Webcowgirl asked Marie Brennan:

Which books influenced your Lady Trent series? I could say what influences I feel, but I'd much rather hear yours!

Marie Brennan Oof -- that's a harder question to answer than you might think! I can say for certain that the idea came from a combination of two things: the Dragonology calendars (I never did pick up the book), and Todd Lockwood's artwork for the D&D supplement Draconomicon. Naomi Novik's Temeraire series may have had some influence as well, what with the time period and all, and all of the pulp adventure I've encountered in fiction or film certainly left a mark -- Indiana Jones, that kind of thing. I don't know if I can fairly cite Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books, since I've only read a couple of those and that was decades ago, but I'm clearly working in that kind of mode. Apart from those initial two sources, though, there's nothing that I consciously looked to as an influence; it was all subliminal.

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