wellinghall | Temeraire; or, Napoleonic-era naval ranks and weapons

Warning: may contain spoilers (but probably only small ones)

My thoughts on these subjects, in slightly more detail; but I'm writing from memory here, and I'll need to check the book to confirm some of this.

On rank, Naomi Novik seems to have made two mistakes. The first is having no rank between Lieutenant and post-Captain. Now, I do not think that the modern naval rank structure (with, I think, Lieutenant-Commander and Commander) necessarily applied two hundred years ago. However, I did think that not every (ship) captain necessarily had the exalted rank of (post) captain.

On weapons, she has her dragon-borne "men at arms" armed with rifles. Rifles were *very* new in those days, and I wonder if such new technology would have been adopted by the air force so quickly. Secondly, rifles then were very slow to load and fire; even if some were armed with rifles, it would make sense to also have some armed with the quicker, if less accurate, muskets.

Of course, there's nothing to say that her fictional world is just like the Real World, with added dragons; but these points do have the feel fo mistakes, rather than deliberate changes.

Comments from those better-versed in such matters would be welcome!

And while talking about the book - the blurb is so horrible as to make us suspect that it was written from an earlier draft of the book.