I liked it, but not as much as I hoped, considering the setting. But the setting itself was a minor problem, in that it didn't come vividly to life -- which, because the era is very familiar to me, could have been accomplished with a few well-placed words. The language overall wasn't a problem, but it was ... undistinguished. For a book placed in an era where educated people were very well-spoken indeed, that was a little disappointing.
Because I'm somewhat dyslexic, I don't follow descriptions of complicated actions or movements of characters very easily -- particularly not when they occur in three dimensions -- so I tend to zone out in scenes like the air battles. The presence of so many were a minus for me, but considering the premise of the book that's not a criticism, just a reason for me, personally, to lose interest at important moments.
And I know people who love, love, love the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire, but I found Temeraire a little saccharine. I like sweet and sentimental, but for me this character and this relationship had more than a hint of an artificial after-taste, which I don't like.
I actually was not, at any point, reminded of Clarke -- the two books, as Napoleonic era fantasies, could hardly be more unlike. But the borrowings from McCaffery were very obvious. On the plus side, some things that might otherwise have needed explaining (like Culhwch's language question) didn't bother me, because they had become part of my mental furniture long years ago via the Pern books. Of course Temeraire is born speaking Will's language -- dragons just do that on impression.
On the dragon's personalities, I agree with dwndrgn that they all had different personalities, and I liked that. It would have been easy to make them carbon copies of each other and explain that away by saying those are the qualities that make them dragonish. But I don't know if I would say they all had different animal personalities; they reminded me more of different sorts of human children at different stages of maturity.
So I enjoyed it, but not enough to buy the other books, even though I've passed them a dozen times during trips to the bookstore. Undoubtedly enough that if my husband started reading and buying them and I found one of the books lying around the house I would pick it up and read it in an idle hour.
