It is therefore agreed that the officers on board will all draw lots to see who the unlucky handler is going to be. The thing with dragon's eggs is that they must be harnessed and bonded with their rider pretty much immediately because otherwise they will go feral or will not accept another handler - a waste of a terribly precious resource, particularly in these troubling days. When Captain William Laurence engages in battle with a French warship, he is kind of surprise that the crew fights so fiercely given that they are practically starving, and there doesn't seem to be any great treasure or anything on board, until they come across a dragon egg.very close to hatching. By only having to tweak the world as we know it a little, it means that the story can get going a whole lot quicker and for me that is a bonus. One of the reasons I don't read a lot of fantasy is that I don't really enjoy the world building that sort of has to happen to establish the rules for the society, hierachy, social rules etc. Novik has taken the events of the Napoleonic wars, and just tweaked them, by giving the combatant countries an air force, not made up of planes or balloons, but rather of dragons. One is that it has been getting a lot of positive reviews, and the second is that it could almost be classified as historical fantasy. I don't read a lot of fantasy, but this book was attractive to me for a couple of reasons. When the newborn ignores his chosen rider and approaches Laurence instead, his life is changed forever.īut even more astonishing than the young dragonet - named Temeraire by Laurence - is the revelation that the egg was meant for the Emperor Napoleon himself. Young dragons must be put to harness immediately or they go feral, and once harnessed, the beast will accept no other master. Within its hold lies a greater prize than the ship herself: a dragon egg. Weeks out of port at Madeira, a British vessel - the Reliant, commanded by Captain William Laurence - captures a French frigate. And the fiery death they rain down upon their enemies has little to do with gunpowder - it comes from the very guts of the beasts they are flying: dragons.

But the battles are not fought upon land and sea alone, for both sides have an air force. Set amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Temeraire is a thrilling tale of one of the most dramatic chapters of European History with a brilliant veneer of bold fantasy.Īs Napoleon's Grande Armee tears Europe apart, his vast armada threatens Britain. The book is called Temeraire in the UK and also here in Australia. Published under the name His Majesty's Dragon in the US this is the first book in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.

Temeraire dragon