Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons (2014)

There's a certain odour of How To Train Your Dragon about this, with the cod-Viking milieu replaced with a Fantasyland version of Edwardian England, and the cartoonish humour swapped over for a detailed (frankly, rather too detailed) evocation of the curiosity of the natural historian. The result is a gentle and, to some extent, beguiling yarn; although one that lacks any properly draconic fire or force. The narrator, Lady Trent, nurses a by-the-standards-of-her-sexist-time unladylike interest in dragons from an early age. She learns from the cook how to preserve a dead 'sparkling' in vinegar (a dragon so small some categorise it as an insect). She grows up the copy of the De draconum varietatibus in her father's library -- I can't say I trust the Latin here, since Lewis and Scott insist the genitive of draco is dracontis. Or perhaps Latin works differently in Brennan's imaginary locale. After all, Lady Trent grows-up in Edwardian luxury in 'Scirland' not Britain, and she travels from this large set of islands off the shoulder of the mainland continent not to Albania/Transylvania/somewherelikethat-ania but rather to 'Vystrana'. What Brennan gains by setting her tale in this arbitrarily constructed Fantasy realm isn't clear to me.

Anyway, not to get ahead of myself: Lady Trent grows to maturity and gets married the kindly Jacob, a less oppressively patriarchal husband than Isabella might have been lumbered with. Jacob risks social ostracism by permitting his wife to attend him on a scientific expedition to the valleys surrounding Drustanev in assuredly-not-Albania/Transylvania/somewherelikethat-ania in search of dragons. There are a couple of rather slackly told adventures: our heroine kidnapped by colourful bandits, who despite her fears that they might 'outrage her honour' in fact swiftly return her to the expedition. She goes on to encounter ancient tombs, statues, legends of the mythical half-human-half-dragon king Zhagrit Mat, and a variety of actual big-as-a-bus dragons, which Isbaella sketches. The illustrations, notionally hers, are one of the high-points of this otherwise rather underinflated story. Nothing very much happens; the cod-Edwardian tone is too broadly pastiche-y and Down-Abbeyesque properly to work and the whole flavour is, well, cosy. Though Isabella carries on her shoulder the scar of a childhood encounter with a Wolf-Drake (half wolf, half duck! Or, no, wait a minute: actually a kind of large dragon ...), and though she's always tumbling through into subterranean caves, being stalked by wild beasts etc etc it never generates any tension or terror. On the plus side, the dragons are treated as examples of naturally occurring wildlife, rather than as feeble McAffreyish ciphers for housecats or horses. But on the down side, the dragons are treated as examples of naturally occurring wildlife, and the minute itemisation of their anatomy and behaviour is a little ... well, dull.