Like many of the Temeraire books, this one reads less as one unified novel and more as a few distinct novellas—in this case, three. Left in exile in Australia at the end of book six, Captain Laurence and Temeraire are readmitted into the Flying Corps to go on a dangerous mission to South America, where Napoleon is seeking an alliance with the Incas.
Crucible of Gold: Book Seven of Temeraire |
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Originally published: 2012 Acquired: July 2026 Read: August 2026 |
The first third chronicles their attempt to get there, where their ship is destroyed by the one-two punch of a storm and a fire, and the remaining crew must desperately survive on a desert island. This, for me, was the best part of the book, it's the exact kind of thing Novik has always excelled at throughout this series—one can imagine it as an incident in a Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin novel... but with dragons. Every aspect is so carefully thought through, the sense of tension is utterly perfect. Novik nails the vibe of the early nineteenth century, and I really enjoyed every excruciating minute of this part.
In the middle third, Crucible of Gold does a thing the Temeraire series often does, which is explore how human/dragon relations operate outside of western Europe (e.g., China in Throne of Jade, Africa in Empire of Ivory). I really appreciate this, and find it fascinating, especially the clash of cultures. In Incan society, dragons actually own people rather than the other way around. There's also some good stuff with Iskierka obtaining a level of fame in Incan society, and we get some neat stuff about her captain, Granby, when the empress of the Inca thinks she might marry him so that her dragon can mate with Iskierka. There are some very good jokes! Unfortunately, it does fall victim to the thing Temeraire books occasionally do, which is it seems like the characters spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for something to happen.
The last "third" is probably the shortest, a little cap about Laurence and company heading off some French ships with good action sequences.
It would be easy to see this as not very unified, and certainly I wonder how much of the structure of the series owes to Novik's background as a videogame writer. But Crucible of Gold is pulled together thematically through its focus on ownership and forms of enslavement: many of the sailor Laurence is trapped with at the beginning were pressed; the Incan dragons own human slaves, which the English find repellent even though England is involved in its own slave trade (and the Inca treat their slaves much better!); Granby is an officer but still trapped by the authority of the British government; in the last third, they reencounter a freed enslaved woman from an earlier book, working to liberate more of her people. It's not something that the book beats you over the head with, but it's a nice little thread that runs not only through this book, but it clearly building to something across the course of the series. I find the title of the last book, League of Dragons, very intriguing in this regard! Only two to go.
Every ten months I read an installment of Temeraire. Next up in sequence: Blood of Tyrants
