But at its heart, it's a story about friendship that transcends not only time and class, but species. Novik has accomplished something singular with her Temeraire series. In Novik's reality, dragons are sentient - and they bond with the first human they encounter upon hatching, which in this case happens to be Laurence. William Laurence is the captain of a British ship fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, a duty that gets derailed when he captures a French vessel that's transporting a dragon egg. Even the backdrop of the book steers clear of the typical fantasy realm - it's Earth in the early 19th century, but an alternate version of our world in which dragons have coexisted with humans for centuries. But at its heart, it's a story about friendship that transcends not only time and class, but species.įriendship may not be in vogue in these days of grimdark fantasy, but Novik couldn't give a fig about trends. Martin wisecrack here), but really, Novik has accomplished something singular with her Temeraire series. It's tempting to compare Novik's output to another current fantasy series that features dragons (insert obligatory George R.

During that same time, she's written other things too - most notably her Nebula Award-winning, standalone fantasy novel Uprooted. That means over the past ten years, Novik has written upwards of 3,500 pages of the Temeraire series, which at this point probably ought to be called a saga.

The first book in the series, Her Majesty's Dragon, came out in 2006. How?īefore we even begin to talk about Naomi Novik's beloved alt-history/fantasy Temeraire series - which concludes this month with League of Dragons - we have to look at the numbers.

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Temeraire by Naomi Novik