Raven Herr asks:  Is the implication that the the manner in which England (and other countrie) treated their newly hatched dragons the reason they went "feral?" If this is the case (and a dragon is born with the ability to speak as well as more than reasonable thinking skills (even if it is learning)- what exactly IS a feral dragon?

Western society in the books defines a feral dragon as any dragon out of harness that does not have a human handler, and any such dragon is viewed as inherently dangerous and uncontrolled, an object of fear to be kept penned up for human safety. But the accuracy of this view is of course highly suspect, and it does not address the distinctions among feral dragons. This is a central issue in the books, which I will be exploring further.

More specifically, the hatching of dragons in China is managed by other dragons rather than by people -- which of course means that there is no particular need to restrain a newly hatched dragon, as humans attempt to do in the Western practice of harnessing, which fights against the hatchling's natural instinct to go flying off in search of the vast quantities of food that a baby dragon requires.

As a note, more questions and comments are welcome and can be posted either to the original chat thread or to any of my replies.  

Posted by Naomi Novik at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Paulo Vicente asks: are the Incas independent in this world?

Yes, although I reserve details to be revealed in future works. Speaking generally, I have posited that the difficulty involved in transporting dragons across the ocean (or even vast land distances, as seen in Black Powder War) would have thwarted many colonization efforts to a greater or lesser extent depending on the native population's air power. This gives me the opportunity to make life a good deal more interestingly difficult for my characters by putting more players on the world stage, and to explore more what-if scenarios abroad while starting the reader off in a comfortably historically accurate situation in Western Europe.

Paulo is joined by Jim Weaver in asking about the release of a timeline.

I have a timeline for my own use and very likely will eventually release it, but I am not yet ready to give up the freedom to tweak it behind-the-scenes as the series continues. Continuity is important to me, so I am chary of making details canonical unnecessarily, as those then become additional constraints on what I can do in future.

Posted by Naomi Novik at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew passed on a question from the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup about the use of dreadnought in His Majesty's Dragon: this is not actually hinting at any historical change; HMS Temeraire, the ship Laurence names Temeraire after, was a member of the Dreadnought/Neptune class of ships (of which the contemporary HMS Dreadnought, predecessor of the more famous WWI-era ship, was also a member). I used this excuse to cheat and use the term a bit anachronistically here because the more historically accurate description, "second-rate," reads so completely wrong to a modern reader -- I of course did not want to convey the idea that Laurence was naming his dragon after some sort of inferior ship!

One of the best online references about ships, Houghton-Mifflin's Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia, is no longer freely accessible, I'm sorry to say, but you can still take a peek at the entry for HMS Temeraire at the Wayback Machine.

Posted by Naomi Novik at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello, all! The lovely people of SFBC have invited me to do a chat here on the blog, so for the next couple of weeks, I'll be taking questions and entertaining discussion about the Temeraire series, the first three volumes of which are now available from the SFBC in a beautiful omnibus edition titled Temeraire: In The Service Of The King.

If you're curious about the books but haven't read them, you can find excerpts from all three books as well as a newly-released short story on my official website at http://www.temeraire.org/, along with links to my livejournal and mailing list.

Please feel free to submit your questions and thoughts right in the comments. I'll be coming by and answering them regularly from now through June 16th.

Posted by Naomi Novik at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)

Naomi Novik, the author of Temeraire: In the Service of the King, will be answering questions and chatting with readers in this very blog from June 7th through the 21st.

So start thinking of questions, and post any ideas as comments on this post. All the posts for the chat will be categorized as "Author Chat" for your convenience. (But you probably already figured that out, since you're all smart SFF readers.) And please do come back from the 7th through the 21st to help make her welcome in the SFBC, and ask more questions.

Posted by Andy Wheeler at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)