![]() ![]() It’s remarkable how obvious dragons were in history, when you come to think about it. Napoleon wanted a Chinese Imperial dragon under his command, and Elizabeth I and Eleanor of Castile had dragons in their strategic planning as well. ![]() One of the most enjoyable parts of Temeraire is the Appendix at the end which gives a brief history of dragon physiology and their impact on human history. Second, the dragons are simply there, much as cows and eagles are there: no explanation is offered as to how dragons arrived or evolved. ![]() This dragon is so hungry to learn that it insists on instructing its rider on the higher mathematics of navigation after a day of practicing formation flying. ![]() Since the dragons function as bombers and fighter planes, this does introduce a little fantasy, of the pilot talking to his plane lovingly and reading it stories from Virgil at night, but this is fine. The dragons talk to their riders aloud in speech, and nobody knows what each other is thinking. First, there is no telepathy, unlike the dragons of Pern in Anne’s McCaffrey’s extensive Dragonflight fantasy series. Naomi Novik’s excellent 2006 novel Temeraire (in the USA, His Majesty’s Dragon), about the fighting dragons of His Majesty’s Navy during the Napoleonic Wars explores this proposition with intelligent imagination. Dragons are tricky beasts to fit into historical novels. ![]()
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