Naomi Novik's dragons do something even more necessary than talking: they fly, of course. This means that, with hostilities, battles, and campaigns going on, even though there are no aeroplanes, the Napoleonic Wars have got aviators, on the backs of the flying dragons. Novik goes into pretty unflinching detail, by the way, describing battle after battle, and imagining how it would have been for Lord Nelson, for instance, if he had not only the Royal Navy out on the water but aviators on dragonback in the air.

Anne McCaffrey, the science fiction author whose dragons in Pern were closely modeled on her beloved horses, was still alive when Novik's first book came out, and she gave Novik her blessing before she died.