Told in Isabella’s voice, the language of the novel is perfectly pitched to suggest a broadly Victorian setting, in which young gentlewomen certainly do not practice dissection, read scientific books about dragons or get themselves into awkward situations with wild wolf-drakes. With the first of Marie Brennan’s delightful fantasy novels, I’ve been introduced to another take on the subject, in which dragons are just another breed of fauna to be studied – albeit long-clawed and lethal – a challenge taken on by the plucky, well-born bluestocking naturalist, Isabella Camherst. (Feb.Authors have tackled dragons in many ways over the years: Tolkien’s shrewd, gold-hoarding Smaug Anne McCaffrey’s magnificent bond-beasts and, more recently, Naomi Novik’s intelligent and well-meaning Temeraire.
Agent: Rachel Vater, Folio Literary Management. Fans of fantasy, science, and history will adore this rich and absorbing tale of discovery. Brennan’s world-building is wonderfully subtle, rendering a familiar land alien with casual details. Isabella’s life is genuinely complicated by her scientific leanings, yet she perseveres with perfectly period-accurate spirit and awareness of the risks and costs. Brennan’s stand-alone novel (unrelated to her Onyx Court series), written as Isabella’s memoir of her youthful adventures, and beautifully illustrated by Todd Lockwood, is saturated with the joy and urgency of discovery and scientific curiosity. Along the way, Isabella solves a mystery and proves her worth as a naturalist. Instead she marries a man who shares her passion for natural history and convinces him to let her join his expedition to see the wild dragons of Vystrana. Isabella has been obsessed with studying dragons since childhood, but a formal scientific career is off limits to a woman.
Isabella, Lady Trent, is a naturalist and adventurer in a country that more or less resembles 19th-century England, yet fantastical creatures roam, Judaism appears to be the dominant religion, and Europe once had an ancient Egypt-like civilization.
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