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Temeraire Discussion starter 5) Is it a fantasy book?
It is often described as a fantasy book rather than, for example, alternate history. Is this fair? After all, there's no magical structure within the book at all, and the dragons are presented as a normal species within the natural world. What makes a book fantasy?
@Apocryphal came across a comparison of the Temeraire series with Babel - maybe he could amplify this comparison a little - is there any way that the two can sensibly be compared?
Comments
The only comparison I came across was a single sentence from a reader saying this book was better historical fiction than Babel. I’m not sure I agree. I think I expected more from Babel and it fell somewhat short, but overall I admired what Babel tried to achieve more than I admired what this novel was trying to do. I think the concept behind this novel is pretty twee - though to its credit it remained rather playful and did not attempt to take itself too seriously. Babel took itself quite seriously. In general, I prefer serious novels.
Genre labels are flexible things with porous boundaries, so I'm not bothered by confusion with attempts to categorise this book. It's a book, it's nerd-troped Napoleonic naval, it'll attract people who like dragons in their stories. Someone along the line got this into publication for purely commercial reasons.
Despite my cynicism, it's a decent enough book that I enjoyed.