Review:: The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan

Title: The Tropic of Serpents

Author: Marie Brennan

Series: The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Previously:
A Natural History of Dragons

I needed a palate-cleanser after The Forever War, and the delight Marie Brennan gave me last time seemed like just the antidote I needed. I was right.

I had some different issues with this book than I had with the previous, partially due to the fact that I just took an African history course and I had some wibbles about how that was treated in this book. On the other hand, I feel like the fact that she's a woman and a naturalist was taken far more seriously in this book, especially with regards to her relationship with her son.

I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this fictionalized Africa, so I'm just going to state that at times it definitely made me feel awkward, especially taking things piecemeal.

But besides that, the book was a delight. It felt like a lot of lanterns had to be hung, however, for the narrator to not seem like a complete Mary Sue, which was also a bit awkward. But it was a lovely romp, and had some good serious bits in it and the naturalism of dragons again was wonderful.

These books clearly aren't perfect. They have their issues. But for the most part, they're just nice reads. The issues also weren't so blatant to me that I felt like it did more than knock the book's potential a bit down.

On the other hand, we have a white savior plot, and yeah, if you like to avoid those, I'd avoid this book. There's no looking two ways about that.

Usually that's enough to deter me from a book, but in this case, it seemed secondary to the actual nature of what was going on. So read at your own risk, I guess.