I loved this book, not because it’s packed with action or because it’s a perfect book without flaws but because of how it made me feel. Every time Laurence climbed onto the back of Temeraire and took flight, I felt like that kid in the “how reading feels” meme with boats, planes, rockets, and dragons soaring all around them. Novik did a wonderful job at making me feel like I was riding right along with Laurence.

I also loved it because of the relationship that Novik crafted between the dragons and their riders. You could feel the love, admiration, and loyalty between each of them, especially between Temeraire and Laurence. There were so many moments between the two that touched my heart. She gave her dragons such spirit and life that there were moments that brought me to tears and one that I will forever not be able to speak of without misty eyes.

One of the unique things about this book is that the reader may very well expect yet another dragon-riding novel just like all the rest, but that’s not what Novik delivers. First, it’s set in our world with our actual history but with dragons! Secondly, she takes the redundant and reinvents it, and makes it her own. The dragons do not fly with a single rider on their massive backs but crews and each rider has his own job aboard their ship of flesh and blood and scales.

If you like historical fiction or even if you don’t, I highly suggest taking a ride on Temeraire. You won’t regret the trip unless of course, you are afraid of heights.

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors rise to Britain’s defense by taking to the skies . . . not aboard aircraft but atop the mighty backs of fighting dragons.

When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes its precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Capt. Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future–and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature. Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.