http://www.temeraire.org/

Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, absolutely best new dragon fiction in a long-fucking-time.

Most here have probably read "The inheritance Trilogy" by that fucking hack Christopher Paolini. Don't let it turn you off this series just because they both involve dragons.

Anyway, anyone else a fan?

 

It had better be damn good if it wants to steal that title from A Song of Ice and Fire.

Speaking of which, A Dance of Dragons was just postponed yet again from April to October. Gah!

Anyway, give us a bit more info. Synopsis?

 

Sorry for the wait-Exams have been absolutely killing me. Finally done =D.

Anyway to make it short and sweet. The series focuses on the napoleanoic wars, however in a semi-alternate reality. It's based in what if situation, what if dragons existed, and what if they lived not only with humans, but were actually a part of our militaries like others? Not some special magical creations, just a intelligent species who happen to weight 10 tons or so?

It's really brilliantly done, both in the cultural aspects, and most definitely in the war aspect. The battle styles are brilliant, with strategy playing a key roll, unline most other dragon-series.

Sorry for any spelling mistakes, I've been running mostly on caffeine pills for the past couple days, and am really starting to crash. I'm gonna grab some sleep and will clean this up when I'm awake.

 

It has a "real" feel to it. You care about most of the "heroes" Hate most of the "villians" the Action is well written. No Mary Sues.

 

I have the first book (His Majesty's Dragon), and I think this thing is fucking terrible. I got up to page 230, but then I just closed it (an extremely rare occurrence). The premise was awesome, I mean who wouldn't want to read about dragons in the Napoleonic Wars.

Unfortunately, that's the only thing in this novel which is awesome. The main character (Laurence) is boring and suffers from one of the worst cases of no personality disorder. Temeraire, himself, isn't that bad, but he is nothing special, character wise, either. There is barely any action or drama in the book, and for a book about, dragons in the Napoleonic era, that's an emphatic no. The author's writing style is way too formal, and it ended up boring me by the first couple of chapters. The biggest complaint I had with is thing was that it read like a fucking romance novel between a dragon and it's rider, and I really don't want a story about that. If I wanted that I would have read Big D's (?) Charlie/Norberta story.

This thing was a waste of my time and money (yes, I actually bought it). I actually preffered the first Eragon book to this one. Sure, Eragon had it's fair share of problems, but it also had some fuckers getting killed, and action.

 

The first book is slow in setting up the premise, and hell the second one is the same for a good portion of the books. The action is a small part of the series up until the third book or so. Till then there's more world building and character development, though the action does come into play, however more subdued.

 

Did the series even try to explain how a ten ton lizard could possibly fly and spit fire without magic? Not to mention how they could speak human languages.

 

It may not have been the best explained series in the world but I still bloody loved it. Found it really cool.

 

wat.

I would definitely not classify aSoIaF as 'dragon' fiction.

The dragon plot of aSoIaF is relatively small compared to the overall story, although that's probably going to change in the future with the next few books (if Martin doesn't have a heart attack lol).

When I think of dragon fiction, I think of Dragonlance and the Pern series, not aSoIaF.

 

There were some explanations, but I'm not going to go through and list em. Something about air bags for flying, something.

Either way, the series just kind of sucks you in. The realism sucks you in, and the plot keeps you locked in your seat.

 

No, it doesn't. The series kinda bores you half to death, the dragon/rider romance creeps you out, and the boring plot makes you think about all the other stuff you could accomplish, instead of reading this. In fact, I wanted to throw shit for actually paying for this piece of garbage.

 

Ughh, did you actually read even the first book?

1-Dragon/Rider romance? The plot is obviously very dependent on the relationship between the dragon and rider, however it's much more of a paternal bond than anything else. Not to reveal too much of the plot, the dragon is hatched with Laurence near him. Obviously bringing forth some skewed idea of cross-species imprinting.

Throughout the rest of the first book (in fact through the current five books out) the dragon is still *growing* and *maturing*. Hardly romantic, in fact the Rider has a lover not even halfway through the first book.

2-Boring plot. I suppose you want the character to discover his dragon, and fly off within the next day with no training, nor hint of any actual intellectual reason why either the rider or his dragon would know how to integrate with a full fledged air force? Yes, the story takes a while to heat up into action, however as I've already stated, this isn't Eragon. The dragon is not done maturing within a few days, and neither is the rider.

 

Read what I have wrote.

The first book had an uncomfortable level of bonding between the two. The majority of the book is about this bonding crap, instead of the Napoleonic War. I didn't mean the dragon/rider romance in a literal sense, I just meant that's what it came across as. Oh and that shit is no parental bond, no parent *accidentally* jerks off their kid's reproductive organs.

First of all Eragon didn't take off the next day. Saphira actually grew for a few weeks before she had to flee. Like I said before Eragon had it's fair share of problems, but it at least had a plot (no matter how ripped off) and a decent amount of action unlike this piece of shit where absolutely nothing happens in the book.

You are quick to rip on Eragon (which is easy), but Paolini actually managed to make Eragon's training as a Rider and Saphira growth somewhat interesting, and it had some action with plot movement, where as this manages none of those things. Then again making your Rider interesting would actually require the Rider to have some personality, something that Laurence severely lacks.

 

i have to agree that this is not Eragon. That thing sucked and I didn't even bother going halfway through it.

The Temeraire series is well written, but really boring. I had read up to and including the book where they go to the chinese empire. After that I just stopped reading because like Homer said nothing happens. There is nothingreally extraordinary going on considering the potential.

Dragons + Napoelonic War = awesome potential

Yet it fails to achieve it. Perhaps if my expectations were lower I might have liked it more, but nope.

 

Man, if this isn't even as good as Eragon then it's in trouble. Eragon was utter shit.

 

Took me a while to get back to this, but seeing as how I'm here...

I'm not going to argue parental vs. Non parental, mostly because there are good points for both sides. While I do agree the whole "ruff" part was a bit weird, it was not as if anyone could have possibly known what it was, much less that it was a sexual organ. Though I question the idea of putting it in the book in the first place, I suppose it was meant to show Temeraire was sexually advancing-Or some shit.

As to boring-As I said, the series takes a little while to heat up, the first and the second book take a while to heat up. After that it's almost all downhill war, even more so in in the fifth book, where it's central theme is war instead of mostly plot development.

Anyway, I'll leave it at different strokes for different folks. Personally I loved the series, found it extremely entertaining. However there are obviously some who don't share my opinion. That's fine, just thought I'd share it with dlp if anyone wanted a good dragon-centric series.

 

To true man I really liked the series as well, but as we all know not all people on this site like the same things.

 

I think the problem with these books as far as the main characters goes--Naomi Novik, as I understand it, worked in the gaming industry before she switched to writing. So she's good at coming up with situations and interesting premises, but I think maybe she was used to player driven characterization or something.

She gets her stride later on though; it just takes a little while. And what other people have said is right; it has a hyper-realistic feel to it, and this is napoleonic era--people weren't given to dramatics, ya know? Especially people of rank.

They're good. I think they would work better on screen and condensed, though.

 

Well apparently they already have a movie deal with Peter Jackson signed and on the desk.