the worst of both worlds.
This one is psuedo-victorian, which I like well enough I guess. My thing is if you're going to be doing alt Victoriana, I want it pitch perfect. I want it like....JS&MN is for the Regency period pitch perfect. Which is a bit of a tall order. I've just been so immersed in 19th century stuff that I can really appreciate the details. That's one reason so much steampunk falls flat for me: most of it just kind of gestures at the details. This one has smooth dialogue and narration that doesn't feel jarring with respect to the period, which is good and somewhat unusual for the genre of alt-Victorian and which I appreciate because I'm sort of picky about it (I love Gail Carriger but she really doesn't have a sense of how to actually make writing sound Period instead of Psuedo-Period. Hint: avoiding contractions just make your writing sound stuffy when you don't take care about your actual word choice.).
I only really have two more Beefs with the book, both fairly minor points, then I'll get on to talking more about what I did like.
The first is religion. So this book is set in Fake-Victorian-England, right, and there's an East-West divide in religion, right, which makes you think "Christianity", right That's what I thought. I found it slightly disappointing. But when you go on reading it seems like it's actually not Christianity, because there are a lot of concepts for Judaism scattered throughtout the book (most noticably, sitting shiva for the dead). I am not Jewish so I might get this wrong, but it feels a bit weird for all of Europe to be uniformly Jewish (given that it is not a proselytizing religion) and for Judaism to have the exact same geographical schism that Christianity does. Or, if it's not Judaism, it's very uncomfortable to think of some sort of fantasy religion that just uses Jewish concepts. I might be wrong with all this though - for all I know the author is Jewish and writing a story that she wanted to see in the world. Or I might be misinterpreting something and that will become wildly obvious as I read the rest of the series (ETA: author has confirmed in an interview that this is fantasy Judaism). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's just something that bit at me a bit as I was reading.
The second is a problem I've found in almost all alt-Victorian fantasy and scifi that strays outside of western European political matters: it doesn't criticize the machinery of empire enough. I actually don't know if you could write a book about a white* English Victorian and realistically have them criticize the empire enough to satisfy me. Realistically, most white English Victorians are not going to view the empire as a unilaterally bad thing for the people it impacted. White English people today don't even always do that. So, this is not unrealistic.
Here's the thing, though: you don't have to write about white English people to write about the Victorians. If you're stuck on white people, why not grab a Scottish or Irish or Welsh protag? They're going to have some Opinions about colonialism, probably. They might not be the ones I have, but I would find that more interesting than a sort of vague and halfhearted "it's certainly bad when the English oppress the local people but I'm not really going to criticize the worldview that got us here in the first place". Or, if you're stuck on English people, there were and are lots of English people of colour.
Again, I'm not necessarily out to see every Victorian character have the same opinion as me about colonialism (Victorians having the same opinion as me on everything related to politics is actually something of a realism-pet-peeve). I'd just like to see really meaty engagement with it as opposed to what feels like fairly shallow "I guess we have to talk about this because we're in Fantasy China" discussion.
Anyway....OH, let me talk about another thing. SO, as I said, a pet peeve of mine is Victorian characters having essentially modern political opinions, especially about feminism. I'm big in favor of feminist Victorian characters, but Victorian women didn't talk about their liberation in the same way we do, even radical ones.I also find it really frustrating because it often presents modern mainstream feminism as the most liberating opinion possible.** Lady Trent is pretty decent in this respect. She's clearly a product of her era yet she also feels herself a strong and competent person, intellectually equal to men. She also holds some xenophobic opinions that she visibly changes throughout the book as she gets more experienced with people. That's really fantastic and I liked it a lot.
What else did I like particularly about the book....did I mention dragons? OH ALSO ILLUSTRATIONS. IT'S A PICTURE BOOK. WHY AREN'T MORE ADULT BOOKS PICTURE BOOKS. The illustrations are great! They draw the dragons! They draw a person or two! Probably my favorite aspect of the whole book!!
Here's one last thing that I really liked. During the course of the book, Lady Trent gets married. She at first feels shy and uncomfortable with her new husband, and he with her. Gradually, though, they grow to love each other. This is expressed particularly as a friendship growing between them. Lady Trent herself thinks that friendship should underlie all relationships of importance in your life, regardless of whether they're romantic, familiar, or elsewise. I liked that a lot, and I also thought it was a reasonably realistic way of dealing with Victorian middle-and-upper-class marriage conventions (which are another thing that gets thrown by the wayside a lot in the form of "we should marry who we love! only true love can lead to good marriage!) It was extremely refreshing and was, perhaps, my second favorite thing about the book.
*It's never specified that Lady Trent is white in the book, nor I think any of her companions, but I'm making an assumption based on coding and knowledge of the genre and also talking about a broader issue in the genre so: if I'm wrong, this still stands for other books.
**"women should wear pants and no corsets and every Victorian woman would have LOVED THIS, they should be Strong tm but not too masculine, Not Like The Other Girls", that kind of thing. Lady Trent wears trousers when practical and occasionally feels embarrassed about this at first. She doesn't chafe to be free of her only bosom-supporting option. I appreciate this.
Overall opinion: Good enough that I've started on the second one in the series. Not good enough that I feel the need to recommend it to everyone I know. Fun, enjoyable, but not sparkly. (I'm going to call things sparkly if they feel revolutionary or like I can't stop thinking about them or if they give me something that I really longed for but never knew.)
This was recommended to me by one highlybread over at tumblr. I am always looking for good alt-history, which is what I'd call this. Overall, like I said, it was a good read. There's dragons! They're cool! I'm a simple asexual who loves a good dragon.
This book fits my dragon opinions reasonably well. I'm very picky about my dragons - less now than when I was a child, but still pretty picky. I don't like mind-reading dragons. I don't like soul-bonded dragons. I like dragons that are more or less straightforwardly animal-like in their anatomy. Naturalistic dragons, rather than mystical dragons, if you will. That's probably very boring of me but ANYWAY my ur-dragon should be able to talk and should have some kind of dragon-like personality in some respect but I can endure dragons that are basically just Big Lizards. And above all, I want there to be T Y P E S of dragons. BREEDS of dragons. How To Train Your Dragon is among my top Dragon Medias despite my lack of attachment to any of the characters because even though they don't talk they're like....cats, you know, and I like that. ANYWAY ANYWAY A Natural History Of Dragons (hereafter NHD) fulfills all these except the talking and the personality (so far) so it's about 8/10 on Ideal Dragons. So, nice.
Sadly, I can't say that for its alternate history. It has my least fave fantasy world conceit: "the countries are more or less the same as in our world but the names are different."
I hate this. This isn't the only book that does it so this isn't an @ for the author, I just hate it. It's exhausting because I have to try to guess WHICH countries is which more or less just using national stereotypes. I can't just ignore the coding because the book will be slightly confusing without it, since the author intends me to pick it up. But trying to guess all the time is SO TIRING. Like, with a second-world fantasy you just accept that everything is weird and strange and not-here, with a straight up alt-our-world you don't have to guess anything except where history and fantasy join up. This is the worst of both worlds.
This one is psuedo-victorian, which I like well enough I guess. My thing is if you're going to be doing alt Victoriana, I want it pitch perfect. I want it like....JS&MN is for the Regency period pitch perfect. Which is a bit of a tall order. I've just been so immersed in 19th century stuff that I can really appreciate the details. That's one reason so much steampunk falls flat for me: most of it just kind of gestures at the details. This one has smooth dialogue and narration that doesn't feel jarring with respect to the period, which is good and somewhat unusual for the genre of alt-Victorian and which I appreciate because I'm sort of picky about it (I love Gail Carriger but she really doesn't have a sense of how to actually make writing sound Period instead of Psuedo-Period. Hint: avoiding contractions just make your writing sound stuffy when you don't take care about your actual word choice.).
I only really have two more Beefs with the book, both fairly minor points, then I'll get on to talking more about what I did like.
The first is religion. So this book is set in Fake-Victorian-England, right, and there's an East-West divide in religion, right, which makes you think "Christianity", right That's what I thought. I found it slightly disappointing. But when you go on reading it seems like it's actually not Christianity, because there are a lot of concepts for Judaism scattered throughtout the book (most noticably, sitting shiva for the dead). I am not Jewish so I might get this wrong, but it feels a bit weird for all of Europe to be uniformly Jewish (given that it is not a proselytizing religion) and for Judaism to have the exact same geographical schism that Christianity does. Or, if it's not Judaism, it's very uncomfortable to think of some sort of fantasy religion that just uses Jewish concepts. I might be wrong with all this though - for all I know the author is Jewish and writing a story that she wanted to see in the world. Or I might be misinterpreting something and that will become wildly obvious as I read the rest of the series (ETA: author has confirmed in an interview that this is fantasy Judaism). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's just something that bit at me a bit as I was reading.
The second is a problem I've found in almost all alt-Victorian fantasy and scifi that strays outside of western European political matters: it doesn't criticize the machinery of empire enough. I actually don't know if you could write a book about a white* English Victorian and realistically have them criticize the empire enough to satisfy me. Realistically, most white English Victorians are not going to view the empire as a unilaterally bad thing for the people it impacted. White English people today don't even always do that. So, this is not unrealistic.
Here's the thing, though: you don't have to write about white English people to write about the Victorians. If you're stuck on white people, why not grab a Scottish or Irish or Welsh protag? They're going to have some Opinions about colonialism, probably. They might not be the ones I have, but I would find that more interesting than a sort of vague and halfhearted "it's certainly bad when the English oppress the local people but I'm not really going to criticize the worldview that got us here in the first place". Or, if you're stuck on English people, there were and are lots of English people of colour.
Again, I'm not necessarily out to see every Victorian character have the same opinion as me about colonialism (Victorians having the same opinion as me on everything related to politics is actually something of a realism-pet-peeve). I'd just like to see really meaty engagement with it as opposed to what feels like fairly shallow "I guess we have to talk about this because we're in Fantasy China" discussion.
Anyway....OH, let me talk about another thing. SO, as I said, a pet peeve of mine is Victorian characters having essentially modern political opinions, especially about feminism. I'm big in favor of feminist Victorian characters, but Victorian women didn't talk about their liberation in the same way we do, even radical ones.I also find it really frustrating because it often presents modern mainstream feminism as the most liberating opinion possible.** Lady Trent is pretty decent in this respect. She's clearly a product of her era yet she also feels herself a strong and competent person, intellectually equal to men. She also holds some xenophobic opinions that she visibly changes throughout the book as she gets more experienced with people. That's really fantastic and I liked it a lot.
What else did I like particularly about the book....did I mention dragons? OH ALSO ILLUSTRATIONS. IT'S A PICTURE BOOK. WHY AREN'T MORE ADULT BOOKS PICTURE BOOKS. The illustrations are great! They draw the dragons! They draw a person or two! Probably my favorite aspect of the whole book!!
Here's one last thing that I really liked. During the course of the book, Lady Trent gets married. She at first feels shy and uncomfortable with her new husband, and he with her. Gradually, though, they grow to love each other. This is expressed particularly as a friendship growing between them. Lady Trent herself thinks that friendship should underlie all relationships of importance in your life, regardless of whether they're romantic, familiar, or elsewise. I liked that a lot, and I also thought it was a reasonably realistic way of dealing with Victorian middle-and-upper-class marriage conventions (which are another thing that gets thrown by the wayside a lot in the form of "we should marry who we love! only true love can lead to good marriage!) It was extremely refreshing and was, perhaps, my second favorite thing about the book.
*It's never specified that Lady Trent is white in the book, nor I think any of her companions, but I'm making an assumption based on coding and knowledge of the genre and also talking about a broader issue in the genre so: if I'm wrong, this still stands for other books.
**"women should wear pants and no corsets and every Victorian woman would have LOVED THIS, they should be Strong tm but not too masculine, Not Like The Other Girls", that kind of thing. Lady Trent wears trousers when practical and occasionally feels embarrassed about this at first. She doesn't chafe to be free of her only bosom-supporting option. I appreciate this.
