The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
2014 - Tor ebook - 331 pages
Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Isabella Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swamp-wyrms of the tropics. The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell . . . where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.
Damn expectations! You read a book as surprising and joyful as Marie Brennan's first 'Memoir by Lady Trent', A Natural History of Dragons, and you go into the sequel with those expectations suddenly sky high. Damn them!
This book picks up a year or two after the first. The pressures of motherhood and society have tied Isabella down to the point where she has become reclusive ('Being a recluse,' she observes, 'is not good for one's conversational agility'), but here she is planning an expedition under the patronage of Lord Hilford and in the company of Thomas Wilker, to the Tropic of Serpents, to the country of Bayembe, a country embattled on each of its landlocked borders and with the jungles of Mouleen to the south.
Naturally, this journey is frowned upon by nearly all around her, due to the highly dangerous area to which she is to travel, and because Lord Hilford cannot lead the expedition for health readons, and especially as it will mean leaving her young child, Jacob, behind. 'But at that point in time,' Isabella says, 'little Jacob made less sense to me than a dragon'. Motherhood does not come naturally to her, and the calling of her true love - the study of dragons - is too much for her to bear.
So off she goes - with Mr Wilker and Lord Hilford's runaway granddaughter, Natalie, in tow - to the forbidding heat and savannahs of Bayembe, where the people are reliant on Scirling investment for its vast iron deposits (which are also the reason for the threatening forces on either side). But here she will find dragons on the plains and, to the south, the lure of the enigmatic and fearsome swamp wyrms - if only she can be brave enough to venture into the Green Hell of Mouleen.
So yeah, expectations be damned. Whilst this book might not have the vibrant pacing of the first book, and whilst it might lack the central mystery and one or two of the characters that made the first come alive, it has other aspects that made it, for me, equally compelling. For one, there is the atmosphere. I could almost feel the sweat dripping as Isabella inevitably ventured into the tropics. I feared along with her as she encountered fauna that might bite or suck or bleed the life out of her, the spiders that might lay eggs beneath her skin, with all the resulting unpleasantness that could ensue. I felt her frustration with the cultural and linguistic differences that forced her down avenues she might not otherwise have chosen. Whilst the pressures put on women pre-suffrage are once again a very strong thread within the story, it is the cultural differences that play a stronger role here.
The narrative voice is, again, rock solid and full of charm and wit. Yes, there are a couple of occasions where those Americanisms creep through again (sorry, but no-one would say they'd 'gotten turned around' in Victorian times, and one use of the dreaded 'obligated' instead of 'obliged' drove me to distraction for several minutes ) and to me that's a sign of lazy writing or lazy editing, one or t'other, but it is less apparent than in the first book, for which I am grateful. There are many laugh out loud moments, some brilliant new characters among the Moulish, and some fabulously exciting set pieces, all told perfectly in the memoir style, with countless tongue in cheek asides to the reader.
In a lot of ways, the style reminds me of M.R.C. Kasasian's 'Gower Street Detective' novels, only this is much more cohesive, engaging, and somehow more believable. Brennan's next biggest trick - after using her story to address many issues past and present - is to make dragons into a species of animal as exciting, scary and real as any you might find in a David Attenborough documentary. And, much like the shark in Jaws, the rarity of their appearances makes those moments all the more thrilling and frightening.
I found The Tropic of Serpents to be another absolute joy.
