Dear Naomi Novik,

[blamebrampton]

I am still hugely enjoying the Temeraire books, but please, for the love of tiny bunnies, hire an actual editor to proofread your novels! The typos! They burn!

(I was doing well at ignoring them until we reached the Nemean region, which is in Ancient Greece, not New South Wales. It was rightly the Nepean earlier. Betas are for fanfic, Naomi. I'm sure you've earned enough to pay for a good editor by now!)

Must dash, plot twist has just occurred and I only have time for another hundred pages before bed.

Much love,

Brammers

Comments

[i-autumnheart.livejournal.com]

I read the first two over the weekend, inspired by your rec the other day. I enjoyed both, but they're not really leaving me with that OMG, must read the next one NOW feeling... do they get better?

The wordbuilding is excellent, and the draconic characters are well done, but so far the plot seems to be mostly an excuse to explore the scenary than an exercise in what-will-happen-next. I'd have liked to see more depth in the characterisation in the China scenes, especially

I wonder if part of it is that it's a YA novel where the coming-of-age story belongs to the non-human partner? Whatever it is, I'm not quite relating.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Number three was the one that really hooked me, the feral dragons are terrific additions and expand the horizons really well. Book four grabbed me with its retelling of sub-Saharan African colonisation, though the pacing was a little shambolic.

Pacing seems to be a real problem: I like most of the characters, human and dragon, but have found the books a little unbalanced. Whether that's because she has written so closely from Laurence or Temeraire's POV, or because she's just not sure of action scenes, I'll have to reread to work out.

I want more worldbuilding! More politics! Where is the Regent? If Britain has only the East India Company to provide its wealth, where have the Lords of the Admiralty all sprung from? But I am content to wait if we get to see Draconic Socialism in the meantime ;-)

[i-autumnheart.livejournal.com]

Grand - I'll keep at them, then. But slowly, because I can forsee my newly-acquired e-book habit (I was given an iPod last week) could get expensive quite fast. But it does save me from needing to add another bookshelf, so that's OK.

More background would be a grand thing - it's such a great premise, but doesn't seem to go quite far enough. I really don't need another fandom, though, so I'll hope for a while longer that Naomi will fill that in on her own :).

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I hope so, too! I realised that the whole reason I wrote any HP (aside from Gillian) was that there were too many loose ends and gaps that I wanted filled. Fingers crossed Novik fills many of them in!