His Majesty's Dragon

His Majesty's Dragon is the first novel in the Temeraire series by the American writer Naomi Novik, published in 2006. In Britain the book carries the title Temeraire.

It takes place during an alternate version of the Napoleonic Wars in which dragons are real, intelligent and able to speak, and every European power uses them as a branch of its military. Captain William Laurence of HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and finds an unhatched egg aboard, a prize he has no use for until it begins to hatch. The dragon that emerges is a rare breed, and once he has chosen Laurence there is no question of the captain keeping his ship: a dragon's handler belongs to the Aerial Corps, and the Corps is nothing like the navy.

Most of the book is the business of training, for both of them, as Laurence learns a service whose manners, ranks and habits are foreign to him and Temeraire grows into an animal whose loyalty to Britain still has to be earned rather than assumed. Napoleon's aerial forces are already in the field, and the war does not wait for the two of them to become useful.