I'm on a boat

As a fervent fan of Napoleonic era tales of adventures in the Royal Navy and beyond--via C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian--it was with fascination and horror that I discovered Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. Several of the promo blurbs describe the series as O'Brian meets Pern-Eragon-generic-dragon-buddy story and this is all too true; Temeraire is an Aubrey and Maturin series, except with one party replaced by a smarty-whiz talking dragon. (Which seems a little unfair, considering Maturin was always reptilian around the edges to begin with.) And yes, you're supposed to bond with dragons when they hatch. And if they bond, they only bond to one person. Because that's what fantasy dragons do best, hang out with people and stuff.

Back when I was in middle school and obsessed with dragons just like all the other girls, adding dragons to everything was an awesome idea. ("Clan of the Cavebear? Needs more dragons.") Now that I'm no longer 12, I'm not sure what Pern adds to the historic seafaring genre--there's still a Napoleonic war on, everyone is still sailing around on ships, hauling ropes and firing cannons at each other, they all clearly believe they're in the world of Hornblower or Jack Aubrey, and all Novik did was plug in a DRAGON BUDDY AERIAL CORPS expansion pack. If you are in fact a 12-year-old girl, Temeraire may appeal for this reason alone. If you aren't 12, try the real books first. Then see if you need this random mash-up (possibly soon to be a film from Peter Jackson--can't be hard, just retroactively CGI some dragons into the existing Master and Commander film).

With the zeal of the dedicated fangirl, Novik tries to capture the style of an O'Brian or even an Austen (though to be sure, Jane Austen understood to a greater degree that it is sometimes permitted, even desirable, to allow lines of dialogue to flow without interruption or exposition), by deploying every florid sentence in her arsenal; she also embraces, it must be said, a grave excess of punctuation: the semi-colon and the colon, or even the comma, all rightfully possessed of a place in higher society, should nevertheless not be used to distraction; of course, O'Brian himself was a great friend of the semi-colon and colon, even multiple times within the same sentence, and Novik is determined to knock off the best.

A paragraph from the first chapter of O'Brian's Master and Commander:

The heat had increased while he was in the house, and when he came out into the street the air was hot on his face, almost like another element; yet it was not at all choking, not at all sultry, and there was a brilliance in it that took away all oppression. After a couple of turns he reached the tree-lined street that carried the Ciudadela road down to the high-perched square, or rather terrace, that overlooked the quays. He crossed to the shady side, where English houses with sash windows, fanlights and cobbled forecourts stood on expectedly good terms with their neighbours, the baroque Jesuit church and the withdrawn Spanish mansions with great stone coats of arms over their doorways.

And a paragraph from the first chapter of Novik's Victory of Eagles (Temeraire excerpts are available at temeraire.org), with the added power of an adjective assault:

The breeding grounds were called Pen Y Fan, after the hard, jagged slash of the mountain at their heart, like an axe-blade, rimed with ice along its edge and rising barren over the moorlands: a cold, wet Welsh autumn already, coming on towards winter, and the other dragons sleepy and remote, uninterested in anything but their meals. There were a few hundred of them scattered throughout the grounds, mostly established in caves or on rocky ledges, wherever they could fit themselves; nothing of comfort or even order provided for them, except the feedings, and the mowed-bare strip of dirt around the borders, where torches were lit at night to mark the lines past which they might not go, with the town-lights glimmering in the distance, cheerful and forbidden.

Throughout the books, you can see Novik at work, diligently attempting to capture the wit and liveliness that made O'Brian's books so memorable. Unfortunately, this imitation is too self-conscious to do anything but remind you that Novik is not Patrick O'Brian and desperately lacks a style of her own. ("I also like Pern!" doesn't count.) Yes, Patrick O'Brian wrote some great historical fiction. Yes, it's fine to be inspired by Patrick O'Brian. No, it's not necessary to pretend to be Patrick O'Brian in order to do historical fiction in the same era. I could credit Novik if she established her own unique voice or at least her own punctuation style, but she didn't. Sure, an author could definitely crib the setting of the O'Brian novels but use his/her own writing style, or apply an O'Brian-esque writing style to a completely new setting, but wholesale copying of both O'Brian's writing style and the setting of his best-known series? That's just cheap. Why bother? Who reads or writes because they're driven to find or create inferior imitations of other, better books? After all, those better books already exist.

In any case, the first Temeraire novel, His Majesty's Dragon, is available as a free online PDF. Who knows, this could be start of a hot new trend: World War II... with talking dragon friends! The siege of Troy... with talking dragon friends! The Civil War... with talking dragon friends! The Russian Revolution... with talking dragon friends! The Armenian genocide... with talking dragon friends! Oh, somebody better get Weta on the line right now.

Ignorant Caucasian Appropriation Attack, Go Go 55!

Grant Morrison should probably sit on his hands the next time he has a "great" idea to create a team of "Asian" superheroes like Japan's Super Young Team or the Chinese Great Ten. That said, he does make a body grateful to belong to a minority group that flies below the radar; as much as it sucks to be invisible or interchangeable, it just might beat being reduced to another one of his cheap collections of attributes and stereotypes. For one thing, Asians of the world, you may speak perfect English, but you will never, ever get the hang of coming up with an English codename. And no, you can't use the name you use in your native language, because it was too much trouble to bother coming up with one. It's so much easier and more amusing to simply apply a white Anglo writer's "they do things fun-nee over there" filter. Enjoy, Shy Crazy Lolita Canary! Shiny Happy Aquazon! Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash! Socialist Red Guardsman! Accomplished Perfect Physician!

(Shy Crazy Lolita Canary, by the way, is a tiny winged girl in a schoolgirl uniform who fights with a voice that sounds like, and this is Morrison's vision here, "the shopgirls in every Tokyo store screaming SUMMMIIMMMMMASSENNNNN!! as loud as they can, at the highest pitch possible and en masse." Deep. The Super Young Team also blatantly emulates/borrows from established, "Anglo" DC superheroes like Superman and Green Lantern, right down to using their logos--and while you could argue that Japanese pop culture does incorporates a lot of cultural remixing, these Japanese characters are presented not as unique individuals with their own names and identities, but as people with wacky names who aspire to be lesser imitations of "Anglo" characters.)

Still, this may be Morrison at the mere cusp of his "creative" powers; he could yet top himself. Why, he could create the Cock Cracker Corps, a bunch of dentally-challenged heroes from the depths of Appalachia. This one gets her powers from meth! That one is a man-billy goat hybrid! Over there is a welfare queen who superpower-pops out another 5 children named Darlene on a weekly basis! Confederate Soldier will never give up the fight, or his 2nd Amendment rights! And as for the Burning White Hood of Purity and Righteousness, a.k.a. Earl, well, best you simply don't ask. Surely Morrison would agree that there's real potential in this one--I mean, if we're going to create racially or ethnically identified teams based on an outside observer's superficial exposure to representation of that racial or ethnic group in selected elements of a country's (pop) culture, then why the fuck not?

Anyway, Morrison's Super Young Team is getting their own, Joe Casey-penned, Final Crisis spin-off mini--Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance--and issue #1 just goes to show that whoever you are, wherever you may be, however dodgy your concept or your writer, no-one can resist the stylish look of the...


Photoshop star brush. Respect!

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