Personal anecdote time. I read A Natural History of Dragons years ago, and while I thought it was fine, it didn’t really hook me. And since there’s so many books out there, I assumed I’d never bother picking up the rest of the series. In the time since, three things have happened.
I read other books by Marie Brennan in whole (Driftwood) or in part (The Rook & Rose series) and loved them.
I got the chance to talk to her at the DC WorldCon less than two weeks ago. I saw a few panels she spoke at, and participated in a small-group discussion with her and Alyc Helms as well. She’s awesome and super interesting.
Mrs. OfThePalace also attended these things, decided to read A Natural History of Dragons while we were at WorldCon, proceeded to the rest of the series, and now really wants to talk about it.
So … I guess I’m reading the rest of the Memoirs of Lady Trent.
Fortunately, I enjoyed The Tropic of Serpents a great deal more than I did A Natural History of Dragons (which I didn’t think was bad at all, just … fine) so I’m not actually complaining about this development.
After listening to Marie Brennan talk at some length about her academic background and her approach to world building, it was very interesting to see how that plays out in practice. I’d read book 1, as I mentioned earlier, and while I could see what she was talking about in retrospect, it was a totally different experience to see it going the other direction. I also was much less annoyed about something that irked me about book 1. It was obvious that Isabelle Trent was from England, and the bulk of the action takes place in Romania … so why not call them England and Romania? The answer (which I know because I asked Marie this directly) is that if she called them “England” and “Romania” she wouldn’t be able to let herself change details. She’d feel bound to get everything right. By doing it the way she did, she was able to use what she knew in her worldbuilding but felt she had the freedom to change what she felt like changing.
Anyway. The book was quite good overall; Lady Trent is off in the not-Congo this time, and spending time with remote tribes learning about swamp dragons. Of course she gets swept up in politics, and we learn more about dragons along the way. Environmentalist and anti-Colonial themes abound. All quite good, and I’m glad Mrs. OfThePalace bullied me into picking the series back up.