A Natural History of Dragons

Let me preface this by saying this book is 3 stars because of the things it lacks, not the things it has being not quite good enough. Some elements I actually quite liked, but one key feature was barely even there. Isabella was interested in dragons since childhood, something their Victorian-like world has an abundance of without the humans knowing much about them. Isabella is also wild and headstrong, always up to something, which is not exactly desirable according to her peers, she still manages to find a lovely, sweet husband called Jacob who is also into dragons. When she befriends a nobleman famous for going on expeditions, Isabella of course makes things happen so not only is Jacob allowed to go, but herself too. Writing Victorian female characters today is not something I am super into, to be honest. It feels like people can't imagine human beings like us living in a different type of society without doing cartoonish things, like a Victorian lady talking in 2017 gender studies language, being an absolutely loathsome bitch to everyone around her because she is fighting society or being a total boring ragdoll suffering everywhere she goes to make us feel pity for the poor, brainwashed slaves. I can tell you, young Isabella is neither of those; she is a person. A person who is imperfect and human, who is very much part of her surroundings and still has her own character. As she is telling her own story, now as an old lady, she even points things out about how she was at fault when some of her interactions turned mean. Sometimes she fucked up. She is not the moral centre of everything, as some authors like to do female characters now. Ms. Brennan even surprised me with some of these things. At one point the characters find some ancient inscription on the walls of a temple ruin where one of them talks about how a country offered money for any man who could solve and translate it, but he is sure she could convince them to give the reward to her. I was like “oh, right, here is the moment when she just magically has amazing skills that not even even professors and geniuses around her had”. But she didn't. She just said she doesn't know shit about stuff like this, thanks. So in my book she is fine. Not quite like Lizanne Lethridge from [b:The Waking Fire 25972177 The Waking Fire (The Draconis Memoria, #1) Anthony Ryan https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456221270s/25972177.jpg 45880091], but she is fiiiiine. The whole memoir format is risky, though. You need to have a great protagonist (check), an interesting life story (check) and it really needs to have the pacing that makes the books interesting. Here is the issue with this. The dragons are barely there. Writing about dragons like it's the story of a naturalist, like this is science meeting myth and fantasy is AWESOME. It's the kind of stuff I eat up. But I feel here much of the otherwise short little book was spent on Isabella doing random stuff. Even while the main conflict involved dragons, they were just a vehicle for some fuckery. I really hope the rest of the series will bring more of the actual things on the book covers. Oh, those covers. They are so lovely. The book even had little illustrations, which were all A+, I really loved them. Again, a great feature of the thing, so I just hope that the story itself will be better and that the lack of dragons happened mostly because we needed to see the context of Isabella's life, her childhood, how she started her journey. Crossing my fingers for that. All in all, it was very readable. The style fit the contents, I found it very easy to read, which is not a bad thing at all. Some people constantly want big challenges on every page, but I personally can appreciate some smooth prose that makes your eyes glide through the pages. This was exactly that; a fun read you could easily fit in even between harder reads or stressful times without being overwhelmed.Also, a bit of a spoiler that anyone paying attention figures out just by reading the title and then the story. Her name is Lady TRENT. She married a guy called Camherst. We all know what that meant. It's sad, Jacob is such a lovely, lovely man. I will be interested in knowing how things develop after this to Lady Trent's old lady self. While I wasn't 100% sold on this, I would say it's a worthy read. I'm not going to push it on everyone I see at this point, but when the specific requirements are met I won't regret mentioning this. I'm definitely going on with the series as well, because I genuinely believe there is potential for the series becoming something extremely cool. Have a nice day and don't be such a lady, pick this up and start the adventure!