I finished His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik last night. It's kind of an odd duck - take Patrick O'Brien writing about Napoleonic Europe and add dragons as an air force. I've seen this book in the stores but it always looked a little cheesy to me so I never picked it up but while looking up Blindsight on the web, I noticed that it had been nominated for a Hugo, science fiction's top award, and that I had read four out of the five novels nominated for the 2007 Hugo. That inspired me to pick up this one to complete the set before the Hugo's are announced in a few weeks.

This is a perfectly pleasant book with some sympathetic characters and nice writing but I don't think it is really of the same calibre as the other nominees. It's an odd idea for a book, particularly since the existence of dragons doesn't seem to have effected anything other than creating a military air force.

The Hugo is a fan voted award, so anything could win but if I was voting I would probably go for Michael Flynn's Eifelheim.



Amazon Link: His Majesty's Dragon