What the jacket says:

“Springtime in Styria.  And that means war.

There have been nineteen years of blood.  The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white.  While armies march, heads roll, and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell, but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso’s employ, it’s a damn good way of making money too.  Her victories have made her popular – a shade too popular for her employers taste.  Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto’s reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance.  Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria’s least reliable drunkard, Styria’s most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a barbarian who just wants to do the right thing.  Her enemies number the better half of the nation.  And that’s all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started…

Springtime in Styria.  And that means revenge.”

What it’s about: The story is about revenge. Plain and simple. It’s brutal and bloody with one or two funny bits, but overall pretty serious. It reads easily, I’ll give the book that and though it was tagged as fantasy – there is very little fantasy in the story. There is also no underlying – big picture – plot. The entire story revolves around Monza’s quest for vengeance. Towards the end of the book I got bored with it, though I wanted to see the ending.The writing is not bad at all and there is certainly potential to take the world created here further and to enrich and colour the story of Styria.

Rating: It’s not a bad story and if you are in the mood for some gore and a relatively mindless afternoon of fun then I’d recommend it. Be warned though: the characters were a bit 2d for me with little to no real development in any of them.

What’s better: If you want blood and gore and vengeance the Malazan Book of the Fallen is probably your best bet.

Re-read: I won’t re-read this book any time soon if ever.

His Majesty’s Dragon

Summary: Temeraire by Naomi Novik is a combination of Fantasy and Historical Fiction. The book follows Captain Laurence and Temeraire, his dragon, whose egg he captures from a French Ship. Laurence is forced to give up his Naval career and join the aviators, who have a reputation as a rough bunch, set apart from the rest of the military. The consensus from people he knows is that he has had to make a dreadful sacrifice for King and Country, but as Laurence comes to know Temeraire, he not only comes to terms with his changed circumstance, he dives in whole heartedly.

Thoughts: I enjoyed the book a lot, already ordered the Book 2 in the series(though I have gotten Mistborn Book 3, and The Alchemyst Book 2 on the To Read pile). Both Capt. Laurence and Temeraire are interesting characters. Laurence’s reactions to events that are inconceivable in the time and place are what really makes him such an admirable character. He meets a Dragon who is his instructor, he finds out women in the aviators are captains too, his reaction to a fellow captain who neglects his dragon, all of these sequences inform his character, and its a tremendous character. He is moral, but not unbending, he is a proper prig, but only till he is comfortable with someone. Temeraire the dragon on the other hand is more like our typical fantasy hero, who is uniquely gifted(at least in the western world), picks up things very quickly, asks the questions about society at large, that normally a fantasy hero asks, such as why do they fight for duty, an has mysterious powers that come into play at a very convenient time. He could easily be Belgarion, Rand al’Thor or Paul Atreides.

Another aspect of the book that really makes it compelling is the time period. The Napoleonic Wars are the perfect setting for this story. It gives us the British Army Officer with the stiff upper lip, who is in constant danger because of the tense times, but comes through in grand fashion.

One final point. This book is incredibly visual, and its tough to imagine the scale at which these dragons are imagined. Some of the lager dragons are as high as a 10 story building, and require huge crews to be able to fight. They are used as messengers, bombers, transports, fighters, or all at the same time. I really enjoyed the similarities between the way fighting and working on a dragon is similar to fighting and working on a ship. I’ve never read the Aubrey-Maturin Series(Master and Commander with Russel Crowe was based on them) but am now pretty keen to look through those.

Cross posted to doshiamit.net