What sort of woman, upon being kidnapped by smugglers in the middle of the night, would jump for joy at the thought of questioning them about dragons? [p. 130]
Set in a world reminiscent of our own in the nineteenth century, where dragons live wild in the remote heights and forests. Our narrator, Isabella (née Hendemore) -- who will, we are assured, later become the world's pre-eminent authority on dragons -- is the child of wealthy gentry. Aged seven, she dissects a pigeon with her brother's penknife to see how the wishbone works. Aged fourteen, she dresses as a boy to join the hunt for a wolf-drake that's plaguing the local farms.
She would rather not marry: but her (excellent) father gives her a list of eligible young men who own Sir Richard Edgeworth's A Natural History of Dragons, and she encounters one of them, Jacob Camherst, at a menagerie. (Where, of course, she is not supposed to be.) Marriage ensues. And Jacob proves willing to let her accompany him on a scientific expedition to the remote, somewhat Slavic-flavoured land of Vystrana. There, Isabella sees her first wild dragons, and makes some discoveries, and has plenty of adventures. Not all of these are cheerful.
Isabella, with her passionate drive for knowledge and her often-reckless decisions, reminded me strongly of Amelia Peabody (see Crocodile on a Sandbank and others), though she has the added complication of being a teenager. She's intelligent, driven and thoughtful -- though sometimes not as considerate of humans as of dragons. And she grows up very quickly in this novel. I did enjoy it, though the pacing was uneven and I'd have liked more worldbuilding: and the dragons (beautifully illustrated throughout by Todd Lockwood: you don't get that in an audiobook) were quite distinct from most fantasy dragons, being neither vocal or amiable. I got a real sense of them as creatures of flesh, blood and bone -- their bones being especially intriguing.
I think this suffered by my reading it so soon after The Signature of All Things, which also featured a female scientist and was also unevenly paced: that was a more literary novel than this grand adventure, though. I intend to read more of Brennan's series, because I'm fascinated to discover what Isabella does next.
Read because: fancied something light; the 'Exploring Science Fiction and Fantasy' reading challenge has 'Dragons' as a prompt; I bought this book in 2017, which is a long time for it to languish unread.
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