By Meghan Mazzaferro
Content warnings: death, animal death, miscarriage, sexism, grief, animal cruelty, animal attacks kidnapping
We have all, of course, heard of Lady Trent, the world’s leading dragon naturalist. But while Lady Trent’s discoveries have been widely published and have shaped our understanding of dragon anatomy and behaviour, she has never gone into detail about her expeditions—until now. For the first time, Lady Trent is compiling all of her experiences into a series of novels, beginning with her childhood and detailing her various adventures (and misadventures) on her mission to learn everything possible about one of this world’s most mysterious creatures.
A Natural History of Dragons is written like a memoir and is told by Lady Trent, an elderly dragon naturalist revisiting the moments in her life that led her to the top of her field. This book explores the young Isabella’s first experiences with dragons and her first expedition to study the creatures for herself. This story balances the whimsy of dragons with a scientist’s eye for detail, exploring dragons not as magical creatures but as animals with all the beauty and terror that comes from studying a wild animal with wings and unusual breath. If you’re a fan of How to Train Your Dragon and are looking for a story with a strong young woman fighting for her passions and studying dragons in all their glory, this book is definitely for you!
The book has a slower pace. It truly reads like a memoir, but Lady Trent has a very distinctive voice, and the balance between young Isabella’s passions and the elderly Lady Trent’s asides and comments on her own actions and the actions of the people around her makes sure that even while the story takes its time, you’ll always be entertained. The pacing might be slow, but it’s also consistent. There is always something happening, whether Isabella is scheming to dissect a tiny dragon or the team is trying to discover a dragon’s nest or a complex conspiracy is being revealed. The plot itself is interesting, mostly following Isabella’s obsession with dragons and the lengths she will go to get to study them. The second half of the book really shines as we begin to see how Isabella will thrive as a dragon naturalist in the future.
I went into this book looking for a story with multiple different dragon species and a person studying them (I wasn’t lying when I said this book has How to Train Your Dragon vibes!), and I really loved Isabella and all the characters’ fascination with dragons as animals to be studied. The book balanced the marvel of dragons as these fantastical creatures with Isabella’s need to understand them from a naturalist perspective, and I enjoyed reading about her experiments and discoveries. I also enjoyed the time period of this book; while the story is set in a fantasy world, it seems to mirror our world around the industrial revolution, and I really liked the story’s exploration of science, the ways in which it was lacking, the technology of the period, and its limitations, and more. And of course, this story explores the sexism and prejudices of the period, and while Lady Trent is still quite young when this story ends, I can’t wait to see her blow away all the men who will underestimate her because of her sex!
This book is only the first in a five-book series, and I, for one, am absolutely obsessed. This book filled a need I never knew I had, and I am so excited to jump back into this world and reconnect with Isabella in the next installment. If you’re intrigued by this premise, don’t worry—it’s a completed series, and all five books are out now for you to read!