You have heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...
Okay, it's not a mashup of an existing book and a paranormal element, but it's as close as I'll probably come to one. Patick O'Brian's seafaring novels of the Royal Navy in the time of Napoleon are certainly more historically accurate (and they're great stories), but the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik has much to recommend it. It's the story, more or less, of the Royal Air Force in the time of Napoleon.
With dragons.
I've about halfway through the first book, and I confess I peeked ahead, but I suspect I'm going to continue enjoying them. The series tells the story of a naval captain named Laurence whose ship captures a French vessel carrying a dragon egg. When the dragonet hatches, the little fellow takes to Laurence. Since it would not do to lose such a valuable creature's services by letting him go feral, Laurence names the dragon ("Temeraire" was a French vessel captured by the Royal Navy--well, okay, the name has belonged to a number of ships in both navies, but the name means "bold" and is a fine name for a Navy man to offer a dragon), persuades him to accept his harness, and ends up leaving his career in the Navy to join the much less respectable Aerial Corps.
It is tremendous fun to hear Laurence recount historical naval battles to Temeraire, with the addition of dragon content. Perhaps you have already read of the Battle of the Nile, and were aware of the destruction by fire of the French flagship Orient. (Wooden ships were extremely hard to sink, since wood swims most tenaciously, but fire aboard a vessel carrying barrels of gunpowder is serious business.)
How did the fire aboard Orient start? Well, after British ships concentrated their fire on the rigging, to clear sharpshooters from the tops, the ship was strafed repeatedly by a fire-breathing Turkish dragon.
Yeah, and you thought grapeshot was bad.
(Fire-breathing is not a common trait among dragons. A few breeds spit acid. Others, the big ones, seem to be used as heavy bombers. Sadly, I have not yet encountered a dragon character named Lancaster. I suppose that would be a bit much.)
I like Laurence, who is a military man and as much aware of his duty as Jack Aubrey, but who has the sense to do his best to pick up the customs of his new service. There's a realistic sense of his dislocation, and his instinctive reaction against events that don't progress "Navy-fashion" makes him seem like a real man of his time.
I like Temeraire, who is for plot-related reasons a special dragon but not a special snowflake. He isn't human, and his thought processes are naive and very direct. (This is not uncommon with dragons, at one point Temeraire and two other young dragons discuss how they would band together to save their humans if they should be so stupid as to commit treason. The dragons' attitudes are entirely practical. I believe with longer service they develop more of an idea of "duty," although for dragons "duty" really involves not letting down one's friends.)
The author is American, and I really like the way she does not make Temeraire a large scaly American. He doesn't "get" King and Country at all, but Novik doesn't put republican speeches into his mouth either. He's just kind of a natural creature, intelligent and good-hearted and perceptive. He's not that much different from the other dragons, though, and I like that too. The central characters are mostly special and likable because they're our particular friends, not because they're Mary Sues at all.
There are quite a few women in the story, several of whom are aviators or cadets. It's not uncommon to have the one Super Speshul Fighting Woman! character in a story, but that's not what Novik does here: in this world, although nobody talks about outside the Aerial Corps, there are female aviators because one particular type of acid-spitting dragon, the Longwing, insists on having female captains. Nobody knows why dragons have these whims but nobody argues with them either. Anyway, Laurence is taken aback by his new colleagues but everyone else, most of whom have been in the service since they were little kids (much like the youngsters you saw carrying powder in Master & Commander) accepts them quite matter-of-factly. One young female captain, Harcourt, does have a dragon named Lily (more typical dragon names are Maximus and Laetificat) but she explains this was the first name that popped into her head when the egg she was assigned to hatched ahead of schedule. Since this is pretty much how Laurence named Temeraire, that seems reasonable.
Apparently Peter Jackson has optioned the series, either for movies or possibly an elaborate mini-series, and I am all agog to see what sort of Temeraire would be produced by Weta.
In the meantime, I've borrowed the first four books from a friend, but I may end up giving them back and buying my own copies. These are friends I want to keep.
With dragons.
I've about halfway through the first book, and I confess I peeked ahead, but I suspect I'm going to continue enjoying them. The series tells the story of a naval captain named Laurence whose ship captures a French vessel carrying a dragon egg. When the dragonet hatches, the little fellow takes to Laurence. Since it would not do to lose such a valuable creature's services by letting him go feral, Laurence names the dragon ("Temeraire" was a French vessel captured by the Royal Navy--well, okay, the name has belonged to a number of ships in both navies, but the name means "bold" and is a fine name for a Navy man to offer a dragon), persuades him to accept his harness, and ends up leaving his career in the Navy to join the much less respectable Aerial Corps.
It is tremendous fun to hear Laurence recount historical naval battles to Temeraire, with the addition of dragon content. Perhaps you have already read of the Battle of the Nile, and were aware of the destruction by fire of the French flagship Orient. (Wooden ships were extremely hard to sink, since wood swims most tenaciously, but fire aboard a vessel carrying barrels of gunpowder is serious business.)
How did the fire aboard Orient start? Well, after British ships concentrated their fire on the rigging, to clear sharpshooters from the tops, the ship was strafed repeatedly by a fire-breathing Turkish dragon.
Yeah, and you thought grapeshot was bad.
(Fire-breathing is not a common trait among dragons. A few breeds spit acid. Others, the big ones, seem to be used as heavy bombers. Sadly, I have not yet encountered a dragon character named Lancaster. I suppose that would be a bit much.)
I like Laurence, who is a military man and as much aware of his duty as Jack Aubrey, but who has the sense to do his best to pick up the customs of his new service. There's a realistic sense of his dislocation, and his instinctive reaction against events that don't progress "Navy-fashion" makes him seem like a real man of his time.
I like Temeraire, who is for plot-related reasons a special dragon but not a special snowflake. He isn't human, and his thought processes are naive and very direct. (This is not uncommon with dragons, at one point Temeraire and two other young dragons discuss how they would band together to save their humans if they should be so stupid as to commit treason. The dragons' attitudes are entirely practical. I believe with longer service they develop more of an idea of "duty," although for dragons "duty" really involves not letting down one's friends.)
The author is American, and I really like the way she does not make Temeraire a large scaly American. He doesn't "get" King and Country at all, but Novik doesn't put republican speeches into his mouth either. He's just kind of a natural creature, intelligent and good-hearted and perceptive. He's not that much different from the other dragons, though, and I like that too. The central characters are mostly special and likable because they're our particular friends, not because they're Mary Sues at all.
There are quite a few women in the story, several of whom are aviators or cadets. It's not uncommon to have the one Super Speshul Fighting Woman! character in a story, but that's not what Novik does here: in this world, although nobody talks about outside the Aerial Corps, there are female aviators because one particular type of acid-spitting dragon, the Longwing, insists on having female captains. Nobody knows why dragons have these whims but nobody argues with them either. Anyway, Laurence is taken aback by his new colleagues but everyone else, most of whom have been in the service since they were little kids (much like the youngsters you saw carrying powder in Master & Commander) accepts them quite matter-of-factly. One young female captain, Harcourt, does have a dragon named Lily (more typical dragon names are Maximus and Laetificat) but she explains this was the first name that popped into her head when the egg she was assigned to hatched ahead of schedule. Since this is pretty much how Laurence named Temeraire, that seems reasonable.
Apparently Peter Jackson has optioned the series, either for movies or possibly an elaborate mini-series, and I am all agog to see what sort of Temeraire would be produced by Weta.
In the meantime, I've borrowed the first four books from a friend, but I may end up giving them back and buying my own copies. These are friends I want to keep.