It feels like this book is set in the real-world Victorian era- except it’s a world that has dragons. Very real, dangerous and practically unknown beasts. Like a fantasy version of Jane Goodall, young Lady Trent deliberately gets herself invited along on an expedition to study dragons in a far-off locale. It’s risky, uncomfortable to say the least, and highly improper. And it seems like the only thing she’s ever wanted to do- having been fascinated by dragons all her life, even though any kind of naturalist pursuits are deemed entirely unladylike. The journey to a small mountain village (where the research team is not very welcome) is tedious, the difficulties include rough living (by their former standards), getting along with the locals, (hampered by a language barrier), and finding the dragons at all.
Lady Trent is absolutely thrilled at the first discoveries they begin to make, after all that effort- but of course, studying dragon anatomy, speculating on recent changes in their behavior, and mapping out the location of the lairs takes second seat to dealing with troublesome people. I was actually a bit disappointed by the turn this book took near the end. It got so close to the dragons- with some incredibly well-thought-out details on their physiology and adaptations that I never encountered before- and then it diverges into a mystery involving smugglers and local politics. While the fallout was interesting- also tragic to our main character- and did completely take me by surprise- I rather wished it has been more about the dragons and less about the people. The parts about dragons facing possible extinction because of greedy, powerful people simply wanting to exploit them as a resource (due to some of their rather extraordinary physical traits)- and Lady Trent’s efforts to present that- was a very nice touch. I wish there’d been more detail on that too. So- I really loved the first two-thirds of this book (in spite of the slightly dry, understated writing style which reminded me of Robin McKinley), I was less and less interested in the last part. But I am excited to see that since I waited so long to read this book (I remember when it was on the newly-published “hot picks” shelf at my library)- the series is now complete, with six books total! I’m hopeful for the rest.
Oh, and the illustrations by Todd Lockwood are simply fantastic. There weren’t nearly enough of those. I have to gets my hands on the rest of this series just to look at the drawings!
Borrowed from the public library.
2 Responses
I’ve read three, maybe four, of these and enjoyed them, but like you wish they were more about dragons than about people. I agree too about the illustrations, wonderful!
Ooh that sounds interesting! Thanks, I grabbed a copy.