A Natural History Of Dragons A Memoir By Lady Trent

An interesting start to the series. Written in the form of a memoir when she is much older, this book tells the story of Isabella, who becomes fascinated by dragons from childhood and grows up wanting to learn more about them. But she is constricted by the Victorian-like society that she grows up in that expect women to 'know their place' in society and not to stick out by doing unladylike things like being fascinated by dragons.

Then chance intervenes, and she gets the opportunity to go on an expedition to study wild dragons in a far country. But things don't start out well; their guide is missing and dragons are attacking the village. And in the process of their investigations about dragons, Isabella stumbles on to a secret that may well affect her natural study of dragons: for if the secret becomes well known, it may mean the end of dragons.

Most stories about dragons tend to focus on the fantasy part of dragons; this series attracted me because it hints that it would try to treat dragons as real life animals and attempt to portray them realistically. This first book concentrates more on the growing up of Isabella than of dragons, which only makes a brief appearance in the book. But it does provide some hints about the natural history of dragons, why they are worth studying, and what Isabella would have to do if she is to try to protect the secret about the dragons for now.

On to the next one in the series to see what other natural revelations about dragons will be revealed.

I actually didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It's set in a pseudo-Victorian fantasy world that's basically Europe with dragons. Our protagonist is the young Isabella Camherst, 19 years old and obsessed with dragons and natural sciences. It's written in first person, as the memoirs of a much older Isabella who turned out to be the most important dragon scientist known.

It must be a long road there though, because in this part of her memoirs, Isabella is 19, it's pseudo-Victorian society, strongly set in patriarchy and so women aren't supposed to have any interest in sciences whatsoever. With the help of her young husband who allows her interest a bit grudgingly after she miscarries, she gets to travel to pseudo-Romania to study rock-wyrms. Something has made those drakes much more aggressive than they usually are, and Isabella is tossed into finding out what happened, while surrounded by hostile villagers and superstition.

I thought this book was charming, surprisingly feminist in tone, and the plot was pretty interesting. The book is also full of adorable drawings of dragons and other such things, as Isabella draws them. If you enjoy travel journal style, it's quite interesting.