I read my first Hornblower novel when I was in my early teens (as a consequence of having read that Gene Roddenbury had Hornblower in mind when he created Captain Kirk), and since then have read the lot, and all the Richard Bolitho novels, and tilted at Patrick O’Brien. So when I read a review of Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, it immediately went on my list.

It’s a delight. It’s the Napoleonic Wars, with a twist: dragons exist, and have been recruited to the naval war in the air. Because they are so precious, when the captain of a British frigate finds a dragon’s egg in the hold of a captured French frigate, his standing orders require him to make every possible effort to establish the relationship with the newly hatched dragon that will ensure it, too, will serve. That includes sacrificing his own naval career, not to mention his understanding with his conventional young lady, to join the aerial corps. Will Laurence is a thoroughly likable man, principled, a touch stuffy at moments (his disciplined naval soul cringes every time he watchs one of his cohorts pack!) but fair-minded and adaptable. His dragon, Temeraire, is a charmer, innocent, infinitely curious, and clear-sighted. Temeraire is the one to expand Will’s mental horizons, from having Will read Laplace to him in the original French, to bringing him to question the status of dragons in British society. The historical setting feels right, at least from the point of view of someone whose knowledge stems from long-ago O-level history and the aforementioned fictional diet. A more recent course in the intellectual history of Europe let me identify some of the revolutionary ideas simmering behind the story. I don’t think anyone’s ever described a dragon as a Jacobin before! The natural history of dragons feels even more right, with the multiple species, sizes, and attributes, and the diverse and distinctive names. In another innovation, Novik takes her naval metaphor into the air: while the smaller dragons have the conventional one-rider arrangement, the larger dragons are crewed and fight as small ships, with a captain, lieutenant, and ship’s company, and tactics that include boarding. And to add to all her other virtues, Naomi Novik writes a clear supple prose that echoes the prose of her era without once jarring the modern ear. I don’t know of another modern fantasy novelist who can toss off six semi-colons and one colon in a sentence without troubling its flow, and hats off to the editor and copy editor who would leave that sentence be. Hats off, too, to Del Rey for publishing the three books in quick succession. Having bought Her Majesty’s Dragon on Saturday, I took a side trip to hunt out The Jade Throne and Black Powder War today. And I lost my heart to little Iskierka, who had me giggling from the moment she popped out of the shell, ready to take on the world.