This was wonderful and I. want. more!

A comedy of manners where Jane Austen meets dragons in this unusual book. It’s really quite bonkers! The dragons wear hats for certain occasions which, as I understand it, symbolise how wealthy they are. To me, at first, it read like a young adult novel but as I progressed, I began to enjoy it more. It did make me giggle at times and the images of dragons in hats which kept appearing in my mind’s eye were quite hilarious. I’m not sure whether I was supposed to find them funny but I did. Despite that, there is a good plot and a variety of characters to keep the reader engaged. All in all not a bad book but probably not my genre! I’ve given myself a Brownie point for reading it! 🐲😄 ( )

Absolutely fucking delightful! Jane Austen comedy of manners but where all the characters are dragons; absolutely masterpiece of the fucking around with alien cultures jawn that I love deeply.

The plot starts with a dispute over who gets to eat the recently deceased father's body, and ends in a hilarious courtroom drama that I would love to see adapted for screen, but that doesn't give much away at all: there's lots more plot and some great characters, including radicals and activists of many stipes. ( )

Surprisingly fun to read. Basically a Victorian novel where all the characters are dragons. ( )

What a pleasure to read this gem of a satire right after the satirefail of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen." The satire gods must have taken pity on me that this was the very next title I picked up. ( )

What a fascinating book! Just like it sounds -- a period courtroom drama among dragons. Well written and intricate in social nuances. Funny and horrifying -- I think it's much better than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it has the same narrative effect -- amplifying social dangers to a height perhaps our changed society can better comprehend. It's such a different game when the alternative to propriety is to be eaten. ( )

The story took a while to really get into gear, but this was great. I expected pastiche but this was much more, some interesting worldbuilding! ( )

It's just like a Victorian novel, but about dragons! So perfect! ( )

I read this straightaway after enjoying Among Others so much. It is quite a different book, but still enjoyable. The best way to describe it is like Downton Abbey except with Dragons. ( )

A Jane Austen novel...where all the characters are dragons!

This book ended up being a lot of fun, but it took some time to grow on me. I must admit, I had my feminist defenses up with the author's note in the acknowledgements that, "This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if [women were the way they're described in Victorian novels], if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology." Why would anyone want to write that story?

And folks, be warned, because pretty early on there's a scene of, essentially, sexual assault. Female dragons "blush" when they get flustered in a male's presence, especially if that male is touching them--and the flustering doesn't have to be in the pleasant, warm-and-fuzzy way. This is not Victorian, this is absolutely horrifying--the thought that your life could be over because of a single unwanted social interaction. Imagine if Elizabeth Bennet had been forced to marry George Wickham just because she enjoyed his company. Well, guess that wouldn't have happened, because he'd have been married off to Georgiana Darcy, regardless of her "actual" virginity. What a nightmare!

Once the Agornin children have headed their separate ways after their father's funeral, that's when world building really kicks in. It's remarkable how little information there is in the first chapters. It takes quite a bit of time to learn that hats are, apparently, a really big deal--you'd think that would have been mentioned sooner? Oh, and dragons live in caves. Okay, but how does that work for manor houses? Cities? I didn't know until close to the end that cities had buildings above the ground at all--until then I'd been imagining them that way because I had nothing else to go on.

Basically, I wish that the whole book had the strength of, say, the middle. The details of world building take too long to put into place, considering that the reader has no real starting point. Are we supposed to imagine these dragons wearing clothes? Do servants polish banisters?

I say all this, but I really got into the book once it got going, once the unfortunately necessary foundation at the funeral that could have been described a great deal better is built. Then the characters are great, the dragon legal system is interesting, and the mystery of the slowly identifiable Yarges surfaces every so often.

For a novel modeled on a Victorian novel, it's great--a wonderfully complex Dickensian plot, unbearable Austenian relatives, and blossoming Hardyesque social awareness. Deaths are handled with Brotesque efficiency and the dastardly villain gets his comeuppance.

I get the sense (or perhaps I just hope) that the fact that some female dragons do hunt with spears means that there's an opening for an eventual women's rights movement. Just because the author went out of their way to create a world in which women are as inferior as they were believed to be in the 1800s doesn't mean I'm going to roll over and accept it!

Quote Round Up

p 18: Parsons should walk, all the time, even when inconvenient, and this Frelt diligently did. He wished he had someone with him to be impressed, or someone waiting for him at home to bring him a drink and admire his fortitude and exclaim over the distance he had walked. A wife.
Ah, the parody of religiosity. At least we have Penn, so we can enjoy Frelt's less-than-sincere piety for the satire that it is.

p 76: "I don't think you realize how different it is for me than for you. You can make your way by your own wits and claws, while I must always be dependent on some male to protect me. Wits I may have, but claws I am without, and while hands are useful for writing and fine work they are no use in battle."
An example of internal inconsistency, since the Yarge have clearly demonstrated that one does not need size and claws to be lethal. But I did appreciate Hanar calling Avan out here--so often men don't understand what it is women go through, overlooking intersectional factors like racism and religious discrimination almost willfully. Avan will have seen female dragons every day that are smaller and not equipped for battle, and depended on his own size to get his way, and yet he still doesn't think of the trouble that his case will case his sisters until they sit down and walk him through it.

p 107: "You know I don't approve of female hunting," Penn said. "If Veld had meant them to hunt, he would have given them claws."
"Do you think they starved in the days before the Conquest?" Sher asked, heatedly, for this was a matter on which he had decided opinions. "Some of the best hunters in Tiamath are female...! It was weapons that drove off the Yarge after the Conquest, after our bare claws proved insufficient."
So interesting how this nugget of information isn't applied in everyday life. There are females, there are peasants, all of them significantly smaller than the well-to-do males. I get the sense that it's only a matter of time until a peasant uprising.

p 157: I was glad to see this side of Berend. It's all too easy in Victorian novels (in much media these days, actually) to villainize the woman who's just trying to make her way in the messed up world she lives in. She's seen as lesser because she works with the system instead of bucking it. No, that doesn't make what Berend says any less horrifying, but she deserves a bit of sympathy and consideration.

p 169: Some thought, and Gelener said, that there should have been four beasts, to allow them each a quarter. They made do with what they had, and found hunger a very pleasant spice.
Spoken like a true upper-class party. Good grief!

p 230: "If you could love Sher, it's your duty to marry him and make him happy."
Ugh, gag me. No one has a duty to love someone, with very few exceptions.

p 259: Loved Selendra's Lizzie Bennet moment with Sher's mother. Reminded me of our discussions about whether Elizabeth really loved Mr. Darcy or whether she just realized what a good match it was and how satisfying it would be to defy all expectations.

p 264: Much as I like Selendra's Lizzie Bennet qualities, I also really like the moments that make her so different: the narrative admissions of love and affection. Oh, and, "Sher did not take advantage to press her further at that time, although she would no longer have desired to be capable of stopping him"? Yeah. Sher's a keeper, for sure.

p 288: Just as Berend had her moment of--for lack of a better word--humanity, so does Sher's mother. She's clearly set up as a roadblock, but she's like Catherine de Burgh: you laugh at her as much as you dislike her. Except that instead of just threatening never to speak to her again, Sher threatens to serve her for dinner--and it's a very real threat! I'm going treat characters as people for a moment, because I very much want to believe that this is Sher's Avan moment of not realizing how different life is for him, as a male, and for his mother, as a female. I don't want to believe that a character otherwise so surprisingly nice for his station would actually be made to make that threat casually if they were fully aware of its implications. Avan's moment earlier gives me hope.

p 322: "I never wanted to be protected, not by you. We were partners ... That's what I want now, not to be a wife like a thing, to be owned by you, I want to go on being your partner, to make my own decisions."
"It's almost as if I'd be your wife," [he] said, hesitant.
"Why not? Partnership. Two wives sounds as if it would work better than two husbands."
Love this exchange! Not going to give away who it is, but I was glad that I had at least one female character come out as on top as they could have. ( )

Well this was just delightful! A story of betrothals and inheritances, proposals and confessions, social status and disgrace, political and religious intrigue... in a society entirely of dragons.

The main characters are the four grown offspring of a dragon who dies near the beginning of the book: two of the sons are married and established, one is working in the city to try to make his fortune. The two daughters are as yet unmarried, and must therefore be taken in as dependents by their established brothers until they can find husbands -- which will be difficult with small dowries.

While the book deliberately and successfully has the feel of a Jane Austen novel, it also successfully integrates the particular elements of dragon biology and society so as to present a seamless whole.

Its style, like Austen's, is rather understated, so it's not really a book to make one squee, but "delightful" is definitely the right word for it. ( )

What a fun romp of a story! It’s a typical regency (or Victorian) romance: the females cannot inherit and must marry well; there are rather rigid rules of etiquette and social classes should not mix; country houses and balls in town; young females are presented during the season; oldest sons inherit the title while younger sons need to into the military or perhaps the clergy. BUT … all the characters are dragons.

I was captured from the first page and enthralled and entertained throughout. Oh, how I wish this was a series, because I want to read more about the Algornin family, but apparently, it’s not. ( )

***READ FOR THE MAGICAL READATHON YEAR 2020***
Dragon Tamer Training Extra research on dragons: extra book with dragons

I had everything I would like in a story but after I finished the story I was like: ''What was the point of it?''

A few days later and I still don't know...

Fun fact: this was the first book where I switched between the audiobook and a physical copy. Also I read this on the last day of the Magical Readahon - OWLs ( )

Not even sure how this ended on my shelf. Read it for a change of pace - it at least kept me turning the pages, but I wouldn't seek out more of it. Jane Austen with dragons I think is a fair description. ( )

A Victorian romance where all the characters are dragons: I don't think it can get much better than this!

Yesterday I couldn't go to sleep until 3 AM because I just had to know how the book would end. It was great fun from beginning to end, and the perfect read for Autumn.

Dear Jo Walton, can I have some more of this please? Feel free to turn this into a trilogy, I wouldn't mind! ( )

A friend recommended this book to me and when I went to the library the first time here in US, I saw it and thought I would try. And I loved it! It's a bit like Jane Austen, but with dragons! The world building is awesome and I love that things are not explained, but the culture and the world shines through with the story. I borrowed this from the library, but I definitely need a copy for my personal collection! ( )

Really wonderful novel about medieval society that happens to be about dragons. Fantastic characterisation, cared deeply about the protagonists and amazing true and surprising world building. ( )

I think I was too harsh on this the first time I read it. This is a charming story with a lot of flavor set in a unique world. Its Downton Abbey, but with dragons.

My only critique is that the ending is a bit too saccharine and easy - I would have liked for tensions at the trial to ratchet up a bit. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3431135.html

A hilarious and also slightly grim comedy of manners, riffing off Anthony Trollope in a society of cannibalistic dragons. It's well imagined, and of course in today's context of querying the roots of Victorian prosperity it seems rather appropriate to highlight the violent foundations of the entire nineteenth-century social system. Not a lot more to say than that: good fun, respectful of the source material and also a decent creation in its own right. ( )

Well written but silly. A historical parody of Victorian fiction, but instead of people we have families of dragons. They express no dragon behaviors and are almost cut-out humans who occasionally get to fly and eat each other, but mostly wear hats and sleep in mansions.

Three siblings go their different ways when their father dies. They're prevented form eating him as is custom, by their brother-in-law who's the jerk of the story and claims all the resources for his own family. Instead the sisters try to find marriage prospects whilst living on the charity of their extended families. There's lots of somewhat daft he's not good enough for you' type of conversations and similar concerns about propitiatory especially for only the women who aren't allowed to hunt etc. There's a complex hierarchy of ranks, and smeo fun world-building where the dragons had fought with humanity and lost, but are now more-or-less civilized, and living in their own country.

The biggest issue I had was with all the buildings, where the true scale of dragons was ignored to become just inhabitants of big rooms, and it never really seemed believable. Mostly I think it's the faux-historical mannerisms that I didn't get on with, the dragon politics in a more sensible setting might have been fun. ( )

This complex novel finally answers the age-old question of what would a Regency-Era romance look like if all the characters were dragons.

No, this isn't a Novak novel. This came out before. Indeed, this was popular enough to win the World Fantasy Award and it is well-deserved.

Far from being a gimmick, the core 'tail' tackles all the original Austen-like social criticisms such as inheritance law, marriage customs, a Pride and Prejudice level of anxiety, quips, and misunderstandings, the full issue of religious practice, slavery, and it even drags the Regency into a modern-era level of Equality.

As a novel about Dragons.

Hell, it succeeds on both levels. If you love Regency novels and you love dragons, I'm certain you and this novel are going to get along famously.

I particularly liked the inheritance issue. I mean, the peeps in England never LITERALLY let their families eat old, dear papa... :)

( )

Don't you hate it when you find a book that you know you've read, but somehow it's still marked as "to-read"?

Yeah.

Anyway, it's Victorian social drama but everyone is a dragon. Flesh-ripping, family-eating, religious, dragons with legal systems.

And it's just as good as it sounds. ( )

This book was a delight in many ways. In one light, it's a furry (scaly?) version of a novel of manners, full of the genteel courses of love and inheritance, where the good end happily and the bad messily (I'm not even tagging that as a spoiler, as that is how this sort of book goes) with the only oddity being that everyone is a dragon. (And the gracenotes of draconic society are delightful all by themselves.) In another light, it's a cunning and cutting analogy of how thin the veil of "civilised" society truly was and is, how deeply we are still steeped in viciousness, albeit with our consumption of our "less worthy" fellows metaphorical rather than literal.

In any case, it was a delight to read. Both sincerely shadowing Victorian novels and often tongue-in-cheek, and sprightly all the while, the prose was charming, the characters interesting, and the happenings amusing in their details while predictable in their general thrust. A wonderful combination of comfort and concept. ( )

Jo Walton continues to be my current favourite author. She manages to inject good politics into everything she writes, and she is very good at keeping the reader in suspense. I always blow through her books and then wish they could go on forever. This isn't my favourite book of hers, but it's still delightful. ( )

I have loved everything Jo Walton has written except for this book. It is not poorly written, just not my cup of tea. To be perfectly honest, I did not finish it because it did not hold my interest and I have a huge TBR pile. So if you read this and it is not to your liking, try Among Others or something from her Small Change series. ( )