Something has occurred to me, thanks to a cheeky post from The B-Movie Catechism.
The first fantasy creature C. S. Lewis introduces in The Chronicles of Narnia
Is any Christian willing to condemn Lewis for this? Any? If no one will condemn Lewis for his chaste faun, let us have no more talk of condemning other fantasists for their friendly dragons.
A book to make you say awwwwwwwww.
His Majesty's Dragon
It is the most entertaining book I have read in two years. Period. (Two years ago, incidentally, I was reading Bone
Other reviewers have already described this, Novik's debut novel, as a cross between Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern
Technically speaking, this is a work of alternate history. In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Will Laurence is an ideal British naval captain. However, his life changes dramatically after he captures a French frigate carrying a single dragon's egg. In Novik's alternate world, dragons are an important part of Europe's militaries, offering vital air support to ground troops and ships alike, but to render the dragons useful to the military, someone must, upon the dragon's hatching from its egg, put the dragon in a harness and become its lifelong companion, constantly at its beck and call. When the dragon begins to hatch on Laurence's ship, he has no choice but to order his officers to try to harness it. The dragon, however, takes a liking to Laurence himself; as a result, Laurence must leave the Navy behind and join Britain's disreputable and shadowy Aviator Corps. As troops and dragons amass on the shores of France for a full-scale invasion of the British Isles, Laurence, his dragon Temeraire, and their green crew must train like mad to become a respectable fighting force and help the hopelessly outnumbered British aviators repel the onslaught.
Novik clearly knows what she's doing. She does not allow her dragons to fly at random over naval or land battles while individual riders on their backs engage each other with pistols and cutlasses. Her dragons fly in logical military formations, and they carry not individual riders but entire crews, including riflemen, bombardiers, lookouts, and a few officers. Novik sets up reasonable limitations on draconic flying abilities and forces her dragons to maneuver within those limits. To make the battles more harrowing, she also weakens her dragons considerably: rather than having virtually impervious scales, they have relatively soft flesh vulnerable to teeth, claws, and bullets. Most of the dragons have no natural projectile weapons; acid-spitting and fire-breathing are rarities, and dragons with such abilities occupy tactically vital positions.
Novik has given a good deal of thought to dragon anatomy, as evidenced by the amusing excerpts from Sir Edward Howe's Observations on the Order Draconia in Europe, with Notes on the Oriental Breeds, which appears in the novel's appendix. The dragons come in a great variety of breeds, each with different abilities, and different names such as Winchester, Yellow Reaper, Grey Widowmaker, and Flamme-de-Gloire, probably inspired somewhat by the color-coded dragons of Dungeons & Dragons.
Although the novel contains three good action sequences, its real focus is on the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire. This is one of those weirdly beautiful friendships of the sort fantasy seems especially suited to invoking. Like many similar relationships, it has elements suggestive of romance: Laurence calls Temeraire "my dear" and occasionally buys him jewelry, they often pet each other and frequently sleep together, and Temeraire gets jealous when Laurence looks at other dragons. Simultaneously corny and strangely moving, their relationship really can, if you'll pardon the cliché, make the reader laugh and cry. Other fantasists sometimes commit the error of trying to depict such relationships by giving the characters a psychic connection or some kind of mystical bond, which I have always found to be a mere distraction. Novik apparently realizes that such things do not make for real friendship: though Laurence putting Temeraire in harness smacks of a magical rite, they have no mysterious union; they are not psychic, but speak to each other in English, and Novik makes clear that they could, if they wished, leave each other. Their relationship is beautiful and believable partly because it is uncluttered with unnecessary fantasy conceits.
But this relationship works largely because of Temeraire himself. Although the narrative follows Laurence and he is a grand character in his own right, Temeraire is one of those rare figures who seems to reach out of the page and shake the reader by the hand, so that you might feel, if you read this book, that you have actually met the dragon. This is not a compliment I pay lightly: C. S. Lewis once suggested that the number of such characters in all of literature was only three, namely Socrates from Plato's Dialogues
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," Jesus tells us in Matthew 18.3. This statement has been variously interpreted as different readers have tried to figure out exactly what aspect of children it is that Christ wants us to imitate. Kate Elderkin in a 1930 article on jointed dolls, which appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology (34.4:472-475), suggests without much conviction that a jointed doll in a Christian tomb in Rome may represent a literal attempt to fulfill Christ's command to child-likeness. A view which, I am told, prevailed after the Enlightenment was that children are trusting and do not question. Another view, probably more modern, holds that children were marginal members of first century society, so Christ is commanding his followers to show solidarity with the least of these.
Another view, which seems to be perennially popular whether or not it is correct, is that children have a sense of wonder. To the child, the world is always fresh and new and there is always something exciting to learn. Such a child can revel in God's creation and therefore revel in the Creator. Whether or not this is exactly what Christ meant, I think few Christians would deny that perennial wonder is a healthy outlook. In his fine volume, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
Though religion is utterly absent from the novel (the Church of England is mentioned only when we learn that Laurence's father wished his son had been a clergyman rather than a military officer), the book manages to get across a few good lessons. In particular, Laurence has some difficulty teaching Temeraire the concept of duty. The dragon wishes merely for an interesting and exciting life; the ideas of standing for a cause or fighting for king and country are alien to him: he is in the war not because he loves England but because he loves to fight. Early in their relationship, Laurence jokingly asks him, "Shall I turn pirate king and go raiding in the West Indies, and fill a covert with gold from Spanish merchant ships for you?" Temeraire replies seriously, "That sounds exciting" (p. 94). However, at the end of the novel, when all is lost and they are facing down an impossibly huge horde of French dragons, Temeraire makes this statement: "And we must still try, or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us...I think this is what you have meant by duty all along; I do understand, at least this much of it" (p. 329). The point is well and simply made.
This is not to say the book is flawless. Novik's prose is frequently awkward (imagine my misuse of commas and semicolons stretched out over a whole novel), and though her characters are all interesting and well constructed, they are so numerous and have so little physical description that I was often lost in a sea of names. The Aviator Corps, aloof from the rest of society, has some peculiar attributes reminiscent of Plato's Republic
I leave you now with one of my favorite passages, which, admittedly silly in isolation, is in context one of the most moving in the novel:
Laurence needed little encouragement; moments later he was striding to the field. As he drew near, he could make out Temeraire's bulk by the light of the half-moon: the dragon was curled in small upon himself and nearly motionless, only stroking his gold chain between his foreclaws. "Temeraire," he called, coming through the gate, and the proud head lifted at once.
"Laurence?" he said; the uncertainty in his voice was painful to hear.
"Yes, I am here," Laurence said, crossing swiftly to him, almost running at the end. Making a soft crooning noise deep in his throat, Temeraire curled both forelegs and wings around him and nuzzled him carefully; Laurence stroked the sleek nose.
"He said you did not like dragons, and that you wanted to be back on your ship," Temeraire said, very low. "He said you only flew with me out of duty."
...
Laurence leaned forward and laid his cheek against the soft, warm hide. "I am so very sorry," he said. "they persuaded me it was in your best interests to stay away and let him try; but I should have seen what kind of a fellow he was."
...
"If you would like to have your ship back," Temeraire said, "I will let someone else ride me. Not him, because he says things that are not true; but I will not make you stay."
Laurence stood motionless for a moment, his hands still on Temeraire's head, with the dragon's warm breath curling around him. "No, my dear," he said at last, softly, knowing it was only the truth. "I would rather have you than any ship in the Navy."
:http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/12/04/judas-scholars.html
Interesting news regarding the famed Gospel of Judas. At least one scholar has suggested the reconstruction and translation of the text is incorrect, and that the gospel depicts Judas as a dupe rather than a hero. This should be seen as a normal part of scholarly debate; in spite of the sensationalism, courtesy of National Geographic, some actual scholarship is involved.
What interests me more is the grossly irresponsible way this article is written (no, not the one you're reading--the CBC one linked above).
Whoever wrote this little article seems to be working on the assumption that the Gospel of Judas carries some kind of special historical weight, as if this document, by virtue of being sensational and by virtue of having been discovered recently, must contain gospel truth. Pardon the expression.
This leads me to speculate that, in many people's imaginations, the strange, especially in regards to the subject of Christianity, is assumed true with little or no critical evaluation. Witness the popularity not only of Dan Brown's novels, but of Dan Brown's ideas. Because Brown proposed strange and on rare occasion unique notions, many are willing to accept them as true history in spite of legions of experts who contradict him.
The contents of the Gospel of Judas have no compelling claim to historical veracity, though the text itself is of course historically important. To show how sf often successfully predicts real events, I refer the reader to George R. R. Martin's "The Way of Cross and Dragon," a short story remarkable mainly for its clumsy storytelling, though that didn't stop Donald A. Wollheim from reprinting it in The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, probably more because he liked its message than its artistic qualities. In the introduction to that same volume, Wollheim reveals himself to be a remarkably ignorant bigot, regarding people outside the pale of Western civilization as backwards and savage, living meaningless lives because they lack the creature comforts of modern technology. He hints that his bigotry extends even to those within Western civilization if they hold to religious creeds.
At any rate, Martin's space opera centers around a heresy-hunter sent to eliminate a new heresy that reveres Judas Iscariot as a saint. As a premise for a made-up heresy, Martin's idea is obvious and not particularly shocking, but he manages to spice it up. In this version, Judas is king of Babylon, master of dragons, and Jesus' greatest servant. After Jesus gets his legs chewed off (a nice, morbid embellishment), Judas carries him around. There's no traditional betrayal here, though Judas eventually falls out of Christ's favor by sending his dragons on a rampage after the crucifixion. When Jesus rises from the dead, he punishes Judas by making him into the famous Wandering Jew of folklore.
The narrator of Martin's tale hands a copy of this legend to a nonbeliever for comment, who replies that it's entertaining , unique, more interesting than the Bible (Martin clearly thinks highly of himself), and for that reason, apparently, more compelling than Christianity. Here we see, buried in Martin's short story, the same concept--that which pertains to Christianity, if it is novel, and especially if it contains conspiracy theory, is more acceptable to our exotic tastes than anything traditional. Of course, Martin is no more a believer in the Way of Cross and Dragon than is his narrator. The moral of his story, with which he gleefully bludgeons the reader, is that all religions, or at least Christianity (the only religion discussed) are false because their details are too hokey for Martin's tastes. That is, you might as well believe Judas was a dragonmaster as believe Jesus was the Son of God.
This isn't exactly brilliant reasoning. When is a detail in a narrative hokey? When it contradicts Martin's worldview, apparently. It's easy enough to point out absurdities in Martin's own story, if we all get to define our own absurdities. There are some indications that he wrote about Catholicism without researching it, and how about the psychic mutant who shows up for no reason? The philosophical sketchiness, thin plot, klutzy writing, didacticism, and occasional pure venom didn't prevent Martin from picking up a Hugo Award.
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universe are all over the place and not really coherent. Has good emotional moments, excellent action, and interesting "cinematography." Flops from humor to drama rapidly but effectively, though occasionally mixes in decidedly misplaced crudities.
