historical fiction has never quite been my bailiwick. Mixed with some Sci-fi, as with the Time wars stuff of [a:Simon Hawke|41942|Simon R. Green|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224555729p2/41942.jpg] I have enjoyed a little, but it's not a genre I've exhaustively explored.

I must therefore say I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying this debut novel from US-resident Novik a great deal.

The premise - introducing dragons into the Napoleonic Wars and so providing an Aerial Corps alongside the more traditional Navy - is a stroke of genius. I find it amazing that with a minor additional factor the horizons have expanded to such a degree that a whole series of books can be launched.

I've read books with more heart-pounding combat scenes, books with more of an emphasis on tactics and strategy, and books with a more political bent. The area in which this one particularly excelled for me was that of social ambience, though.

William Laurence is Captain of the HMS Reliant and through no choice or desire of his own is thrust into the initially unenviable position of "harnessing the beast". We can immediately see that this isn't something to be desired. "The Corps may not be the sort of life that any of us has been raised to," he says to his crew. that's putting something of a happy face on things, it seems. becoming an Aviator would mean "an end to any semblance of ordinary life", and "the prospect of entering their ranks could not be appealing to any gentleman raised up in respectable society." an aviator supposedly lives in "wild outrageous libertinage in small enclaves, generally in the most remote and inhospitable places" and dragons were "finicky" and "could not be managed by force". Much is also made of the sociological impact of such a thing - Lord Allendale, Captain Laurence's father is quite against the whole dragon thing and almost disowns his son as a result. A woman that Laurence had shown interest in is suddenly out-of-bounds and much is made of the almost ostracising effect being a dragon's companion instils in "polite society".

I am by no means as eloquent as the author, so it may not seem such a huge deal, coming from me. But the social mores of the time are very much in evidence, and Captain Laurence has many an adjustment to make.

there is a fascinating congruence which speaks highly of Laurence when he has been training and living with his dragon for six months, though. He ends up making a delivery to a seagoing vessel, and one of the crewmen happens to bring the matter up. "I suppose he is a valuable animal and we must be glad to have him, but it is appalling you should be chained to such a life, and in such company." For the reader, it seems that this isn't too wide of the mark of Laurence's thoughts at the opening of the novel. But his curt "I wonder that you could imagine such an address acceptable" shows us without doubt that his attitudes have radically shifted.

The language is exquisitely crafted - Novik makes room in her acknowledgements for those catching "out-of-period words". The precision, self-control, perhaps even snobbishness of the English upperclass elite is perfectly captured and expertly applied to create a sense of the time so inspiring that I want to turn all the electricity off and read by candle light.

As I said, the raw elements of this nonetheless outstanding novel aren't incredibly done in themselves. the aerial combat, seamanship, politics and detail are very good, but have been done better in works focusing more specifically upon them as individual themes. For me, the biggest and best part of this book was the social impact of having a dragon for a companion, alongside the titular characters growth, development and adaptation to the situations in which they found themselves.