His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik

TL;DR: History--but with dragons!

(But seriously, the review is less than 500 words, surely you can manage the time to read it?)

Captain William Laurence captains the HMS Reliant as Britain fights back against the unstoppable surge of Napoleon Bonaparte’s French forces. During a battle, the Reliant captures an incredibly rare Chinese dragon egg, bound for France. The British believe that if a dragon is not claimed and harness

ed quickly after birth it will become feral and violent, and the loss of such a valuable dragon during wartime is unthinkable. So Laurence, with the miserable knowledge that he is abandoning his entire career as a naval officer, feels that it is his duty to claim the beast as soon as it hatches so it does not fall into French hands.

When the dragon hatches he names it Temeraire and finds himself abruptly cut off from his shi

p and his crew—nonetheless he is not entirely alone. Dragons are superior in intelligence to a horse or a cow, and Temeraire is a Celestial dragon—the most intelligent, gentle, and courteous of all dragons. In his egg, Temeraire has already learnt Chinese, French and English. He enjoys having Newton’s Principa read to him. As Laurence makes the transition from the honor bound, rigid formality of the naval co

rps to the more casual culture of Britain’s arial corps, he and Temeraire become fast friends, till Laurence no longer regrets the accident that led to him losing his place in the navy.

The books cover the entire course of the Napoleonic Wars—had they been conducted with dragons. Novik keeps the tone serious, so except for the whole history-altering introduction of dragons, you could almost imagine them as engagingly written history books.

The best part of this series is seeing Laurence’s rigid, Victorian era sense of honor conflictin

g with Temeraire’s more modern, commonsense morality. It’s a lovely, unique conflict because they are the best of friends and both, in their own way, bent on doing the right thing no matter what. Over the years of the war, Temeraire gains wisdom and understanding, and Laurence learns that honor without love is not worth having.

The first in the series is standalone, so you don’t have to commit to all nine (yes, NINE) to enjoy Lawrence and Temeraire, but they are all excellent books!