Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent memoirs may have been for young adults. Really. I’m not sure.
But I really liked them! They featured a really strong minded female character. AND DRAGONS. I would have been just like her, if I lived in her universe. There were five Lady Trent memoirs. In order, they were:
A Natural History of Dragons
The Tropic of Serpents
Voyage of the Basilisk
In the Labyrinth of Drakes
Within the Sanctuary of Wings
Isabella is a tomboy with four brothers, growing up in would-be Victorian England. Her version is Scirland. The world in the book is very much like our world in the 19th century, except there are dragon in distant parts of it, with much about them unknown. They’re in very remote regions and are very dangerous, making them very difficult to study.
Isabella’s parents – her mother in particular – want her to be a proper lady (meaning definitely no studying dragons) and want her to marry, and she does. She eventually marries Jacob, a gentleman, who is like minded about scientific research and who she manipulates into going on a dragon expedition financed by a famous scientific wealthy backer. After she cracks, breaking down in tears and explaining to him that she really wants to go because basically all she’s cared about since she was a kid was learning about dragons, Jacob takes her with him and convinces their backer to let her come to be a sketch artist and secretary for the trip.
Jacob is probably my favorite character in the first novel. He is kind, and understanding, and treats Isabella as an equal. He is quite hurt when he thinks Isabella doesn’t love him, but she does, she’s just super bad with her feelings.
The stories are of Isabella’s expeditions in the wild to study dragons – her obsession since she was a kid. I love her relationship with Tom, at first an antagonist, then her partner and best friend. Like Isabella, Tom also has trouble being accepted into the high society scientific community. Isabella is of high birth but is a woman, and Tom is a man but of a lower class. They make a great team in the later novels.
She is finally accepted by the scientific community, rather grudgingly, but accepted all the same.
I really enjoyed these books. The world building was good. It’s true they were a bit predictable but overall I didn’t mind this because 1. they weren’t mysteries, 2. Isabella was a really wonderful character, and 3. THERE WERE DRAGONS.
Like Isabella, I am also obsessed with dragons. I liked these books a lot. They will not be for everyone, but I enjoyed them immensely.
words in scarlet ink 