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Jul. 11th, 2015 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI think I did Marie Brennan a disservice when I read A Natural History of Dragons pretty much immediately after plowing through some actual nineteenth-century literature. Thus the suspension of disbelief never quite set in -- though the prose is a pretty good approximation, and I did enjoy it reasonably well all the same.
The conceit is that Lady Isabella Trent -- who lives in a slightly-alternate Victorian era where all the countries have different names, and a variant on Judaism is the major world religion (though this also has a different name), and also there are dragons -- is now a distinguished albeit eccentric lady naturalist who has decided to publish an account of The Scientific Adventures Of Her Youth. Marie Brennan has a lot of fun with this, especially the implication that Isabella has published earlier and more circumspect writings of her travels and discoveries which she is now contradicting.
It seems like there are a bunch of books planned, and I guess the pattern is going to be approximately one expedition per book? So this one is primarily focused on Isabella's first expedition, in which she talks her new husband into taking her along on an expedition to -- what I think is alt!Poland? Somewhere cold and colonized by alt!Russia, anyway. Because this is an origin story, there is less of what I suspect will be a future feature of Crankily Eccentric Middle-Aged Woman Who Does What She Wants and more of the more YA-trope-ish Young Lady Who's Not Like The Other Girls Vs. Society That Won't Let Her Do What She Wants. I could wish for a little less Not Like Other Girls -- there's one childhood friend of Isabella's who comes in for a lot of gentle scorn for liking to read romantic novels, for ex., which just made me want to defend that poor woman and her romance novels against all comers.
The most interesting part for me was the impact of the exploration on the local villagers, who now have to put up with Victorian naturalist antics. Isabella, obviously, has a blinkered viewpoint, but Marie Brennan does try to show at least some of what's happening around the edges of her Victorian assumptions; my actual favorite character was Isabella's pressed-into-service local maid, who clearly spends the whole book just 200% done with Isabella and her entire party, and justifiably so. "It did not help that Dagmira had a way of seizing my hands and kissing them both whenever I produced a new piece of vocabulary. In Vystrana this is a courtesy shown to those of higher rank, but the sardonic manner in which she did it was more like a Chiavoran woman throwing her hands in the air to praise the Lord for a miracle." DAGMIRA. I will probably read more Memoirs of Lady Trent, but secretly I desperately want to be reading the Memoirs of Dagmira.
(PS if you already read this and enjoyed this, or alternately are looking at this review thinking 'Victorian lady naturalists, yes, let's!' then, yes, please do read it, but also GO READ THE LIE TREE, read it right now. OK, sorry, I'm really done now.)
The conceit is that Lady Isabella Trent -- who lives in a slightly-alternate Victorian era where all the countries have different names, and a variant on Judaism is the major world religion (though this also has a different name), and also there are dragons -- is now a distinguished albeit eccentric lady naturalist who has decided to publish an account of The Scientific Adventures Of Her Youth. Marie Brennan has a lot of fun with this, especially the implication that Isabella has published earlier and more circumspect writings of her travels and discoveries which she is now contradicting.
It seems like there are a bunch of books planned, and I guess the pattern is going to be approximately one expedition per book? So this one is primarily focused on Isabella's first expedition, in which she talks her new husband into taking her along on an expedition to -- what I think is alt!Poland? Somewhere cold and colonized by alt!Russia, anyway. Because this is an origin story, there is less of what I suspect will be a future feature of Crankily Eccentric Middle-Aged Woman Who Does What She Wants and more of the more YA-trope-ish Young Lady Who's Not Like The Other Girls Vs. Society That Won't Let Her Do What She Wants. I could wish for a little less Not Like Other Girls -- there's one childhood friend of Isabella's who comes in for a lot of gentle scorn for liking to read romantic novels, for ex., which just made me want to defend that poor woman and her romance novels against all comers.
The most interesting part for me was the impact of the exploration on the local villagers, who now have to put up with Victorian naturalist antics. Isabella, obviously, has a blinkered viewpoint, but Marie Brennan does try to show at least some of what's happening around the edges of her Victorian assumptions; my actual favorite character was Isabella's pressed-into-service local maid, who clearly spends the whole book just 200% done with Isabella and her entire party, and justifiably so. "It did not help that Dagmira had a way of seizing my hands and kissing them both whenever I produced a new piece of vocabulary. In Vystrana this is a courtesy shown to those of higher rank, but the sardonic manner in which she did it was more like a Chiavoran woman throwing her hands in the air to praise the Lord for a miracle." DAGMIRA. I will probably read more Memoirs of Lady Trent, but secretly I desperately want to be reading the Memoirs of Dagmira.
(PS if you already read this and enjoyed this, or alternately are looking at this review thinking 'Victorian lady naturalists, yes, let's!' then, yes, please do read it, but also GO READ THE LIE TREE, read it right now. OK, sorry, I'm really done now.)
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Date: 2015-07-12 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-07-26 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-13 03:18 am (UTC)I did love Dagmira a LOT though. Best part of the book.
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Date: 2015-07-26 06:49 pm (UTC)DAGMIRA THOUGH. Her total lack of tolerance for even a single one of these shenanigans! I love her so much. *__*