Hic Sunt Cuddly Dracones

TITLE: His Majesty’s Dragon (In the UK: Temeraire)
AUTHOR: Naomi Novik
PUBLISHER: Harper Collins

RATING
5/5 “HMS Victory”; 4/5 “HMS Beagle”; 3/5 “HMS Bounty”; 2/5 “HMS Pinafore”; 1/5 “RMS Titanic”
SCORE 4/5

Time was, dragons were the stuff of nightmares, horrors lying beyond the horizon, "Hic Sunt Dracones"—here be dragons, and watch out, they're coming for you. How times change. Revisionism is in, and our old nemesis has gotten a makeover. "His Majesty's Dragon" shows this isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided you don't mind having your dragons declawed.

At first glance, "His Majesty's Dragon" seems like a one-trick dragonet, its one twist being that it puts dragons in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. The idea of mashing up fantasy and Napoleonic adventure is cute, but not terribly original. It's been done before, most notably with Susanna Clarke's 2004 bunker-buster "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell". Fortunately, that's not all "His Majesty's Dragon" has to offer. Like many good works of speculative fiction, it takes a well-worn concept and stands it on its head—here, deadly fire-breathing dragons are not monsters, but our friends and allies.

This too, has been done elsewhere, often in kiddie stories like "How to Train Your Dragon". But whereas these boy-and-his-dragon stories tend to present dragons as a geeky kid's dream pet ("does whatever I say, and if anybody gives me any grief, turns them into smoked baby back ribs"), the dragons in "His Majesty's Dragon" are more like a geeky adult's dream kid.

Dragons in Ms Novik's book are smart, sentient chaps who imprint themselves on the nearest suitable candidate after they hatch from their shells—much the way birds do in the real world. As the novel opens, Royal Navy Captain William Laurence captures a dragon's egg from a French frigate, and no prizes for guessing who the little critter picks to be his mommy-surrogate when he hatches. A panicked Laurence names his new companion "Temeraire" (French for "rash") after a ship in the Royal Navy—which sounds about par for guys' choices of baby names. We're always trying to get the kids named after our obsessions: I know one soccer-mad father who planned to name his son Zidane, while in Japan a certain Mr Hayashi (the name translates as "Wood(s)") was thwarted in his attempt to name his son Tiger.

Also like some new parents, Laurence isn't overjoyed at the prospect of giving up his career and private life to look after a needy, grasping infant. The two of them are packed off to join Britain's Royal Aerial Corps, currently going tooth-and-claw with the French emperor Napoleon's own squadrons of dragons. The training scenes that follow are more 'Cosby Show" than "Karate Kid", as Laurence helps Temeraire to make friends, learn about where he came from, and steers him through the treacherous shoals of adolescence. This is light, breezy fun, as we watch Laurence go from reluctant parent to proud father, and Temeraire from shy stripling to king of the skies. There is skullduggery and violence of course, even a climactic aerial battle against the foul and most foreign French, but this is a kind of "Princess Bride" combat, deadly without every feeling threatening.

This is to the fantasy genre what the marshmallow is to Irish cream cheesecake; soft, squishy and sweet, simple yet a little bland. "His Majesty's Dragon" under-does the action, adventure or humor in favor of "awww, shucks" moments of bonding between Laurence and his dragon. Characterization is also marshmallow-simple, especially among the human cast. It's "The Black Stallion" with scales, surprisingly without bite for a book about dragons. The best that can be said of its Hornblower-meets-Helm's Deep setup is that Ms Novik at least explores how this might change history, with the Battle of Trafalgar as a sneaky deception to hide Nappy's real plan for invading England (this compares well with Ms Clarke's work, in which a powerful magician uses his wizardry to enable the British to beat Napoleon at Waterloo—which is, er, precisely what happened historically).

The real joy of the book is found in the energy Ms Novik invests in her scaly heroes. Thought has gone into getting the tone of each dragon right—from the dim-bulb chirpiness of the smallest dragons, to the earnest inquisitiveness of Temeraire himself. Speaking as a father, I'd say that in Temeraire, Ms Novik also strikes about the right balance between children's clinginess and their desire for independence. Ms Novik also obviously takes great joy in devising weird and wonderful breeds of dragons, with names to match, from the Winchesters and Parnassians of Britain, to the Pecheur Couronne (crowned fisher) and Flamme de Gloire (flame of glory) of France, and the Imperials and Celestials of China. Perhaps it's not surprising her human characters seem deadly dull next to these flamboyant butterflies.

Still, just as not every movie needs to be in 3-D, not every fantasy novel needs blood and guts. "His Majesty's Dragon" is a gentler kind of tale, as warm and cuddly as a dragon itself. And if that doesn't make sense to you, you're behind the times!