Temeraire by Naomi Novik, Book 5: Victory of Eagles

The Temeraire series is nine books long, and is currently being reprinted in three three-book omnibus volumes, which might lead you to think it a trilogy of trilogies (as is true of, for example, The Expanse). This is especially true because the first three books came out in rapid succession in the same year. But while there is at least one embedded trilogy in the series, it's actually books three through five. In book three, Black Powder War, Napoleon had steamrolled through continental Europe and the British dragons were weakened by disease; in book four, Empire of Ivory, Laurence was disgraced and separated from Temeraire; these cliffhangers are largely resolved by the end of book five, Victory of Eagles, which would work as a stopping point, though it also leaves a hook for more adventures.

This seems like a canny move on Novik's part; beginning her plot trilogy with the last book of a trilogy in terms of release sequence mean the people who picked up the first trilogy have to keep on going!

Victory of Eagles: Book Five of Temeraire
by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2008
Acquired and read: November 2024

Anyway, having found the stuff about searching for the cure in Empire of Ivory a bit dull, I really enjoyed this one. Novik switches up the formula a bit; while the previous books were all told in third-person limited perspective for Laurence, this one makes Temeraire himself a viewpoint character for the first time, which is great. There are lots of intense, grueling sequences of the kind that Novik really excels at (and made Black Powder War such a good read) as the French slowly take Britain, and the British do their best to push back. Laurence's moral forthrightness has some good implications here, and I liked his reunion with Temeraire a lot. There's also some good stuff about what we're willing—and unwilling—to do in the desperation of war. Wellington appears as a minor character here, and he's excellent; Novik cleverly weaves some echoes of real history into her alternative one, especially with Nelson. Of course I love all the stuff about Laurence's stiff moral code, how could I not? Overall, I really enjoyed this one, my favorite since the first book.

I have sometimes been a bit skeptical about Novik's alternative history, to be honest. Why would all of European history basically be the same with dragons up until the 1800s, but begin diverging then? But most non-European countries seem to have quite different histories in this timeline. Obviously, this has to be the case, or you don't get 1) the fun premise of "Napoleonic War with dragons" or 2) any suspense. But her approach pays off here; because Napoleon didn't invade England in our history, it just feels utterly wrong when he is able to do so here, allowing the readers to experience the same alienation and estrangement as the characters. It's just not right that Napoleon should be in England. You feel this just like Laurence does, even if for a different reason.

Every ten months I read an installment of Temeraire. Next up in sequence: Tongues of Serpents

Temeraire by Naomi Novik, Book 4: Empire of Ivory

Empire of Ivory: Book Four of Temeraire
by Naomi Novik

Empire of Ivory begins right after the conclusion of Black Powder War, with Temeraire and his crew making it back to Britain and finding out why Britain's dragons did not come to the aid of Europe as Napoleon's forces overran the continent: a deadly sickness has spread among the dragons, incapacitating most of them.

Originally published: 2007
Acquired and read: January 2024

Without giving too much away, it turns out that Temeraire is immune to the sickness, probably as a result of something that happened to him in Africa on his long sea voyage from Britain to China in Throne of Jade. Thus, reluctantly, Will Laurence, Temeraire, and a group of sick dragons must set out for Cape Town to see if they can recover and reproduce whatever it was that made Temeraire immune.

Unfortunately, though there are lots of good moments of characterization and worldbuilding throughout the book, what results was to my mind the dullest of the Temeraire books thus far. I had a grad school professor who use to talk about the "paradox of tedium": how did you communicate the tediousness of work in your novel without the book itself becoming tedious? But if you didn't make the book itself tedious, then you failed to capture the emotional experience your book was supposedly about. I don't know if that quite applies to Empire of Ivory, but too much of the book is spent in a state of stasis, waiting to see if something works again and again and again, without much to pull the reader along. We do eventually get some more interest and complexity, and the book ends up delving into the role of dragons in (an) African society. There's some good stuff here, though the book doesn't go into as much depth as Throne of Jade did with China, and more tantalizes than spells out. It ends up feeling like a sideshow from the main plot rather than central to it.

That said, the last couple chapters were brilliant. As I am coming to realize is often the case with Novik's work, all the pieces have been carefully put into position to create a climax, and even when the positioning isn't intrinsically interesting, the climax is still highly effective. I may have found Empire of Ivory a weaker book (which isn't to say it's a bad one), but it still left me eagerly anticipating the next installment. How are they going to get out of this one?

Every ten months I read an installment of Temeraire. Next up in sequence: Victory of Eagles

Temeraire by Naomi Novik, Books 1-3: His Majesty's Dragon / Throne of Jade / Black Powder War

Temeraire: In the Service of the King: His Majesty's Dragon / Throne of Jade / Black Powder War
by Naomi Novik

I've been intrigued by the idea of the Temeraire series ever since I first heard of it—the Napoleonic War with dragons!—but never got around to reading it. I think I even checked the first couple out of the library when I was in college but had to return them before I read them. Having subsequently read and enjoyed Naomi Novik's Scholomance books and Spinning Silver, I wanted to read them even more. I was given a Temeraire book for Christmas... somewhat inexplicably, book nine of nine! So looking to fill in the rest of the series first, I discovered there was an omnibus of the first three novels from the late, lamented Science Fiction Book Club with a beautiful painted wraparound dustjacket by Todd Lockwood, and I picked it up.

Published: 2006
Acquired and read: March 2023

Periodically when reading these books, I would turn to my wife and make a remark along the lines of, "These were made for me." I have long been a fan of the Horatio Hornblower television show and novels as well as the Master and Commander film (haven't gotten around to those novels yet). It would be impossible to overstate how absolutely perfect Novik is at capturing the vibe of Napoleonic naval fiction—only, you know, it's got dragons in it. The worldbuilding totally convinces because everything totally convinces. Even before you get to dragons, the series utterly captures that world of duty and obligation and cruelty. Every time some new wrinkle was introduced, I thought to myself, "Yes, if there really were dragons during the Napoleonic Wars, that's exactly how it would be," such as when she explores the rivalry between aviators and sailors in the second book, Throne of Jade. The idea that dragons would require whole crews, not just single riders, is clever and makes for a lot of interesting dynamics.

The first book is strong, mostly serving to set up the world, characters, and situation: Will Laurence is captain of HMS Reliant, but circumstances mean he ends up bonded to a newly hatched dragon, Temeraire, and so he must give up the career he has spent his entire life in and discover an entirely different way of living. We discover the world of dragons and aviators through the eyes of Laurence, and we also experience the developing bond between aviator and dragon. I was genuinely moved by a passage where Laurence and Temeraire are almost tricked into giving each other up Laurence ends up telling Temeraire, "I would rather have you than any ship in the Navy."

It would be easy for a series like this to just be formulaic adventures. I expected it to be nine volumes of fighting Bonaparte, even if I also expected it to be good. But the series impresses in two ways as it develops across the first three books, and I imagine it will continue to go further in both areas. The first is that Novik broadens the canvas: the second novel sees Laureance and Temeraire journey to China on a British dragon transport, so we see what China and bits of the British Empire are like in the world; the third has them travel overland from China to Turkey, and then into continental Europe, expanding the world even more. The other is that many dragonrider fictions* make their dragons sentient... and then just have them happily serve their masters without complaint. The Temeraire books actually explore this, as Temeraire has a growing awareness across these three books of the ways in which he is not free, and in which he and his people are given little in the way of choice. Why should a human make a choice but a dragon be constrained? But at the same time the exigencies of war press heavily upon Captain Laurence. How can dragons make a push for freedom when all of Europe is in peril?

I enjoyed all three books collected here. As I already said, His Majesty's Dragon is a solid series opener. The long journey to China in Throne of Jade was fascinating, and the navigating of Chinese politics pulled together a lot of stuff in a clever way. The overland journey in Black Powder War was tense, and I really enjoyed the novel's second half, as Laurence, Temeraire, and crew are swept up in a series of devastating battles in continental Europe was utterly gripping, compelling reading. I am taking a bit of a break before going onto book four, but I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Every ten months I read an installment of Temeraire. Next up in sequence: Empire of Ivory

* I keep meaning to figure this out: who was it who invented the idea of the dragonrider. Was it Anne McCaffrey in Pern, or did it have some kind of predecessor I'm unaware of?

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

The Golden Enclaves: Lesson Three of the Scholomance
by Naomi Novik

Published: 2022
Acquired and read: November 2022

Reading them because they were Lodestar Award finalists, I enjoyed the first two Scholomance books, especially the second, that I picked up the third when it came out. I enjoyed it, but I do think the second book, with its emphasis on working together as a team to overcome a dangerous situation, remains my favorite. This takes El out of the world of the Scholomance, into the actual world where she has to deal with the consequences of her actions in book two, what has happened to her boyfriend Orion, and the secrets that underpin her universe.

Like the first, I feel like this one had to do a lot of explaining—now that we've left the environment of the first two books, there's a lot of exposition we need. So sometimes I got lost in the thaumababble about how enclaves work; it's definitely all thought through, but sometimes I felt like the book shows its work a bit too much, like reading a Brando Sando novel. There's also a lot of politics in this one. Again, it's kind of the anti–Harry Potter; Rowling's books never really reckon with how Hogwarts fits into a lot of quite awful structures in the larger context of wizard society, but Novik does. I enjoyed it, and I see why the story had to engage with the broader world, but I did miss the clear focus of book two.

Hugos 2022: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

The Last Graduate: Lesson Two of The Scholomance
by Naomi Novik

One of the most effective moments I've ever witnessed in fantasy worldbuilding comes in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. The book does such a good job with the concept of the dæmons, especially the idea that they are inseparable from their humans, that a mere 150 pages after you learn about this, it viscerally feels like a violation when you discover people out there are separating humans from their dæmons.

Originally published: 2021
Acquired: May 2022
Read: July 2022

Similarly, The Last Graduate has a moment in it that builds on the extensive worldbuilding done here and in the series' first book, A Deadly Education. Our protagonist, El, realizes that the world does not function the way she thought it does. The rules of how the world does work have been so enmeshed in the mind of the reader, that the idea they could work differently feels as disruptive to you the reader as it does to her, a person who actually lives in this world. And it's not just that the world doesn't work the way she thought: it means something for what she will have to do.

I thought A Deadly Education was pretty good, but that it began climaxing at a point where it should have begun escalating. Well, this book really does escalate things. I don't know if A Deadly Education needed to be exactly the way it was, but The Last Graduate takes an expert turn in plot, world, and character that needed the detailed foundation laid in the first book. I said that the first book felt like an interesting Harry Potter riff; this one moves beyond that to be about something. When I read Last Graduate, I felt that Novik was capable of more because I'd read Spinning Silver; now I see that she is up to more, actually something similar to what she was up to in Spinning Silver. That book contains this line that has stayed with me:

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

The world of the Scholomance is a brutal one: you have to keep yourself alive at the cost of others because if you don't, you will die. The Last Graduate begins to interrogate that assumption in a way that moves toward an impressive ethic of care. (And, incidentally, reads as a pretty compelling analogy for climate change—or any other entrenched, generational problem.) A Deadly Education was a pretty good novel; The Last Graduate was a great one, and the best Hugo-nominated* novel I've read thus far this year.

* Well, technically, Lodestar-nominated.

Hugos 2021: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2020
Acquired and read: June 2021

A Deadly Education: Lesson One of The Scholomance

by Naomi Novik

This reads like Naomi Novik started with Harry Potter and worked backward to justify it: why would you send your child to a magic school where it seems like immensely dangerous things are always happening? Then she worked forward from those justifications and built up a world and story around them. I found that quite clever. The main character is fun, and so is her place in the world; Novik does some great worldbuilding here. I'm sure she is a Harry Potter fan, but it does feel a bit like "Harry Potter done right."

One hundred and fifty pages in, though, and I felt like we were just getting started, still building the world, and what this book was actually about was unclear to me. I didn't feel like a central conflict had been introduced that this book would resolve; we just had the general premise of the whole series. Then, suddenly, it was, and the book quickly ran to its ending. I get that it's meant to be sudden in the narrative, too, but the only previous Novik I've read is Spinning Silver, which was over double the length of this book, and used its length highly effectively. Without having actually read the next book yet, it felt like this one had been arbitrarily cut off for reasons I don't really understand, when really this book should have kept on developing for some time. (If it's because of length and genre—unlike Novik's other work, this seems to be marketed as YA, albeit half-heartedly—then why is literally every Lodestar finalist longer?)

So as a 500-page book, I think this could have been great, but it resolves at the point it ought to have been complicating.

Hugos 2019: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Trade paperback, 474 pages
Published 2019 (originally 2018)
Acquired May 2019
Read July 2019

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

This was the last Best Novel finalist that I read for the 2019 Hugo Awards. It's a loose fairy tale retelling, and I was kind of dreading it because that kind of thing doesn't interest me, but I was soon sucked into it. Naomi Novik has constructed a fascinating world filled with a number of fully realized characters; I appreciated her ability to give us multiple protagonists whose goals are at odds with one another in pretty dramatic ways without compromising our empathy with any of them. I've never read anything by her before, but she writes really compellingly-- there were a couple sequences where I was utterly enthralled, on the edge of my seat with suspense. It helps that it's a very unpredictable novel (in a good way); it's not regurgitating some kind of stock plot you've seen a million times.

One of its most noteworthy features is that it has multiple first person narrators. Surprisingly, it rotates narrators even within chapters, and there are no obvious indicators of the switches; you have to pick up on who the "I" of each section is, though Novik is good about putting some kind of giveaway detail within the first couple sentences of each section. Even more surprisingly, it constantly adds on narrators, even hundreds of pages in, so you never know who you'll be hearing from next. Why do this, I wondered? One is, I think, that this is a book about spinning, about twisting fibers together to form yarn. The yarn is made up of individual strands-- just as stories are. The structure of the novel reminds us how there is no such thing as a standalone story, each person's story is made up of other stories in ways both small and big.

This is reinforced in a scene where one character's mother tells another character that the most one can do is help others, and do so cheerfully. Wanda was hired as a servant by Miryem, but Wanda's aid to Miryem's family went beyond what was required. The best people do good in the world where they can, and expect nothing in return, because you don't know how your story might affect someone else's. We see this quite literally in the novel in a scene where two groups of characters are staying in the same house, but in two different worlds, and each group of characters unwittingly helps the other group through their generosity. Like the best novels, Spinning Silver encourages an ethical orientation toward the world with its form and with its plot.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. (308)