title: His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1)
author:  Naomi Novik 
description: In this delightful first novel, the opening salvo of a trilogy, Novik seamlessly blends fantasy into the history of the Napoleonic wars. Here be dragons, beasts that can speak and reason, bred for strength and speed and used for aerial support in battle. Each nation has its own breeds, but none are so jealously guarded as the mysterious dragons of China. Veteran Capt. Will Laurence of the British Navy is therefore taken aback after his crew captures an egg from a French ship and it hatches a Chinese dragon, which Laurence names Temeraire. When Temeraire bonds with the captain, the two leave the navy to sign on with His Majesty's sadly understaffed Aerial Corps, which takes on the French in sprawling, detailed battles that Novik renders with admirable attention to 19th-century military tactics. Though the dragons they encounter are often more fully fleshed-out than the stereotypical human characters, the author's palpable love for her subject and a story rich with international, interpersonal and internal struggles more than compensate. <i>(Apr.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  Convicted of treason despite their heroic defense against Napoleon’s invasion
  of England, Temeraire and Capt. Will Laurence have been transported to a
  prison colony in distant Australia—and into a hornet’s nest of fresh
  complications. The colony is in turmoil after the overthrow of military
  governor William Bligh—aka Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty. And when Bligh
  tries to enlist them in his bid to regain office, the dragon and his captain
  are caught in the middle of a political power struggle. Their only chance to
  escape the fray is accepting a mission to blaze a route through the forbidding
  Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But the theft of a precious
  dragon egg turns their expedition into a desperate recovery operation—leading
  to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new complication in the global war
  between Britain and Napoleon.
  
  
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  `Naomi Novik`
  
  
  
  
  
  # **Tongues of Serpents**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Temeraire VI**