I read book 1, A Natural History of Dragons, in the Before-Time. The Long-Long-Ago. Summer 2017, in other words. I only gave it two stars on Goodreads, said the book suffered from not nearly enough dragons and was generally rather flat, and I wasn’t going to finish the series.
Fast forward to December 2021. In the time since, I’d read (and loved) Brennan’s standalone *Driftwood*, and had read and loved the first two books of the Rook & Rose series she’d written with her friend Alyc Helms. On the strength of those two, I was excited to see Marie Brennan at World Con, and (after hearing her talk about how her archeological training shaped her writing in the first panel I attended) I more or less followed her from event to event like a puppy. The high point of my con experience was the small-group discussion I participated in with her and Alyc Helms. So I decided to give the rest of the Memoirs of Lady Trent another go.
Also affecting this decision was Mrs. OfThePalace, who (after attending that same panel I mentioned above) read A Natural History of Dragons while at World Con, finished the rest of the series over the next week and a half, and has been pestering me to hurry up because she wants to talk about it.
So, moving on from personal anecdotes that no one cares about: I stand by my review of book 1. I also rate the series as a whole an easy 5 stars … which says something about how much better books 2-5 are.
I’m not sure what exactly it was about book 1. I think part of it was how much time was spent on backstory. The series is great when Isabella (eventually Dame Isabella, eventually Lady Trent) is in the field, studying dragons and getting caught up in global politics. Even when she does get to the dragon research in book 1, there are still significant elements of this paradigm that aren’t really in place yet. Book 1 was never bad, but I am incredibly glad I decided to pick the series back up.
The world is inspired by our own (but with dragons, obviously), though Brennan decided to make it a different one from ours to give herself a large degree of creative freedom (I know because I asked her this) . Isabella is from not-Victorian-England. In book 1, she studies rock wyrms in not-Romania. In later books, she visits not-the-Congo, not-Indonesia, not-Egypt, and then finally not-the-Himalayas. Each book deepens Isabella’s (and our) knowledge of dragons. Each book brings us closer to some great discovery that the author alludes to (which is perfectly reasonable, given the memoir structure of the book, but it’s intriguing and maddening at the same time). And each book raises Isabella to greater and greater prominence and/or notoriety, depending on who you ask.
The book is part comedy of manners, part travelogue, and part naturalist adventure. Brennan gives Isabella a dry, self-aware wit that is a delight to read. I know I’m not the only one who wasn’t impressed by book 1 and decided to not read more, but I am very, very glad that I eventually picked the series up and gave it a second try. Highly recommended.