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Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire Mass Market Paperback – Illustrated, June 7, 2011
Naomi Novik (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Convicted of treason despite their heroic defense against Napoleon’s invasion of England, Temeraire and Capt. Will Laurence have been transported to a prison colony in distant Australia—and into a hornet’s nest of fresh complications. The colony is in turmoil after the overthrow of military governor William Bligh—aka Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty. And when Bligh tries to enlist them in his bid to regain office, the dragon and his captain are caught in the middle of a political power struggle. Their only chance to escape the fray is accepting a mission to blaze a route through the forbidding Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But the theft of a precious dragon egg turns their expedition into a desperate recovery operation—leading to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new complication in the global war between Britain and Napoleon.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDel Rey
- Publication dateJune 7, 2011
- Dimensions4.1 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
- ISBN-100345496906
- ISBN-13978-0345496904
- Lexile measure1180L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for His Majesty’s Dragon and the Temeraire series
“These are beautifully written novels—not only fresh, original, and fast paced, but full of wonderful characters with real heart. [The Temeraire series] is a terrific meld of two genres that I particularly love—fantasy and historical epic.”—Peter Jackson
“A terrifically entertaining fantasy novel . . . Is it hard to imagine a cross between Susanna Clarke, of Norrell and Strange fame, and the late Patrick O’Brian? Not if you’ve read this wonderful, arresting novel.”—Stephen King
“A splendid series . . . Not only is it a new way to utilize dragons, it’s a very clever one and fits neatly into the historical niche this author has used.”—Anne McCaffrey
“Just when you think you’ve seen every variation possible on the dragon story, along comes Naomi Novik. Her wonderful Temeraire is a dragon for the ages.”—Terry Brooks
“Enthralling reading—it’s like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon’s Christopher Paolini.”—Time
“A completely authentic tale, brimming with all the detail and richness one looks for . . . as well as the impossible wonder of gilded fantasy.”—Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice, Grade: A)
“Novik has accomplished something singular with her Temeraire series. . . . At its heart, it’s a story about friendship that transcends not only time and class, but species.”—NPR
“[Naomi Novik] is soaring on the wings of a dragon.”—The New York Times
“A thrilling fantasy . . . All hail Naomi Novik.”—The Washington Post Book World
“An amazing performance . . . [I] was immediately hooked by the writing, the research and the sheer courage of the whole enterprise.”—Chicago Tribune
“Novik’s influences run the gamut from Jane Austen to Patrick O’Brian, with a side trip through Anne McCaffrey. Her books are completely involving and probably addictive, their central conceit explored in clever detail with a great deal of wit and historical insight.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Something new and quite wonderful . . . The Temeraire trilogy could well be this year’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”—BookPage
“A superbly written, character-driven series . . . What keeps one turning the pages is the urge to find out what happens next to Captain Laurence and Temeraire, characters who win one’s heart from the beginning. Bravo!”—Booklist (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There were few streets in the main port of Sydney which deserved the name, besides the one main thoroughfare, and even that bare packed dirt, lined only with a handful of small and wretched buildings that formed all the permanence of the colony. Tharkay turned off from this and led the way down a cramped, irregularly arranged alley-way between two wooden-slat buildings to a courtyard full of men drinking, in surly attitudes, under no roof but a tarpaulin.
Along one side of the courtyard, the further from the kitchens, the convicts sat in their drab and faded duck trousers, dusty from the fields and quarries and weighted down with fatigue; along the other, small parties of men from the New South Wales Corps watched with candidly unfriendly faces as Laurence and his companions seated themselves at a small table near the edge of the establishment.
Besides their being strangers, Granby’s coat drew the eye: bottle-green was not in the common way, and though he had put off the worst excesses of gold braid and buttons with which Iskierka insisted upon adorning him, the embroidery at cuffs and collar could not be so easily detached. Laurence wore plain brown, himself: to make a pretense of standing in the Aerial Corps now was wholly out of the question, of course, and if his dress raised questions concerning his situation, that was certainly no less than honest, as neither he nor anyone else had yet managed to work out what that ought in any practical sense to be.
“I suppose this fellow will be here soon enough,” Granby said, unhappily; he had insisted on coming, but not from any approval of the scheme.
“I fixed the hour at six,” Tharkay answered, and then turned his head: one of the younger officers had risen from the tables and was coming towards them.
Eight months aboard ship with no duties of his own and shipmates nearly united in their determination to show disdain had prepared Laurence for the scene which, with almost tiresome similarity, unfolded yet again. The insult itself was irritating for demanding some answer, more than anything else; it had not the power to wound in the mouth of a coarse young boor, stinking of rum and visibly unworthy to stand among even the shabby ranks of a military force alternately called the Rum Corps. Laurence regarded Lieutenant Agreuth only with distaste, and said briefly, “Sir, you are drunk; go back to your table, and leave us at ours.”
There the similarity ended, however: “I don’t see why I,” Agreuth said, his tongue tangling awkwardly, so he had to stop and repeat himself, speaking with excessive care, “why I should listen to anything out of a piss-pot whoreson traitor’s fucking mouth—”
Laurence stared, and heard the tirade with mounting incredulity; he would have expected the gutter language out of a dockyard pickpocket in a temper, and hardly knew how to hear it from an officer. Granby had evidently less difficulty, and sprang to his feet saying, “By God, you will apologize, or for halfpence I will have you flogged through the streets.”
“I would like to see you try it,” Agreuth said, and leaning over spat into Granby’s glass; Laurence stood too late to catch Granby’s arm from throwing it into Agreuth’s face.
That was of course an end to even the barest hope or pretense of civility; Laurence instead pulled Granby back by his arm, out of the way of Agreuth’s wildly swinging fist, and letting go struck back with the same hand, clenched, as it came again at his face.
He did not hold back; if brawling was outrageous, it looked inevitable, and he would as soon have it over with quickly. So the blow was armed with all the strength built up from childhood on rope-lines and harness, and Laurence knocked Agreuth directly upon the jaw: the lieutenant lifted half-an-inch from the ground, his head tipping back and leading the rest of his frame. Stumbling a few steps as he came down, he pitched face-front onto the floor straight through the neighboring table, to the accompaniment of several shattering glasses and the stink of cheap rum.
That might have been enough, but Agreuth’s companions, though officers and some of them older and more sober than he, showed no reluctance in flinging themselves at once into the fray thus begun. The men at the overturned table, sailors on an East India merchantman, were as quick to take offense at the disruption of their drinking; and a mingled crowd of sailors and laborers and soldiers, all better than three-quarters of the way drunk, and a great scarcity of women, as compared to what would have been found in nearly every other dockyard house of the world which Laurence knew, was a powder-keg ready for the slow-match in any case. The rum had not finished sinking between the paving-stones before men were rising from their chairs all around them.
Another officer of the New South Wales Corps threw himself on Laurence: a bigger man than Agreuth, sodden and heavy with liquor. Laurence twisted himself loose and heaved him down onto the floor, shoving him as well as could be managed under the table. Tharkay was already with a practical air seizing the bottle of rum by the neck, and when another man lunged—this one wholly unconnected with Agreuth, and by all appearances simply pleased to fight anyone at all—Tharkay clubbed him upon the temple swiftly.
Granby had been seized upon by three men at once: two of them, Agreuth’s fellows, for spite, and one who was trying his best only to get at the jeweled sword and belt around Granby’s waist. Laurence struck the pickpocket on the wrist, and seizing him by the scruff of the collar flung him stumbling across the courtyard; Granby exclaimed, then, and turning back Laurence found him ducking from a knife, dirty and rust-speckled, being stabbed at his eyes.
“By God, have you taken all leave of your senses?” Laurence said, and seized upon the knife-wielder’s hand with both his own, twisting the blade away, while Granby efficiently knocked down the third man and turned back to help him. The melee was spreading rapidly now, helped along by Tharkay, who was coolly throwing the toppled chairs across the room, knocking over still more of the tables, and flinging glasses of rum into the faces of the custom as they rose indignantly.
Laurence and Granby and Tharkay were only three together, and thanks to the advance of the New South Wales officers well-surrounded, leaving the irritated men no other target but those same officers; a target on which the convicts in particular seemed not loath to vent their spleen. This was not a very coherently directed fury, however, and when the officer before Laurence had been clubbed down with a heavy stool, the choleric assailant behind him swung it with equal fervor at Laurence himself.
Laurence slipped upon the wet floorboards, catching the stool away from his face, and went to one knee in a puddle. He shoved the man’s leg out from under him, and was rewarded with the full weight of man and stool landing upon his shoulder, so they went sprawling together upon the floor.
Splinters drove into Laurence’s side, where his shirt had ridden up from his breeches and come wholly loose, and the big convict, swearing at him, struck him on the side of his face with a clenched fist. Laurence tasted blood as his lip tore upon his tooth, a dizzying haze over his sight. They were rolling across the floor, and Laurence had no very clear recollection of the next few moments; he was pounding at the other man savagely, a blow with every turn, knocking his head against the boards over and over. It was a vicious, animal struggle, insensible of both feeling and thought; he knew only distantly as he was kicked, by accident, or struck against the wall or some overturned piece of furniture.
The limp unconsciousness of his opponent freed him at last from the frenzy, and Laurence with an effort opened his clenched hand and let go the man’s hair, and pushed himself up from the floor, staggering. They had fetched up against the wooden counter before the kitchen. Laurence reaching up clutched at the edge and pulled himself to his feet, aware more than he wished to be, all at once, of a deep stabbing pain in his side, and stinging cuts in his cheek and his hands. He fumbled at his face and pulled free a long sliver of broken glass, tossing it upon the counter.
The fighting had begun already to die down, oddly quick to Laurence’s instinctive sense of an action; the particpants lacked the appetite of a real engagement, where there was anything worth to be gained. Laurence limping across the room made it to Granby’s side: Agreuth and one of his fellow officers had clawed their way back up onto their feet and were yet grappling weakly with him in a corner, vicious but half-exhausted, so they were swaying back and forth more than wrestling.
Coming in, Laurence heaved Granby free, and leaning on each other they stumbled out of the courtyard and into the narrow, stinking alley-way outside, which yet seemed fresh out from under the makeshift tarpaulin; a fine misting rain was falling. Laurence leaned gratefully against the far wall made cool and light by the coating of dew, ignoring with a practiced stomach the man a few steps away who was heaving the contents of his belly into the gutters. A couple of women coming down the alley-way lifted their skirts over the trickle of muck and continued past them all without hesitation, not even looking in at the disturbance of the tavern courtyard.
“My God, you look a fright,” Granby said, dismally.
“I have no doubt,” Laurence said, gingerly touching at his face. “And I have two ribs cracked, I dare say. I am sorry to say, John, you are not in much better case.”
“No, I am sure not,” Granby said. “We will have to take a room somewhere, if anyplace will let us through the door, to wash up; what Iskierka would do seeing me in such a state, I have no notion.”
Laurence had a very good notion what Iskierka would do, and also Temeraire, and between them there would not be much left of the colony to speak of afterwards.
“Well,” Tharkay said, joining them as he wrapped his neckcloth around his own bloodied hand, “I believe I saw our man look into the establishment, a little while ago, but I am afraid he thought better of coming in under the circumstances. I will have to inquire after him to arrange another meeting.”
“No,” Laurence said, blotting his lip and cheek with his handkerchief. “No, I thank you; I think we can dispense with his information. I have seen all I need to, in order to form an opinion of the discipline of the colony, and its military force.”
Temeraire sighed and toyed with the last bites of kangaroo stew—the meat had a pleasantly gamy sort of flavor, not unlike deer, and he had found it at first a very satisfying change from fish, after the long sea-voyage. But he could only really call it palatable when cooked rare, which did not offer much variety; in stew it became quite stringy and tiresome, especially as the supply of spice left even more to be desired.
There were some very nice cattle in a pen which he could see, from his vantage upon the harbor promontory, but evidently they were much too dear here for the Corps to provide. And Temeraire of course could not propose such an expense to Laurence, not when he had been responsible for the loss of Laurence’s fortune; instead Temeraire had silenced all his mild complaints about the lack of variety: but sadly Gong Su had taken this as encouragement, and it had been nothing but kangaroo morning and night, four days running—not even a bit of tunny.
“I do not see why we mayn’t at least go hunting further along,” Iskierka said, even while licking out her own bowl indecorously—she quite refused to learn anything resembling polite manners. “This is a large country, and it stands to reason there ought to be something more worth eating if we looked. Perhaps there are some of those elephants which you have been on and on about; I should like to try one of those.”
Temeraire would have given a great deal for a delicious elephant, seasoned with a generous amount of pepper and perhaps some sage, but Iskierka was never to be encouraged in anything whatsoever. “You are very welcome to go flying away anywhere you like,” he said, “and to surely get quite lost. No one has any notion of what this countryside is like, past the mountains, and there is no one in it, either, to ask for directions: not people or dragons.”
“That is very silly,” Iskierka said. “I do not say these kangaroos are very good eating, because they are not, and there are not enough of them, either; but they are certainly no worse than what we had in Scotland during the last campaign, so it is stuff to say there is no one living here; why wouldn’t there be? I dare say there are plenty of dragons here, only they are somewhere else, eating much better than we are.”
This struck Temeraire as not an unlikely possibility, and he made a note to discuss it privately with Laurence, later; which recalled him to Laurence’s absence, and thence to the advancing hour. “Roland,” he called, with a little anxiety—of course Laurence did not need nursemaiding, but he had promised to return before the supper hour, and read a little more of the novel which he had acquired in town the day before—“Roland, is it not past five?”
“Lord, yes, it must be almost six,” Emily Roland answered, putting down her sword; she and Demane were fencing a little, in the yard. She patted her face down with a tugged-free tail of her shirt, and ran to the promontory edge to call down to the sailors below, and came back to say, “No, I am wrong: it is a quarter past seven: how strange the day is so long, when it is almost Christmas!”
“It is not strange at all,” Demane said. “It is only strange that you keep insisting it must be winter here only because it is in England.”
“But where is Granby, if it is so late?” Iskierka said, prickling up at once, overhearing. “He did not mean to go anywhere particularly nice, he assured me, or I should never have let him go looking so shabby.”
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Product details
- Publisher : Del Rey; Illustrated edition (June 7, 2011)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345496906
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345496904
- Lexile measure : 1180L
- Item Weight : 6.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.1 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #81,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #356 in Military Fantasy (Books)
- #700 in Sea Stories
- #1,255 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

An avid reader of fantasy literature since age six, Naomi Novik is also a history buff with a particular fascination with the Napoleonic era and a fondness for the work of Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City along with many purring computers.
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Laurence’s life is spared, but he is sent to Australia as a prisoner and expected to live in exile. All things considered, this is better than death, and Temeraire escaped the terrible conditions of the dragon breeding camps.
Of all the books in this series, this one was my least favorite. There is some political intrigue, a mystery to be solved, and Laurence is trying to figure out how to make a new life for him and Temeraire in Australia.
For me, the story dragged, and I felt we were going from one event to another without much passion or excitement for the story.
However, if you’re reading this series, I wouldn’t skip this book. Some of the things about Australia and Sidney are interesting, and you’ll miss some of the details of the story by skipping.
I love these characters, which is part of the reason I wouldn’t skip any of the books. This is a series I’ll reread in the future.
The interactions among the characters are part of the reason I find these books so delightful. Laurence and Temeraire have an endearing relationship. Iskierka provides a lot of humor. She relentlessly harasses Grandy and Temeraire.
Tharkay shows up in this book and adds some mystery to the plot. I like him as a character, but I’m not quite sure whose side he’s on. Because I like him I always give him the benefit of the doubt.
Jeremy Rankin, from the first book His Majesty’s Dragon, arrives in Sidney. He’s been granted an egg and awaits its hatching. In book one, he abuses his dragon, and Laurence humiliates him by forcing him to show kindness to his dying dragon. There’s no love lost between the two men.
I detested him in His Majesty’s Dragon, so this book gave me an instant villain. He hates Laurence and isn’t inclined to concede any kindness toward him. His arrival spells trouble.
Of course, Temeraire has been talking to the eggs, telling them they don’t have to be harnessed if they don’t want to be. Rankin gets to feel the sting of Karma!
Novik steps us back in time and shows Australia and Sidney in their infancy. Populated with criminals or people exiled for one reason or another, this country had a unique beginning.
In this era, most people had little or no understanding of indigenous people or any interest in understanding their cultures. Thrown in some Chinese and expect misunderstandings and trouble.
There are some very satisfying moments in the story, and Iskierka provides some funny and entertaining moments. She is a dragon with endless self-confidence and knows what she wants. Poor Temeraire, he is endlessly frustrated by her self-confidence, bragging, and pointed jabs.
But a slump had to come eventually. This book was disappointing if only for the fact that it felt half-finished. It was shorter than the others, and had no real twists to it; about the time one would normally come, toward the end when their long and monotonous journey comes to an end, there was a quick sort of climax that was rather unsatisfying that came to a close very quickly.
I was sad to see Laurence and Temeraire avoid the politics of the rebellion against the governor of Australia. I think there was the potential for Temeraire to explore a whole new avenue of radical ideas entirely outside the stifling British atmosphere, but they ditched that to go on a very straightforward and boring flight across the desert. Even then, there was Kulingule to wonder about, but even then he ended up just turning out to be a heavy weight. For a moment I wondered if he might end up with some ability not unlike the Divine Wind, with the way his body sagged and filled with air. But again, it was like the author was rushed and had no time to delve into that potential mystery.
I wonder if a part of my disappointment with this book lies in the fact that I read this one, whereas I listened to the audiobooks of most of the previous iterations. Simon Vance has the perfect voice for this series, and I think I might go back to listening to the rest. And I will continue through the series. I think that Naomi Novik is a wonderfully talented author and I have found myself enthralled with this series as a whole, but I am left with the impression that this book did not get the full attention it deserved. After reading five books in a row that were truly splendid, one book can’t change my opinion of he author’s talent.
Here’s hoping that the next installment has more of the spirit of the prior books. I’m in for the long haul, and flush with the hope that the next book will return Laurence and Temeraire to their place as two of the most interesting and charming characters I’ve come across in a while.
Laurence and Temeraire, after assisting the British military in forcing Bonaparte out of England, are exiled from Britain to the penal colony in Australia. They are still considered traitors, and hace lost their military standing.
All is not well in New South Wales.
The New South Wales Corps has evicted the governor, Captain Bligh. The citizens agreed to the ouster. The English government sends another governor who is ousted, too.
The three eggs that were sent to Australia in order to start an Aviary Corps have hatched; one being stolen away before hatching.
Laurence and Temeraine travel across Australia to find a road across the Blue Mountains, to discover the route of smugglers, and to find the stolen egg.
An acceptable story.
Top reviews from other countries

And it isn't as bad as the worst reviews claim, but nor is it more than just 'Okay'. As many of the other reviews state, Tongues of Serpents suffers from being, frankly, a rather dull book. A slow start segues into a lengthy middle-section that is, as another reviewer points out, one long interminable journey punctuated by dragons arguing with one another. When that journey finally ends it does so with an anti-climactic discovery, a brief burst of action and then the book sort of drifts to an end. At no point did anything on the page generate a real sense of excitement.
At times it almost seemed as if Naomi Novik's skills as a writer had deserted her. It might have been my imagination, but the both the descriptive prose and the dialogue in Tongues of Serpents felt leaden and at times almost garbled. Some of the sentence structures in the book's opening passages were quite frankly baffling and on several occasions I found myself rereading paragraphs to try and make sense of what was being said.
Equally her talents at crafting a compelling narrative also seemed to have gone missing. Not only was the story dull and unengaging; when she did try to liven things up her efforts fell flat. At one point, for example, Temeraire and his companions find themselves threatened by an unseen enemy that is by turns stealthy and deadly. This should have generated as palpable sense of danger and fear, as individuals first go missing inexplicably and then the danger is revealed, but the way the author handles it there is little or no tension generated. Even a passage when Temeraire himself trapped and in direct danger never really takes off.
Other reviewers have put forward various theories as to why the series has suffered such a dip in form with Tongues of Serpents. Personally I think that Naomi Novik, having placed Temeraire and Laurence in Australia, found herself in a narrative cul de sac and didn't really know what to do once she was in there. The result is this hugely underwhelming book.
All I can hope is that, with the precis of the plot of Crucible of Gold suggesting that it will see Temeraire and Laurence leave Oz and rejoin the war effort, the next book provides more action and with it sees the series get back on track after this major hiccup.

The Napoleonic war still rages and Temeraire and Laurence have been exiled or 'transported' to the prison colony in New South Wales. Their insistence on passing the cure for the dragonic plague to the enemy has disastrously ended their careers.
This book is a nice read , but the plot is non existent. Its mostly a tour of the Australian outback with a conclusion thats finally something worthy of a next book. The entirety of this book is spent waiting for something interesting to happen. there are various red herrings , such as the possibility of laurence and Temeraire becoming privateers , but this fails to materialise and the book concludes leaving the reader somewhat bemused. As plot devices go - the introduction of new plot threads at the end of this book - could have been revealed in the first chapters via an urgent summons and we could have skipped this books content entirely in favor of the next.
Yes the prose is fine, and we all want to know what Temeraire and Lawrence are up to - but not 300 pages of miserable and pointless introduction to the cast of the next few books. I actually think that this book can be skipped entirely unless you just want a comfortable and easy read. If you just want to judge the book on the prose its a 3 star book, but as part of an ongoing series I find it very difficult to justify its cover price given its lack of content.

For those of you dropping in at random, 'Tongues of Serpents' is Naomi Novik's sixth in her series about the intelligent dragon Temeraire, in an alternative world history where the British Navy defends against Napoleon's invasion with the help of a draconic Aerial Corps. It's a crazy idea - but it's worked superbly for five books. Ms Novik adroitly captures 18thC manners, speech and military environments. It might not be real history but it 'feels' right; and if you like Hornblower stories or some of the grand old Hollywood naval epics then this series is likely to appeal.
Other reviewers mark Book 6 down as 'boring'. My response is that we're seeing poor demoted Laurence (oh how deliciously serious! oh how swashbuckling!) and his magnificent dragon companion Temeraire at a very low ebb. Having your career and all hope crushed is NOT exciting. It's dreary and draining. No doubt the mismanaged convict colony was an appalling place to fetch up. Instead of naval and military efficiency, instead of devoted and honourable colleagues, Laurence and Temeraire are surrounded by crass, venal stupidity and brutishness. Horrible contrasts, compounded by screaming unfairness. With their lives in tatters, L and T battle to remain true to themselves. Tough on readers, perhaps. Is Ms Novik guilty of conveying her lead characters' downturn of fortune too well?!
Having glimpsed the Australian outback decades ago, I enjoyed the travelling sections with their atmosphere of heavy heat and lurking menace. I'd heard of bunyips but had no idea how they operate - great stuff! Temeraire's moment of danger was vivid to me (if not to others reviewing here); a powerful dragon mired in swamp is full of irony and epic heroism.
I do question the dragon's anatomical structure as suggested in the new hatched, disabled dragon. Dragon characters remain strong and very enjoyable. And suddenly we have trained sea serpents!
I like the linking to Laurence's previous adventures in imperial China: showing us a new aspect to those encounters, showing us the strain on Laurence and Temeraire's bond, showing us how both are thinking more and more independently.
Yes, I agree it's a bit of a stepping stone book. So? We're on a long journey with these two fine heroes. Keep up!
...Now where the blue blazes is Book 7 for Kindle?!!

It was with some trepidation, however, that I came to read Tongues of Serpents. I read the reviews and steeled myself to expect a poorly written piece of long waffle. I wanted to read it anyway before I moved onto book 7 (crucible of gold) of the series (which has disappeared as a Kindle e-book. Hmmm...)
Despite all of the bad reviews, I quite enjoyed reading this book. Yes, some of the descriptions were too long and my copy did not include a map which may have aided my understanding. Plus, the part in Sydney didn't really flow. It might have been better to combine this with another book to reduce the length which was a bit too long. But, there were some good plotlines: the treatment of the dragon who could not fly for one. I also liked reading about Temeraire getting stuck in quicksand even though other reviewers criticised this part.
So all in all, this book is not the best of the series (personally my favourite is the first) but it worth reading to follow the adventures of Laurence, Temeraire et al. Perhaps because this book is so far removed from the Napoleonic Wars is the reason why it is the worst to date of the Temeraire series. So Ms Novik, why don't you go back to the tried, tested and successful formula of having them fight Napoleon?
