A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
334 pages
Published 2013
Read from June 18 to June 20
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
There has been some minor effusion surrounding this series; io9 recently squeed itself over the "realistic" natural history underlying the books, apparently part of a newish direction in fantasy fiction. Reading this book, however, I was struck not with its supposed postmodernism but with how deliberately and determinedly retro it was. Speculative natural history is pretty much the foundation of what we would call science fiction today. This could easily have been a work of Verne's, or one of Doyle's Professor Challenger novels, with of course some differences in style and ideology (few modern writers seem to attempt the broadly satirical, larger than life characterization endemic to Victorian sci-fi, while Brennan's narrator is, of course, a woman trying to escape her socially defined role to pursue most unladylike ambitions).
The speculative natural history is delicious, but it comprises far too little of this book; the bulk of its second half dawdles along with a simplistic smugglers-and-corrupt-nobleman plotline straight out of a 1930s boys' novel, the type of old-fashioned pulp which never evolves beyond mildly entertaining. Even the whole "It's a story that usually has a boy character, but this time it's a girl!" idea hasn't been novel since the early 1990s, though of course it's certainly welcome now, in a time when, as a culture, we seem to be backsliding away from diversity, inclusiveness, and tomboys. There's potential here -- and at the very least I would keep reading this series for more of the same -- but it isn't nearly as groundbreaking and innovative as the internet would have you believe.
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