Dragons: Friend Or Foe?

Wow, I am so sorry about the gap in posting, I ended up at the station with no access to my computer for several days, and the worst part is we were so busy I didn't even get any extra reading in.  Actually that part was ok 'cause as much as I love reading, I love going on calls even more, especially the ones that come in over a holiday weekend.  Since this is a book blog and not a blood and guts blog I will now commence with the post I have been meaning to put up for the last four days.

Right before I went to the station I finished up a book that has been on my TBR pile forever.  It came with a ton of recommendations and I was very excited to read it.  I promptly bought it, put it on my book shelf and completely forgot about it until the other day when I was frantically cleaning the house for last second guests.  Alas the cleaning never got quit done, but the book was a page turner.  The book was Seraphina by Rachel Hartman.  It was a really good read, not what I was expecting at all in a good way, but more on that later.  First a rambling synopsis. As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Seraphina is set in a the fictional land of Gorred in a medieval type time period.  One of what makes this world so special is the presence of dragons. Up until 40 years ago, dragons and humans were at war.  Dragons would eat humans and humans developed a form of fighting called dracomachia that turned the tied and made it into an even battle. Finally the Queen of Gorred and the Ardmager of the dragons come up with a treaty to ensure peace between the two species.  As with all change, especially when it involves putting hostilities aside, it is not popular with everybody. Both sides have it's detractors and vocal portions of the populations in opposition to the treaty.  Our story opens a couple of weeks before the 40th anniversary of the signing of the treaty.  Our heroine, Seraphina a 15 year old girl and the assistant music director has had to make a last minute adjustment in the funeral program of the crown prince.  Seraphina was forced to put herself on the program and play her flute for the entire crowd.  Now this is normally not a big deal, especially as Seraphina is an extordinarly talented musician, but she has been trying to keep a low profile her entire life. We learn the reason for this is because Seraphina is a dragon/human hybrid, possibly the only one in the world, in fact most people think that it is not possible for a dragon and human to breed. This manifests itself in a band of silvery scales around her forearm and midriff.  She also inherited her musical talent from her dragon mother, along with some pretty freaky maternal memories.  One of the side effects of her dragon half is the relentless inundation of images and sounds from random and bizarre creatures inside her head.  Her Uncle Orma, who is also her teacher, helped her create a garden in her head that she could "place" each creature into.  The garden has an environment suited to each character and Seraphina has to visit it each night to make sure everybody is in their place.  Many of these characters that live in her head have some sort of unusual feature, a wattle, deformed wings, lumpy skin, and some are mostly human looking.  I have to admit I found this whole garden of personalities fascinating and promptly tried to apply it to any number of things :-).  As our heroine goes about her duties as music mistress (she is described by her peers as prickly) we see just how deep seated the prejudiced between the two species are.  We also start to get a glimpse of the complicated religious and political structure.  We learn that dragons take the form of humans when they are in the cities, and unless they have a special dispensation they must wear a bell to identify themselves.  For dragons ard, or order is the most important part of their life.  Being in human form allows them to experience intense emotions which is contradictory to their dragon way of life.  Dragons in human form are kept under strict watch by the Censors and if they display any undue emotion are ordered to have that part of their memories or brain cleansed.  Any extreme feeling such as love, guilt, empathy etc. are forbidden and seen as a disease.  This creates a lot of Vulcan like conversations with the dragons.

Most of the story itself focuses on trying to solve the murder of the crown Prince before the Ardmager comes to celebrate the treaty signing.  Seraphina uses her maternal memories (memories that her mother passed down to her before she died giving birth) and information from her Uncle Orma to piece together what happened.  With the help of the bastard Prince Lucian Riggs, the captain of the guard, and his fiancee the spirited (and one of my favorite characters) crown princess Glissenda, she finds the dragon that is her grandfather is responsible not only for the princes death, but also a plot to try and kill both the royal family and the Ardmager.  Along the way Seraphina starts to meet some of the people/creatures in her garden in real life.  At first she is confused and frightened, but then soon realizes that they are all part dragon as well.  It turns out that each of these creatures has it's own unique talent that can be used to help our intrepid trio in keeping everybody safe.  Unfortunately the dragon conspiracy is uncovered to late and the Queen and her daughter (Glissenda's dragon hating mother) are both killed, leaving Glissenda as the ruling heir. Back in the dragons land a coup has occured and the treaty is nulled. Seraphina and Lucian fall in love with each other, but he decides he can't leave Glissenda on her own and asks Seraphina to let him go, which she does.  Her uncle Orma assists in killing his own father, and goes into hiding to avoid having his brain cleansed of all memories of his niece.  Seraphina goes out to find the rest of the people in her garden to try rally them and their talents to help keep the piece.  The book ends with everybody gearing up for war and a sequel.

As always my summation does not do this book justice. There was a lot of intricacies and interpersonal stuff, a lot of history both personal and world, just all kinds of stuff.  Phew, lets take this one piece at a time shall we? The biggest thing that struck me about this book is how different it was from what I had expected.  From the reviews and blurbs I was expecting a typical, if fresh YA fantasy novel.  This book was not in any way shape or form a typical fantasy novel, in fact I would call it a political novel with dragons.  The main part of this book was setting up the relationship between dragons and humans.  In this book humans are religious, emotional beings, while dragons are brilliant, logical beings.  This sets up a conflict not only between dragons and humans, but between human and human, and dragon and dragon.  Humans have a normal life span of a mediaeval time person, while dragons can be extremely long lived.  This sets up other conflicts, especially when it comes to the treaty.  I found it interesting that the older generation of humans, one that was starting to die out had an understandable hatred/fear of dragons, after all for most of their lives the dragons were trying to eat them.  The younger generation of humans, ones who have lived with the treaty their whole lives were more of a mixed bag, some adapting and utilizing the teachings of the dragons, even befriending, or in some rare, secret occasions even falling in love with a dragon (in human form).  Others either inherited their prejudiced or were induced into it by an extreme faction of the multi saint religion.  The people who follow St. Ogden are notorious for their extreme intolerance of dragon kind and any who associate with them.  Dragons also have a divided population. The older generation is still alive and well, some resenting the loss of the old ways, others rejoicing in the peace between them and humans.  The younger dragons almost all enjoy the freedom of the treaty and try their best to uphold it.  The human political/religious set up is reminiscent, though not exactly like old European style monarchies, with religion and government being inseparable on most accounts and how that influences the way things are done.  I loved, loved, loved Seraphina's brain, the way things in their were almost tangible.  She could "walk" in her garden and maintain it, she would create visual representations of things (such as a file box for her mothers memories) that could be interacted with, so much fodder for a person like me who finds that stuff fascinating, I wanted to spend even more then the ample amount of time the book allowed in her head.  The Seraphina/Prince Lucian love thing was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  Lucian is not my favorite of characters, he is a bit of a black and white type of guy, and Seraphina is an accomplished liar so that obviously caused some issues.  The fact that he is not only engaged to Glissenda, who is great friends with Seraphina, but that the relationship seems to work well, makes it hard to see how the Seraphina/Lucian thing could ever work out well.  I actually kind of liked that she falls for an unavailable man, who is engaged to somebody who is not a horrible wench, but a friend.  I also like that Glissenda and Lucian seem to have a very functional relationship and that he decides to honor it, at least for the moment.  It is a much different love story than I am used to.  The different versions of family and the different ways those relationships play into decision making are pretty thoroughly explored, and the parts were music was prominent made me happy.  The main problem I had with the book was it tended to skip around a bit much, it gave a ton of information without actually telling you anything.  When I started the book I did not know it was intended as a series, so I went reading it as a stand alone, which made the gaps even more frustrating.  Even knowing it is supposed to be a series just makes it feel like the author purposely left stuff out so that she would have something for the next book, which is one of my reading pet peeves.  I felt like I needed a bit more of a complete history of this world to really be able to put all of this great material into context. The ending felt completely rushed and different from the rest of the book, which again irritates me to no end.  The writing style however was superb, very readable without being simple.  I enjoyed the book on the whole, will definitely read the sequel when it comes out, and maybe some of her freshmen writing flaws will be mended by the next book. I will give this book 7 out of 10 houppelande.