His Majesty's Dragon

Oh friggen sweet. Ok, so here's how it is. This stuffy British sea captain wipes the deck with a frenchie ship (ha, wipes the deck). When they take control of the ship it has this giant egg on it, because it turns out there are dragons. This egg is about to hatch so he makes his crew draw straws on who is going to be its best bud because these crazy people don't want their very own dragon and it is a punishment or something. But when the egg hatches and the loser kid tries to talk with him the dragon is like, oh hell no I ain't running with no lackey, where is the big dog on this boat? He finds the captain and talks to him in perfect English saying, you and me man.

So Captain Laurence has this dragon, and doesn't know what to name him, so he calls him Temeraire after some lame ship or something. And the dragon is really smart, but because they are new they have to go off and train on how to be a useful in a fight. Which is awesome, because I totally read all the Pern books and those dragons NEVER fought, they just flew around people and shot falling strings out of the sky. But in this book Europe is at some war between the English and the French, and they totally load the dragons up with gunmen and bombs and attack ships and other dragons with them.

So here I am, all psyched out because Laurence keeps telling Temeraire about all these dragon battles, but the first two thirds of the book are about training. Laurence is a Navy man, and he knows he is so much better than the hippies in the air corp, so he spends his time showing them how to be more duty bound and clean cut and the right way to do things. It is okay though, he doesn't always know what's right, and sometimes other people have to call him out on it. Like when he is shocked to see girls with dragons too. Sure there wasn't much fighting, but I guess I can reluctantly admit I was interested never less, because I am kinda a softy and Laurence and Temeraire are getting tight together.

Then bam, they get a mission. And this Napoleon dude is craftier than people think, and he totally tricks everyone and now it's up to the dragons to save the day, including Temeraire even though he isn't trained all the way. And it is exciting, and I can feel the tension and hear the rifles and everything else I want in a battle. There are different kinds of dragons doing different things, and Laurence thinks of them as ships and so he comes up with strategies no else thought of. It was awesome.

I got bummed a little though, because Laurance was such a stuffy pants he was boring sometimes. And it was weird how he was such a bad judge of character and so hoity toity but people still thought he was cool, even the people who didn't like him change their mind. And as cool as it was, sometimes my brain hurt when I tried to figure out stuff like how they could hold normal conversations while flying through the air and how people could hold so steady when riding a giant flapping animal and how many cows does a dragon have to eat a day and where do they all come from?

4 stars