The Tropic of Serpents

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

With A Natural History of Dinosaurs we visited an alternate reality where Lady Trent is an aspiring naturalist in a world where naturalists in general, and women naturalists in particular are presented with numerous obstacles to overcome, not the least including what they are studying: dinosaurs. This made for a lot of fun in the first book, but went a little awry in the second. In the first novel, Brennan brought out the fact that while naturalists have to travel to study their subjects and along the way must deal with the people who live in that area--the differences with language, culture, religion. It is no different with this trip, although a war complicates things further. However there is far too little dragon, and far too much politics in this one. Because it is a different reality, lands, governments, even the days of the weeks are different, and Brennan does not make it easier on the reader with impossible names. Like most trilogies this middle novel suffers typical middle novel syndrome: let down from the introduction of the first, while setting events up for the last leads to not much happening in the second.

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