Marie Brennan: The Voyage of the Basilisk
Jun. 13th, 2018 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaVoyage of the Basilisk is the third novel in Marie Brennan’s delightful series concerning the adventures of Isabella Camhurst, Lady Trent, scholar, naturalist, explorer, and student in particular of the fascinating subject of dragons. Lady Trent’s adventures take place within a secondary world that is inspired, in some very obvious ways, by nineteenth century England and Europe, and shares in both the sexist and colonial prejudices of that time, prejudices to which Lady Trent herself is a prime source of resistance.
As the novel opens, Isabella is about to embark on an extended sea voyage on the RSS Basilisk, captained by Dione Aekinitos. Her goal is to study dragons and related species in their native habitats all around the world. Travelling with her are her assistant Tom Wilkins, her young son Jacob, and Jacob’s governess, Abby Carew.
Lady Trent’s voyages take her into the Arctic, where she and Tom necropsy a sea serpent killed by the crew of the Basilisk, attempting to determine if the arctic sea serpents are of a different species than those found in tropical climates. She observes wyverns in the mountains of northern Lezhnema. And across the ocean, in Otholé, she studies the quetzalcoatl, the feathered dragons native to that continent. And in Yelang, she swims with the dragon turtles and ventures into the interior to seek out the tê lêng dragons, one of many draconic and related species known to inhabit that part of the world. In the Broken Sea, she examines komodo dragons and fire lizards.
As she recounts the events of her voyage, through to its truly magnificent and unexpected climax in a sea battle in the Broken Sea, Lady Trent often makes side comments about what the reactions to her exploits have been, often dwelling on the impropriety of many aspects of her adventures. As a woman, unmarried and often unchaperoned (the governess Abby not being the extremely adventurous type, and some of her expeditions being unsafe for her son), Lady Trent faces a great deal of rumour and scandal. Her associate Tom is assumed to be her lover, as is almost every other man she mentions in her dispatches home to the news organisation that has partly funded her world voyage. Perhaps the most scandalous alleged liaison is her growing friendship with an archaeologist she meets in Otholé, who is studying the ruins left behind by the ancient people known as the Draconiand. Suhail is Akhian, this world’s parallel to the Middle East and Muslim cultures, the speculation among those reading her dispatches - which do not quite conceal her appreciation of Suhail’s intelligence and charm - is intense.
The charm of the Lady Trent novels is their close resemblance to the journals of the extraordinary women of our own world, the Hester Stanhopes and Gertrude Bells who explored parts of the world deemed ‘exotic’ by European standards, some if them, like the imaginary Lady Trent, scientists in search of new truths, others simply wanderers with a desire to encounter different cultures - though more often than not, doing so from the perspective of presumed European superiority.
The other aspect of the Lady Trent novels that attracts me - beyond the whole ‘woman who engages in wonderfully transgressive activities like the pursuit of knowledge and a life of adventure and discovery’ thing - is the way that Brennan depicts the way that science was conducted when in its early years. The feeling of the world as an open book with so little known, and the hands-on researches that established the foundations of methods of research and deduction, hypothesis and testing, refinement and correction of earlier theories as more facts are observed. It’s a perfectly imagined look at how the pioneers of intellectual discovery did science.
As the novel opens, Isabella is about to embark on an extended sea voyage on the RSS Basilisk, captained by Dione Aekinitos. Her goal is to study dragons and related species in their native habitats all around the world. Travelling with her are her assistant Tom Wilkins, her young son Jacob, and Jacob’s governess, Abby Carew.
Lady Trent’s voyages take her into the Arctic, where she and Tom necropsy a sea serpent killed by the crew of the Basilisk, attempting to determine if the arctic sea serpents are of a different species than those found in tropical climates. She observes wyverns in the mountains of northern Lezhnema. And across the ocean, in Otholé, she studies the quetzalcoatl, the feathered dragons native to that continent. And in Yelang, she swims with the dragon turtles and ventures into the interior to seek out the tê lêng dragons, one of many draconic and related species known to inhabit that part of the world. In the Broken Sea, she examines komodo dragons and fire lizards.
As she recounts the events of her voyage, through to its truly magnificent and unexpected climax in a sea battle in the Broken Sea, Lady Trent often makes side comments about what the reactions to her exploits have been, often dwelling on the impropriety of many aspects of her adventures. As a woman, unmarried and often unchaperoned (the governess Abby not being the extremely adventurous type, and some of her expeditions being unsafe for her son), Lady Trent faces a great deal of rumour and scandal. Her associate Tom is assumed to be her lover, as is almost every other man she mentions in her dispatches home to the news organisation that has partly funded her world voyage. Perhaps the most scandalous alleged liaison is her growing friendship with an archaeologist she meets in Otholé, who is studying the ruins left behind by the ancient people known as the Draconiand. Suhail is Akhian, this world’s parallel to the Middle East and Muslim cultures, the speculation among those reading her dispatches - which do not quite conceal her appreciation of Suhail’s intelligence and charm - is intense.
The charm of the Lady Trent novels is their close resemblance to the journals of the extraordinary women of our own world, the Hester Stanhopes and Gertrude Bells who explored parts of the world deemed ‘exotic’ by European standards, some if them, like the imaginary Lady Trent, scientists in search of new truths, others simply wanderers with a desire to encounter different cultures - though more often than not, doing so from the perspective of presumed European superiority.
The other aspect of the Lady Trent novels that attracts me - beyond the whole ‘woman who engages in wonderfully transgressive activities like the pursuit of knowledge and a life of adventure and discovery’ thing - is the way that Brennan depicts the way that science was conducted when in its early years. The feeling of the world as an open book with so little known, and the hands-on researches that established the foundations of methods of research and deduction, hypothesis and testing, refinement and correction of earlier theories as more facts are observed. It’s a perfectly imagined look at how the pioneers of intellectual discovery did science.