Book #44 of 2024: A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent | DNF: Dark Lord's Daughter

[thistlechaser]

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan.

Quick synopsis: A fictional memoir written by a smart and wise woman living in a fictional Victorian time period.

Brief opinion: I loved the first half of this book so much! To the point where I repeatedly said to myself that if Lady Trent were real, she'd be a hero of mine. But wow the second half went downhill...

Plot: Born into a high class family of six brothers, young Isabella is never one for "proper" hobbies. She collects bugs and bones, and once dissected a dead pigeon she found.

As she grows into her teens, her parents convince her to be "good" for a few years -- long enough that she could be presented to Society and land herself a husband fitting her own family's status.

Happily for her (though not by chance) her husband is just as interested in science as her and loves her enough to not keep her on a leash at home -- he permits her to come on a scientific study of dragons to another country (fantasy Russia, seemed like).

The couple, a senior scientist, and his assistant spend days exploring and studying dragons, but then bad stuff keeps happening, which turns the trip into an attempt to solve the mystery of who was trying to run them out of Fantasy Russia instead of doing science.

In the end, they (of course) solve the mystery and bring the story back to Dragon Science in the final pages.

Writing/editing: I really loved the author's (and Lady Trent's?) writing. The editing was perfect. Apparently the artwork included in the book is wonderful, but in an ebook it's about an inch tall, so it was really hard to make out much.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I loved Lady Trent so much! In the first half of the book, I connected so strongly with her. (A girl who didn't want to stay in her "place", she wanted to learn and do science!)

I'm not one for marriage, romance, "Society" stuff, but I liked the brief courting and the relationship between her and her husband.

The second half of the book lost my interest and by the last couple chapters I was skimming.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 4 stars, liked. There are five more books in this series, and apparently each is a little better than the one before it, but I'm not sure I'm going to continue on with it.

Book spotted at Jeane Nevarez's book blog. Her review here: Link.


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DNF #34: The Dark Lord's Daughter by Patricia C. Wrede. It was such an odd experience trying to read this book. The story was full of irreverent humor -- it made me want to defend the story from... the author?

This could have been a really great story, I loved the idea of it (girl from our world and her family are sucked into another world and she finds out she's the dark lord's daughter). Her family being sucked into the other world as well is such a new twist!

I made it almost to the 30% point before DNFing it. I just disliked the humor too much to stick with it.

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

We felt so much the same about this one! I do want to read the sequels, just haven't got around to it yet.