His Majesty's Dragon

Is your favorite movie Master and Commander? (Mine is!) Do you enjoy fantasy? Then this is for you! Quickly became a top 5 favorite for me.

This book has a great reimagining of history with fantasy involved. The human characters are charming and the dragons have personalities and quirks all their own keeping the book interesting with every chapter. Loved it so much i went ahead and ordered the rest of the 9 book series!

I absolutely love this whole series! I can not recommend it enough, read this book and then the next and don’t stop! Naomi did so well in this series, there simply is not another to compare it too.

Although I am a devoted reader of both fantasy and science fiction, it's been years since I've been interested in dragon stories. It seemed that dragon stories were either too fairy-tale or D & D pastiches. Naomi Novik's thrilling tale brings me back to my early days, when I fell in love with the dragons of Pern. The author's straight-forward narrative makes the concept of dragons fighting in the Napoleonic wars wholly believable. Well researched, but not overweighted by historical fact - the relationship between the dragon and his rider, as well as the other dragons, riders and support personnel is what makes this book (and hopefully the two others soon to be published) so delightful. As enjoyable a book as any other I've read in the last year. Highly recommended.

I should preface this with the warning that I'm going to gush -- frankly, I haven't been this madly fond of a book in the longest time (hm, when did Connie Willis last publish something?), and I'm at the stage where I want the whole world to know how great this book is. I bought it Wednesday afternoon, read 200 pages of it that night, then went out the next day and all I kept thinking about was going home and finishing it, which I did, staying up very late (past my bedtime) and finding the ending very bittersweet. Bittersweet because the conclusion happily justifies all the promise of the beginning chapters, and yet I'm sad because I'm through with the book and will have to wait weeks (till April 25) for the sequel. I know that's nothing compared to the wait with most fantasy trilogies, the gap between books is usually at least a year, but I want the sequel right NOW in my hot little hands. The novel takes place in England during the Napoleonic Wars, only with the added twist of dragons (which must be admitted, improve every scenario). In this alternate universe, dragons are tamed by most nations of the world as a fighting force, bonding to a handler at hatching, and trained in the Aerial Corps in the pursuit of warfare. So when Will Laurence, a British Naval captain experienced in battle, captures a French frigate with a dragon's egg that is very quickly going to hatch, he has no choice but to put himself and the crew up to bonding with the creature because even though England has France outgunned in the way of ships (think Admiral Nelson and the superiority of the British Navy), France is outgunning England 2-1 in the way of fighting dragons. Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire, are then thrust into the world of the Aerial Corps where things are done in a slightly different way than Laurence is used to in the Navy. Novik handles the world-building with startling grace, given that this is her first novel. One of the prime pleasures of the book is authentic feel of the world she's built -- you can tell that months of research went into correctly portraying 19th century English society, from the realities of the Navy to the manners of the drawing room. And best, none of it is done showily or in a lecturing way, it's all of it presented as naturally as possible. She doesn't let research intrude upon telling the story, and better yet, her addition of dragons into this world is so well thought-out (from their feeding, breeds, natural inclinations, personalities, levels of intelligence, size and temperment, mode of fighting and the innovative invention of aerial fighting) that it adds to the depiction of the historical period. She seamlessly grafts on her inventions to the known historical realities, and comes up with a beautifully realized fictional world that's meticulously detailed and worked out. I adore that there is so much thought given to how the dragons would fit into this society, and she succeeds in a way that few authors of speculative

Novik deserves a lot of credit for coming up with a fairly novel concept to write about. The idea that dragons could exist as a natural creature is good, but the way that she explains it is logical. I like the fact that she has given the history of the species enough thought to figure out how they would become a part of the society. Her characters are good, but a little flat. By that I mean that they seem to go through the motions of being who they are without understanding them really. The main character should be a poster boy for the duty-bound soldier of the day. The story is fun and I am really looking forward to the next book to see how she keeps things going. Hopefully the Main character will be something more human and less of a cardboard character.