That’s not really at all the sort of book I expected, but I ended up quite enjoying it.

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience.

In a nutshell, it’s a roughly Victorian period piece (feels fairly like Downton Abbey for the rough time period and most recent media I’ve experience with) in a secondary world that strongly echoes our own with some new names and one big difference–dragons!

It’s got an interesting feel, following the titular young (~20 for most of the story) Lady Trent who’s absolutely fascinated by the ’natural history’ (science!) of dragons. Which of course is not the sort of interest a young woman of the times should be following.

One thing leads to another, she manages to get herself on an expedition to a remote land to see dragons in person, there’s some action, some heartbreak, and of course SCIENCE!

It’s an interesting start into a world where dragons are a natural part of the world–with all the feel of a ‘magical world out there’ that you often feel in older works/histories/maps.

Well worth the read, in my opinion, I’m curious where it goes from here!

Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plenitude of mud.