beccaelizabeth | (Reply)

From:

So far the answer seems to be
because dragons are really impressionable at birth
form a bond with one particular human
and can then be talked into anything
if their human says so.

like, by book two, they've shown that other cultures think it's flat out abusive to bond before the dragon is fifteen months old

and in book one the relationship with dragons gets compared to keeping a mistress happy, or ideally a wife

but an abused dragon will happily starve
because their human says to

so

the basic answer is
abuse.

like, there's also a lot about bringing ten or twelve year olds to war, because napoleonic era

and some about women's rights, or lack thereof, especially as regards capital

and also a bunch about the slave trade
and makes that comparison explicit

so it's taking that soul bonding with a dragon thing and going
hang on
isn't this a bit creepy

and then trying to fix it by having a dragon campaign for dragons rights.

so yeah, crewed dragons with bombs and rifles, explicit comparison to age of sail ships, awesome sky battles to try and turn the course of the napoleonic wars
really cool

but the actual point is why are they killing each other
this is several kinds of abusive
and once the characters realise that, doing something about it.

though my reread is on book two so they've just resolved to do something, i can't remember how far they get, and i don't own the whole series yet anyway.

it has bits about colonialism and all the sorts of structural inequalities and the dragons are somewhere between a defamiliarisation technique to give a new lens on old oppressions and a... I think of it as science fiction approach, where okay you've got these new elements, but how would that work? soft sf napoleonic au dragons...

... I like that approach rather a lot
it's just whenever I'm not reading fanfic I miss the emotional payoffs
and then feel daft when I notice I'm complaining about lack of chocolate in a roast dinner.