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.

Well, it was okay. I had some trouble getting into it, and then part of the ending became rather predictable once specific characters were introduced. Other parts of the ending were never really resolved at all. It wasn't until the halfway point that I actually started feeling invested in it. Some of this probably due to geography issues. I listened to an audiobook and as such I get nothing in the way of maps, so all these made up countries and places and how they relate to each other means little to nothing. Plus when you hear them read out but never see them in writing, it takes a very long time for it to start sounding like a place and not just 'something made up'. (Especially, when some of them sound a bit sort of 'made up via keyboard mashing', but that might simply be due to the format that I had)

I've got the two next ones on audio as well, but haven't yet decided whether or not I liked it enough to continue with them. I'll have to let it ferment for a little while and see if I feel curious.