"His Majesty’s Dragon" by Naomi Novik

“His Majesty’s Dragon” is about the adventures of Captain Will Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire. Laurence is a ship captain who fought in a battle to win the Channel for the English. After taking over a French ship they found a crate below deck that contained a rather large black egg. The ship’s doctor examined it and said it was a rare dragon egg that could hatch any day now. So they set the egg on a velvet cushion to be watched. Immediately Laurence says that he should watch it alone since it was his responsibility as captain. After only a few days the egg cracked and wobbled itself off the cushion onto the deck. When a black snout appeared in the tiny air hole poked open by the dragon within the egg they knew that they would have a lot more to worry about than just making it back to port. None of them knew what a dragon ate, how it acted, or what it would think of them when it saw them.

The dragon was the size of a large dog, almost entirely black except for a light colored weaving through some parts of his wings, also it was like no dragon they had ever seen fly through the skies above them . At first the dragon didn’t even pay attention to them, he just wandered the deck exploring. They were sure that it wasn’t a tame dragon. Then when no one thought it could happen, the dragon asked them why they looked so glum. So that is when Laurence decides to be the one in charge of the dragon and told his first mate Riley to captain the ship. The dragon required a name and so Laurence said Temeraire because of the nobility of the first Temeraire. Laurence thought of this name because the first Temeraire was a brave seaman who he admired. Temeraire says he likes the name and will keep it. In the following days Temeraire ate up a lot of the ships supplies and it looked like every time he ate he got bigger. Then there was the faithful day that the ship finally reached a port. Upon reaching port Laurence and Temeraire met with a dragon specialist who managed to find out what type of dragon he was. Temeraire was a Chinese Imperial which is the strongest Chinese dragon other than the Celestial. Following that, the pair met several more dragon captains and was forced to join the Air Corps. This is only the beginning of their many adventures such as their fight to win the Channel and destroy the French already invading England.

I thought the book was absolutely excellent. The book mostly follows what you would expect when you pick up a book with a dragon as a character. There are plenty of adventures and several characters to make the book interesting. The author doesn’t make the characters talk out of character at all which makes it easier to understand the story. I enjoyed the fact that it introduced a dragon that wasn’t like the rest since he is the only Chinese dragon that they own. I also enjoy the fact that the author was able to use a historical setting while keeping the book fantasy. It’s very interesting to see how the battles would go if they had dragons to help with the war. The only thing that might have made it more believable would be if the characters talked more like they would during the 1700s and1800s.Overall I would read the book several times more.

If you enjoyed “Eragon” and “Eldest,” you would also enjoy this book. The other books in the series are “Throne of Jade,” “Black Powder War,” “Empire of Ivory,” and “Victory of the Eagles.”

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"Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure" by Dave Gorman

Dave Gorman is somewhat weird. Not weird in any bad way but he seems to take trips that most people wouldn’t want to do. For example, he looked up all the other Dave Gormans around Europe. Then he sets himself up to write a book for a company yet can’t think of anything to write. That’s when he gets an email from someone in Australia, who says his website is a googlewhack. A googlewhack is when you search Google using two real words and get back one hit. You’re not allowed to put it in between inverted commas because it counts as cheating. Third, it cannot be a word list of any kind or a thesaurus, dictionary, or encyclopedia page. It appeared that his website was the only one with Francophile Namesakes on one of its pages. That’s when he decides to look for googlewhacks himself. He finds one, and talks to the owner of the site for awhile. On one of his trips he visits another Dave Gorman who is a friend of his. As he talks about googlewhacks to the other Dave—or as he preferred, David—the other has an idea. He bet that Dave couldn’t get a chain of 10 googlewhacks in a row. Dave had already 2 since his first googlewhack found the David’s googlewhack site. So that Dave had to find 2 googlewhacks. If one failed the other would probably work. Dave had until his 32nd Birthday to get 10 googlewhacks in a row. But how close to his deadline will Dave Gorman be?

I thought the book was good. It was very life-like without a lot of weird things that you couldn’t believe in. Dave is weird in the way he does some activities, but is not freaky weird. Also, there are no conversations that are unbelievable. I thought it was nice that all the people in the book had interesting personalities. Also a nice touch that he added was pictures of some of the people that had googlewhack sites or people at the book company. Also it there are a couple of funny parts in the book. Such as one of the people with a googlewhack on their site not understanding what a googlewhack was. This is amazing because he is an educated doctor that should understand something as simple as what a googlewhack is. There are sometimes when the things Dave does are things you simply wouldn’t expect, especially after he’s been drinking. For example: He wakes up with a tattoo of a driver’s license on his arm. Also he wakes up in an airport with a ticket to Washington without remembering a lot about how he got there.

The book is fun and enjoyable for anyone who can understand what the characters are saying. If you like this book you might also like “Word Freak” by Stefan Fatsis.

>> Buy “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure” by Dave Gorman