His Majesty's Dragon

In a world that combines fantasy and history, humans and dragons have lived side by side for thousands of years. Now it is the early 1800s, and the powers are feuding. Captain Will Laurence's impressive career on the high seas comes to an end when a dragon hatchling bonds to him. He must be trained as a dragon-rider to fight for England against an aggressive Napoleonic France. Simon Vance executes Laurence's stern yet compassionate personality flawlessly. Vance keeps a steady rhythm in delivering the narrative while also executing various vocal shifts for different characters. Additionally, he incorporates the story's action when performing voices so that Laurence's voice, for example, turns into a deliberate shout when he rides his dragon, Temeraire. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

January 23, 2006
In this delightful first novel, the opening salvo of a trilogy, Novik seamlessly blends fantasy into the history of the Napoleonic wars. Here be dragons, beasts that can speak and reason, bred for strength and speed and used for aerial support in battle. Each nation has its own breeds, but none are so jealously guarded as the mysterious dragons of China. Veteran Capt. Will Laurence of the British Navy is therefore taken aback after his crew captures an egg from a French ship and it hatches a Chinese dragon, which Laurence names Temeraire. When Temeraire bonds with the captain, the two leave the navy to sign on with His Majesty's sadly understaffed Aerial Corps, which takes on the French in sprawling, detailed battles that Novik renders with admirable attention to 19th-century military tactics. Though the dragons they encounter are often more fully fleshed-out than the stereotypical human characters, the author's palpable love for her subject and a story rich with international, interpersonal and internal struggles more than compensate.