Thursday, July 5, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan




A Natural History of Dragons is the first in Marie Brennan's series: The Memoirs of Lady Trent, which finished this year with its fifth book and is now nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series.  All five books are in the Hugo Voters Packet, although I actually listened to this book as an audiobook (which was quality) taken out from my Hoopla library, so you get the entire series as a free benefit of your $50 Hugo Voting membership.  And based upon this book, I definitely will be continuing with this series, as I enjoyed it quite a bit, so I'm really happy about its inclusion in the Hugo Packet.

The general idea of the series is that, as the title suggests, it's a five book memoir of Isabella, Lady Trent, who is well known at the time of writing for her experiences as a Dragon Naturalist, despite living in a fantasy world reminiscent in part of Victorian England, despite all the gender dynamics that implies.  This book tells the story of Isabella's childhood, marriage, and her first adventure to discover the traits of dragons.  And the result is a story told in a really fun voice (older Isabella looking back at her younger self is really fun) in a very different world with some solid characters, a surprising plot, and well....dragons.

Note: The Audiobook which I "read" this book as is very well done, so I definitely recommend reading the book in that format.  

More after the Jump:

--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------
Years before Isabella was famous for her work as a Dragon Naturalist, she was a young girl, the only daughter of a family of boys, whose inclinations were not the least ladylike.  Instead, she was fascinated by natural creatures - such as sparklings, birds, and most of all.....dragons.  At the time, the only knowledge about dragons came from Sir Richard Edgeworth's book A Natural History of Dragons.  But Isabella wanted to know more than that- despite it being an incredibly unladylike pursuit.

And as a young woman, she persuaded her husband to take her along with him and two other explorers on a journey to Vystrana to study the Vystrani Rock-Wyrms, a type of dragons known little about throughout the world.  But when they arrive at Vystrana to start their study, they find that the Dragons, thought to be not harmful to humans minding their own business, have begun to attack innocent villagers, and that things aren't quite what they seem.  And Isabella's natural curiosity won't let her simply let these anomalies go unexamined...even if it results in danger and harm to her and her companions.

So begins the Memoirs of Lady Trent, and the story of her first adventure/inquiry into the nature of Dragons.
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A Natural History of Dragons features a world that is a spin on Victorian Era Europe (and other parts of the world), but that isn't quite analogous to our world exactly.  The actual countries involved in this book are clearly pastiches of England and Russia (or well, it feels maybe more like an area like Afghanistan under Russian control?), but the world isn't exactly like ours in ways other than the existence of fantastical creatures.  For one, this is not a Christian based world - the dominant religion is clearly instead based upon Judaism, which amused me greatly (as I'm Jewish, the moment that villagers started to use grogers to drown out evil spirits cracked me up).  For another the political dynamics aren't quite the same as in our world, and everything is drawn up very well, even if it was maybe a little distracting for me to try and figure out the real world parallels to these places.

Isabella is a pretty fun lead character - both version of her, the elderly version who is narrating the story and tells some pretty fun asides and commentary on the things going on as well as the younger version who is the actual main character of this story.  Is young Isabella a unique character?  Oh certainly not - the adventurous girl/lady in a Victorian setting who isn't a fan of rules on her behavior is a pretty classic staple - but it's done very well here, and while having her main pursuit be one of science isn't unique either, it's a fun twist.  She's also a nice mix of naive and yet.....not (the moment where she's captured by smugglers and wonders if she should try to seduce the smugglers to survive is not what you'd normally see from such a heroine).

The rest of the characters are a bit more standard, but even they are generally interesting - the Lord who heads the exhibition is a bit stereotypical as the reasonable (well kind of) but eccentric authority figure, but Isabella's husband Jacob and the other scientist, Mr. Wilker, have surprising depth - each is clearly an archetype in general - Jacob is the scientist husband who tries to protect his wife as society wants and Mr. Wilker is the arrogant scientist who doesn't think a lady should be involved in their work - but both subvert those archetypes quite a bit in ways that make them very interesting (Wilker has good reason to be resentful of Isabella's interference in their work other than her gender).

The plot is similarly twisting and generally interesting, although the eventual antagonists are kind of....eh, as is the final resolution of same (Older Isabella in fact lampshades said resolution quite a bit).  Still, the plot is generally good and surprising, although some of the events you will be expecting to happen based upon the format of this book as a memoir.  But it's definitely a fun start to a series and I look forward to going on to the second book probably next week, so that I have enough of a sample size to rate it for the "Best Series" Hugo Category. 
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