His Majesty's Dragon By Syllabub By Syllabub on Jan 05, 2008 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

I first heard of Naomi Novik's novel Her Majesty's Deagon during a discussion of the nautical tales of Patrick O'Brian, of which I am most assuredly a fan. As is Ms. Novik, according to statements on her website as well as notes in her novels. So despite generally having no interest in books that contain dragons, I decided to give this dragon oriented book a chance.The story is deliciously absurd: during the napoleonic wars, a British naval captain acquires a dragon egg from a defeated French ship. He ends up closely bonded to the intelligent beast, and must leave the sea to become a dragon mounted aviator.Despite the nautical content of the novel being scarcer than I expected, I found His Majesty's Dragon an enjoyable bit of light reading. The story feels a bit hurried in some places, and it is quite obviously the first book in an intended series, but it was fun even for a reader with no taste for dragon stories.