The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

by Marie Brennan

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It’s always a sad feeling when I’m going through quite a bit in life and reeling from a couple of bad reads, and it ends up affecting my future/current reads.

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The story of these memoirs being told by Lady Trent or Isabella Camherst are basically a series of adventures set in a decade of her life. This book was in the second/beginning of the third one if I’m not mistaken and about a couple of years after book 1, A Natural History of Dragons, ended. One of the things that I absolutely loved about this is how the dragons are treated in it, there’s something very fascinating about approaching these dangerous beasts as “exotic creatures” rather than “magical slay-worthy creatures” which is something I mentioned in my thoughts of book 1, and fell in love with all over again in this book. Even better yet, the species of dragons we encounter in this book is basically a follow up to something we’ve seen before, but haven’t gotten a closer look at just yet. It’s very interesting to see the habitats, eating habits, breeding rituals, female vs male properties and purposes and I definitely can’t wait to see more!

One other thing to enjoy in this book, is Isabella herself. There’s something so identifiable with her for me, it hurts me deeply when I read it for reasons I’m still not strong enough to share, but nonetheless I find reading about her point of views and antics somewhat liberating for me. There is a certain amount of change to her as well in this book, reading book 1 gives off the impression that she’s a haughty posh high class women who doesn’t know any better, but in this book, you can easily see that a change did happen. Of course, it’s not completely drastic, which I appreciated, but it’s definitely there. She’s not the only one to enjoy though, the book brings back old faces and introduced new ones who are usually taken with her flow. Isabella has this very deep thirst for knowledge and while she does in fact keep herself in check most of the time, she always ends up in seriously sticky situations, and the companions suffer with her.

This to me was both funny and amusing, I mean while she’s telling the story she KNOWS that her hopes of an easy and issue free expedition is never going to be realized in the way she hopes and this gives a sarcastic tilt to most of what she’s talking about which is once again amusing to hear. The story is not completely different than what she had to go through in Vystrana, but given the different location, we are treated to a new culture, customs, legends and rituals that follow the people living there and is once again related to the dragons. Given that Eriga is somewhat loosely based on tribal African countries, it’s very interesting to see how Marie Brennan will be spinning her story around it.

That being said, this aspect also shows the only flaw I can find in this series so far; the locations are not so clearly distinct until you actually visit them. The world is not so high fantasy that you can’t draw the picture yourself, it’s quite the opposite. It’s really just an alternate reality of a 16th to 18th century world where dragons are now part of the equation, with some new rock types and materials related to said dragons. For example, Eriga is a tribal African country, Vystrana is either Tibet or somewhere similar to it, Scirling where Isabella is from is England and Thiessois is France.... this is not so easy to distinguish until I either visit the country or meet people from it. The book is not going to wait until I’m spoon fed all of this information, but proceeds onwards with or without my knowledge being intact. Now that I’m more familiar with the world it might not be an issue later on, but I do wish that a glossary at least was provided so I can use it as a reference when some new terminology comes up.

Other than that tiny issue, I still think this was a wonderful flow up to the book with how it handled gender roles and politics again, while giving a view of racial biases or issues and more importantly presenting a world that is so refreshing to read about without having to resort to petty romances to make it “dramatic.” I’m actually surprised Marie Brennan is sticking to that format of storytelling, but I’ll be damned if I said that I’m not grateful for this breath of fresh air.

Final rating: 4.5/5