An Officer and a Gentleman. (Temeraire crossover.)

ATP

Well-known member
Not changing Europe's history too much didn't bother me, I think the reason the first book was decent was because the base idea was really interesting and the world wasn't developed anyway.

But once Temeraire and friends started traveling, Naomi Novik wrote herself into a corner because she gave awesome, powerful dragons much better than those feeble English ones to all the foreign nations. Firebreathers in the middle east, Chinese dragons that could shatter a fleet, monstrously powerful elephant-tusked ones in Africa, sandworms in Australia, Aztec dragons worshipped as gods, etc. Meanwhile England had mostly small dragons, none of them had special powers except for the acid spitters, and they tended to be so uncultured they slept on rocks in caves and didn't bother to even dig them out. But somehow those evil white people from Europe managed to colonize all those superior places anyway.

Worse, she made the "England" side the obvious bad guys in behavior except for Lawrence who was loyal to them to a fault making him appear to be a complete moron since he kept betraying England for its evil ways while also steadfastly maintaining his loyalty to King and country. It's very hard to actually like the protagonists by the end because they acted like schizo idiots due to wokeness colliding headfirst into history.

Yes,my reaction was like -
i get it,evul white man bad,so why not get nice chineese waifu and live there ?
Saving England and destroing Napoleon in the end was bullshit.

I am from Poland,and history with dragons have no sense here.We were saved in 17th century only thanks to luck and winged hussarls.With dragons as main force,it would not worked and Poland should cese to exist then.
 

Speaker4thesilent

Crazed Deplorable
P.S I think that @Doomsought is right - author made mistake do not changing history in Europe with dragons,and later anothers trying to change that
“You can have one unicorn in your garden as long as you are consistent about it.”

The idea being that, as an author, you can have one thing in you writing that stretches credulity and the readers will forgive you for it. Especially if it is early in the book or foundational. In Temeraire, that’s the Dragon Air Force, and things still working out the same, historically.

If she’d been consistent about that it would have been forgiven by most readers.

She wasn’t.

If she’d actually bothered to understand history, and done her research, she could have had the English getting samples of foreign dragons and breeding new bloodlines with the sort of hybrid vigor that would have let them dominate the post-Napoleonic Wars battlefield.

Instead of learning actual history, she leaned into Woke ahistorical bullshit. With how happily some of the West-Africans were to sell other Africans into slavery, I would have expected them to sell dragon eggs too. With England’s navy, that would have been an excellent source of new blood for their dragon Air Force.

Say they introduce a Dragon that’s on the heavy side of Medium, but with tusks. Use them to target enemy Heavyweights: they’re more nimble than the other guy, but the tusks allow them to punch above their weight class.

That’s the sort of shit that I was expecting. Of course the protagonist’s side starts out weak! Then the protagonist and his/her allies have plenty of room to improve things!

Instead, Naomi Novak managed to wallow in mediocrity for several books after a reasonably strong opening act.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
P.S I think that @Doomsought is right - author made mistake do not changing history in Europe with dragons,and later anothers trying to change that
Not changing the history isn't that big an issue, not changing the culture, or the weapons people not riding dragons use in ways they'd respond to dragons was a worse issue but even that pales before the illogic of the culture she had surrounding dragons.

A culture with respected female warrior/soldiers and no effective birth control will not be sexually permissive.
A culture where dragons and their riders are as important militarily as they're shown to be in the first book, will have those dragons and riders acquire considerable political power, even if they magically avoided completely warping the society.

And that's ignoring how such "Minor" issues as having high speed mail, and air transport would change society, or the magical secret society the dragon riders somehow manage to maintain with no one the wiser, with apparently no way of preserving valuable dragons when they're being mistreated.

Worse, she made the "England" side the obvious bad guys in behavior except for Lawrence who was loyal to them to a fault making him appear to be a complete moron since he kept betraying England for its evil ways while also steadfastly maintaining his loyalty to King and country.
Worse, she made them stereotypical stupid-evil, there was no reason for their evil actions except to hurt the hero and were willing to hurt themselvs in order to do so.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Never knew about the dragon story until today, but the fanfic is good, with a touch of hornblower flavoring.
The original story's catch was "Horatio Hornblower with Dragons" so Lordsfire's tale is quite accurate to Naomi Novik's stories. Temeraire and Lawrence's internal thinking and discussions are by far the strongest part of the books, especially early on. There is some real enjoyment to be had in their discussions and musings if you can turn off the part of your brain that notices all the wokeness and says "Wait, how on earth are English wimminz kept in the kitchen and out of politics or military power when the awesomely powerful acid-spitting dragons in England only accept female riders, usually in the same bloodline generation after generation, and this has been going on for hundreds to thousands of years?"

You seem to have managed to read a lot further than I did, I stopped when they agreed to leave england for china
I made it to around where they discover that the Russian dragons were being controlled by barbed iron spikes driven through their ribcages and just kinda went How? How did humans ever manage to drive the first spikes in without the house-sized firebreathing masses of destruction killing them first? How are the dragons even still alive with massive barbed iron spikes apparently in their lungs? Why are all these people so pointlessly evil that Cobra Commander would tell them to ease up a bit, and how are they holding their empires together with this kind of behavior going on?
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
I made it to around where they discover that the Russian dragons were being controlled by barbed iron spikes driven through their ribcages and just kinda went How? How did humans ever manage to drive the first spikes in without the house-sized firebreathing masses of destruction killing them first? How are the dragons even still alive with massive barbed iron spikes apparently in their lungs? Why are all these people so pointlessly evil that Cobra Commander would tell them to ease up a bit, and how are they holding their empires together with this kind of behavior going on?
Thanks for confirming I was right to stop reading when I did.
 

ATP

Well-known member
The original story's catch was "Horatio Hornblower with Dragons" so Lordsfire's tale is quite accurate to Naomi Novik's stories. Temeraire and Lawrence's internal thinking and discussions are by far the strongest part of the books, especially early on. There is some real enjoyment to be had in their discussions and musings if you can turn off the part of your brain that notices all the wokeness and says "Wait, how on earth are English wimminz kept in the kitchen and out of politics or military power when the awesomely powerful acid-spitting dragons in England only accept female riders, usually in the same bloodline generation after generation, and this has been going on for hundreds to thousands of years?"


I made it to around where they discover that the Russian dragons were being controlled by barbed iron spikes driven through their ribcages and just kinda went How? How did humans ever manage to drive the first spikes in without the house-sized firebreathing masses of destruction killing them first? How are the dragons even still alive with massive barbed iron spikes apparently in their lungs? Why are all these people so pointlessly evil that Cobra Commander would tell them to ease up a bit, and how are they holding their empires together with this kind of behavior going on?

1.All to show how evul white society is.I have no problems becouse i saw from the start that story is to show how enlinghtened idea backed by Napoleon are better then evul royals.

2.Even easier to explain - dragons are treated like russian serfs,and unless Poland where serfs still have some rights,in Russia they were property.You could buy,sold,rape and beat to death them and nobody cared.
Althought it is really illogical ,that dragons which unless serfs could burn or smash people was treated that way.Author tried counter that by giving big dragons hoards of gold,which they just keep and did nothing with it.
Which paradoxally,is typical fairy tales dragon behaviour.

But i still do noy undarstandt why SI do not just take chineese waifu and lived in cyvilised China.Maybe becouse such waifu would be Manchu spy ?
Who care ! i want cute manchu spy waifu for myself ! and dragon,too !
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
2.Even easier to explain - dragons are treated like russian serfs,and unless Poland where serfs still have some rights,in Russia they were property.You could buy,sold,rape and beat to death them and nobody cared.
This is wrong. Even ignoring all the many ways Dragons are not like Serfs, that's not how Russian law treated Serfs.
Could a Russian noble rape or kill a serf? Sure.
Could a British rape or kill a servant? Sure.
Was it legal for them to do so? No way.
Could they get in a lot of trouble, up to getting executed if the wrong (or right) person found out about what they did? Yes. Granted a serf on a village a thousand miles from anywhere would have a lot more difficulty finding someone who cares than a servant in England, but the point is the nobles did need to be somewhat careful.
 

ATP

Well-known member
This is wrong. Even ignoring all the many ways Dragons are not like Serfs, that's not how Russian law treated Serfs.
Could a Russian noble rape or kill a serf? Sure.
Could a British rape or kill a servant? Sure.
Was it legal for them to do so? No way.
Could they get in a lot of trouble, up to getting executed if the wrong (or right) person found out about what they did? Yes. Granted a serf on a village a thousand miles from anywhere would have a lot more difficulty finding someone who cares than a servant in England, but the point is the nobles did need to be somewhat careful.

Unfortunatelly,no - russians sefs was property,so could be treated as such.British servants was free people.Polish serfs was people who could not abadonn their land and must work for him,but they judges themselves.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Unfortunatelly,no - russians sefs was property,so could be treated as such..
To an extent, this was in practice true. It was not however true to the extent you are suggesting and was never officially legally true.
Serfs were tied to the land, but not (especially in the second serfdom) without rights. Enforcing those rights was of course a problem, but those rights did exist and a lord could get in trouble for getting cought violating them.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
1.All to show how evul white society is.I have no problems becouse i saw from the start that story is to show how enlinghtened idea backed by Napoleon are better then evul royals.

2.Even easier to explain - dragons are treated like russian serfs,and unless Poland where serfs still have some rights,in Russia they were property.You could buy,sold,rape and beat to death them and nobody cared.
Althought it is really illogical ,that dragons which unless serfs could burn or smash people was treated that way.Author tried counter that by giving big dragons hoards of gold,which they just keep and did nothing with it.
Which paradoxally,is typical fairy tales dragon behaviour.

But i still do noy undarstandt why SI do not just take chineese waifu and lived in cyvilised China.Maybe becouse such waifu would be Manchu spy ?
Who care ! i want cute manchu spy waifu for myself ! and dragon,too !
I'm reasonably sure Russian Serfs did not normally have barbed iron spikes driven into their ribcages in order to compel obedience.

But my comments were less about the politics of it than the practicality. I can fully believe that somebody would be that cruel, less so that any human had the ability to inflict that cruelty on dragons who are just as smart as humans but also the size of houses and armored enough to take multiple cannon hits, besides sometimes being able to breathe fire. Attempting to apply said barbed spikes should result in immediate squishing or crisping for the humans involved, and successfully applying the spikes would most likely kill the dragon or at least leave it so crippled compared to non-spiked dragons that it's no longer a useful military asset. Either way, it's a deeply nonsensical idea.
 

ATP

Well-known member
To an extent, this was in practice true. It was not however true to the extent you are suggesting and was never officially legally true.
Serfs were tied to the land, but not (especially in the second serfdom) without rights. Enforcing those rights was of course a problem, but those rights did exist and a lord could get in trouble for getting cought violating them.

Serfs was tied to the land in Poland,too.But only in Russia you could sold serfs without land,when in Poland you sell land with serfs who could not abadonn it.
And in Russia you could have harem of peasant girl,in Poland it was impossible.

One of reason why Moscow agreed to Crime of Partition - among 8 millions of polish serfs there were at least 300.000 which run from Moscowites,not to be free people,but polish serfs.Many runned from Prussia,too.
There were no polish serfs,who tried to run there.

There is very good book by marquiz de Coustine "Letters from Russia" showing that and other unpleasant things there.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Serfs was tied to the land in Poland,too.But only in Russia you could sold serfs without land,when in Poland you sell land with serfs who could not abadonn it.
Russia had plenty of serfs and a lot of outright slaves, they were not however the same thing.
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
Russia had plenty of serfs and a lot of outright slaves, they were not however the same thing.
Simply declaring serfdom to not be slaver because it is not chattel slavery is fallacious.

Serfdom is a form of slavery that is a separate category of slavery than chattel slavery. The serf is property of the state rather than an individual. This completely changes the dynamic of this form of slavery compared to other forms.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Simply declaring serfdom to not be slaver because it is not chattel slavery is fallacious.
Quite true, and that's not what I'm talking about. If you want to argue that all serfs are slaves I'd find it very difficult to argue against you. My point is that while serfs may be slaves, that does not mean all slaves are serfs.
 

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