The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik

I started the Temeraire series on a bit of a lark and the first book was so good, I just had to keep going.  It was sold to me as the Napoleonic Wars with dragons and that was the payoff, indeed.

There are some spoilers ahead for the series, but those spoilers wouldn't diminish your enjoyment of reading about DRAGONS in any way.

Book 1
His Majesty's Dragon
Captain Will Laurence has a promising naval career and a blooming romance back on shore when he becomes bonded with a dragon and is swept into a career as an aviator who will be assigned to Temeraire the dragon for the rest of his life. Adventures ensue.  Was this great literature? No. Did I devour every second of it? Yes. Is Laurence a terrible chauvinistic bore? Yes. Is Temeraire the Hermione Granger know-it-all of dragons? Yes.  Did that make me love this any less? No.

Laurence gets to fly on the dragon!  You guys, nothing has been so thrilling as when Harry Potter flew after that Remembrall and thought McGonagall was going to kick him out, but he really got recruited to be a Quidditch player (I just checked my spelling and got Remembrall, McGonagall, and Quidditch correct - don't make me doubt myself, SPELLCHECK).

There are dragons!  It is brilliant and exciting and I hope the rest of the series lives up to my excitement.

Book 2
Throne of Jade
Well, after an exceptional first book, this book was quite a let down. So, Temeraire is a Celestrial dragon, a special breed that only serves members of the Chinese Imperial family.  The Chinese had intended his egg to go to France and they are pretty upset that the English have him now. So this entire book is about Temeraire and Laurence going to China on a boat (I love a good book about the sea, but Temeraire is a FLYING CREATURE) and the boat trip was just interminable.

Frankly, I knew that Laurence and Temeraire couldn't stay in China forever and this whole book was a bit of a bore.  Eh. T knows Chinese now, so I'm sure that will come up in future novels.

Book 3
Black Powder War
In this novel, Laurence and Temeraire are sent on a mission to retrieve two dragon's eggs and escort them back to England. One of these dragons is a fire-breathing dragon (Iskierka - she comes up a lot later in the series, so I best name her) and that is a BFD to England, whose dragon unit does not include any fire-breathing members.  But there is villainy afoot. Another Celestial dragon from China is attempting to stop our heroes from meeting their goal.

I enjoyed the bits about the eggs and I definitely enjoyed the baby dragon. All that aside, this book was really in the weeds about military maneuvering and troop movements and aerial versus naval campaigns. I didn't love all that. I'm really in these books for the joy of the dragons and I want more of that!

Book 4
Empire of Ivory
This book was actually quite exciting. There's a sickness going around the dragons and it causes a long, protracted death. England does not have dragons to spare, so Laurence and Temeraire go off to find a cure. Once the cure is obtained, our intrepid duo go off to commit treason and make sure dragons in France get the cure, too.

Meanwhile, the relationship between our dragon and his handler is very touching. It's clear that each would die for the other and it might actually come to that. The very literal parallels between the treatment of slaves and the treatment of dragons are interesting to examine. We spend a lot of time on boats (again!) and it's interesting to see how Laurence, whose family is very anti-slavery, deals with issues related to slavery and pro-slavery individuals, especially the captain of the dragon transport ship.  Unlike the third book in the series, this book left me incredibly excited to get the next book from the library.

Book 5
Victory of Eagles
This book is the fallout book. After committing treason, Laurence is locked away, Temeraire is sent to a breeding grounds where he is suitably bored and worried about Laurence. Laurence's feelings of  shame regarding the treason are real. I admire Novik for really digging in on the fact that taking the morally righteous action has serious consequences for Laurence and Temeraire. This is the low point for our duo, who are eventually taken out of their confinements to do menial tasks. Laurence loses all of his money due to a lawsuit because he freed some slaves in a previous book (the right thing never pays off for Laurence) and he loses his job in the aviation corps.  He's isolated from friends and family and frankly, as I'm writing this, I see more and more parallels to the fifth Harry Potter book.

Laurence and Temeraire manage to take London back from Napoleon, though, so they do eke out a victory.  Now they're being sent off to Australia and I can only imagine we'll be back on a boat for most of the next book and then be poisoned by the famously deadly Australian wildlife.

Book 6
Tongues of Serpents
Australia. This is the Australia book. It's fine. We get a couple of new dragons and I really admire how Novik is able to give each dragon its own personality.  It feels like Novik grew up on a farm with a half a dozen dogs and each of those dogs had its own unique relationship with her. I love the dragons.  But otherwise, I don't know what to think about this book. We ran around the Australian Outback, chasing eggs, and attempting to stay alive despite no water and lots of dangerous beasties.  Eh. You know I'll go back for more dragons.

Book 7
Crucible of Gold
You guys! Something, something, war plot, and Laurence and Temeraire, Granby and Iskierka, and Kulingile and Demane end up heading to Brazil. One the way, their ship catches fire due to some unsavory sailors from Australia (you know they're all criminals, right?), and they end up being captured by a French vessel. The French deposit them on a small island our crew figures out a way out (I felt a lot like I was reading parts of In the Heart of the Sea, which is beloved to me). Then there are political machinations and they eventually find their way to Rio de Janiero, free some (more!) slaves, and then learn that their loyal cook was actually a servant to the Chinese prince who has been spying on our boys. We're going back to China in the next book!

This book was so good. The plot kept moving and we  weren't on the home front of a lot of battling, so we didn't have to deal with a lot of the ins and outs of battle formations. There were lots and lots of new dragons, an exciting escapade on the sea, and skulduggery and espionage. What more could a girl ask for in a book about dragons?

Book 8
Blood of Tyrants
 What is even happening in this series? It's like every other book is good. I will call this the amnesia book. Laurence gets amnesia in a shipwreck that happened in between this book and Crucible of God as our heroes attempted to get to China. He is separated from Temeraire and we spend the first third of the book trying to reunite those two, a third of the book in China trying to prove that our heroes aren't bad guys, and another third of the book in Russia with battle after boring battle. I was less than thrilled with this book. Remember that Laurence has amnesia this whole time and doesn't remember any of the events of the previous seven books. Does that sound annoying to you? Yes, yes it was. If the next book wasn't the last book in the series, I would have given up on Novik at this point.

Book 9
League of Dragons
I was excited for this book because this series has been reliably consistent in its every other book is a good book-ness And it was a good book!  It wrapped up everything in a nice bow for me. I feel quite satisfied with the ending of the novel and the series.  There are some gaping holes left (whatever of that villainous white Celestial dragon, Lien?), but overall I was so happy to be spending time with my guys, winning the war and fighting the bad guys. I was pleased that the rights of dragons will no longer be ignored and that Temeraire will have a purpose in life once Laurence inevitably dies before the dragon does. I enjoyed the new baby dragon.  Thumbs on this book.

Overall, this series is quite hit or miss, but in general I loved the way Novik depicted the dragons. They all had individual quirks and mannerisms and their characters were, in many ways, better developed than the people. We read the first book for my book club some months ago and the veterinarian in my club, who is not normally a reader of fantasy or science fiction, was amused that this was simply a "boy and his dog" type of book.  If you like to think about the inner lives of animals, this might be the series for you.  But if you take your history seriously, this light-hearted view of the Napoleonic wars might not be for you.

6.10 Judgment - Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the tenth day of the month is "Judgment." I have personally decided that I will pass judgment on a book on the tenth day of each month. 

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Temeraire series

Spinning Silver (standalone novel)

Scholomance (trilogy)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik is a standalone fantasy novel.  I have a mixed history with Novik's writings. If you care to peruse my reviews of her other books, the links are above. I thought the Temeraire series was mixed in terms of success of each individual novel, but have overall positive feelings about dragons, so am pretty fond of it overall; I thought Scholomance started off strongly and then trickled down into not great; and I thought Spinning Silver had an excellent first third and then became a slog. Whatever will I think of Uprooted?

I thought the beginning of the book was so promising. There's a magician in a tower and every ten years he takes a girl from the nearby villages as his servant. These women are allowed to leave after ten years, but they're not the same. Agnieszka is chosen and must go live with The Dragon. Great premise!

But. You guys. WHY DO I HAVE TO BE THE ONE TO SAY THIS?

The Dragon abuses Agnieskza over and over again. He starts by telling her she's dirty (which is kind of true), horse-faced, and a mess. He doesn't explain to her that she's a witch and that he's teaching her magic, but instead forces magic on her until she crumples into a heap. And yet I'm supposed to believe she just falls in love with him?!

I find myself IRATE.

I also find Agnieszka to be such a special snowflake that she's nearly insufferable (nearly because I like that she loves her mom and is a really good friend to Kasia). Oh, she's a witch and never knew it? Oh, she's not just a witch, but a special kind of witch who can only do magics that have been thought to be long lost? Oh, she's not just a special kind of witch, but she's specialized in a special special type of magic? OH REALLY?

I find myself annoyed.

2/5 stars (also, now I'm grumpy)

Line of note:

"I've had lovers now and then, mostly soldiers. But once you're old enough, they're like flowers: you know the bloom will fade even as you put them in the glass." (page 318)

Bleak. 

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

 

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie is the first book in The First Law trilogy.  I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that I'm looking for something to fill the Realm of the Elderlings (ROTE)-sized hole in my heart now that I've finished the entire saga. I want a sweeping fantasy epic with well-developed characters I can root for, a world so immersive I temporarily forget it's not real, and I would prefer some sort of magical creature(s), but I'll let that last element pass if I must. I want ROTE, I want the Temeraire series, I want to be immersed.  Fantasy book people say that I must read Abercrombie.  He is the ruling author of fantasy now that Rothfuss and Martin have been demoted due to their inabilities to meet deadlines.  

So I read Abercrombie.  

We follow a gazillion four (five? six? eight hundred?) different narrators as they each live in this world - a world that's divided by north and south, always at war, and has zombie-like creatures that eat people and seem to be almost impossible to kill. There's a nobility structure and great inequality and a jousting Contest that seems to be a big deal.  Eventually the four people we're following end up in the city center together for the "peak" of the "action."

Look.  I know, I know. People love this book.  People love Joe Abercrombie. I'm not going to take it away from them.  But this book. It's not good. I don't really know what the plot is, I don't know why I should care about these people, who are depicted as very bad, maybe even evil in some cases. I'm certainly not rooting for them. I don't think the world was explored deeply enough to immerse me in it. There's not so much as a pet cat to fill the dragon-shaped hole in my heart.

In the end, I want my fantasy to have stakes, but I want to feel somehow buoyed by the experience of reading it.  Yes, there is death, torture, and villainy in ROTE, but the end of every mini-series was a hopeful note for the future. Sure, Temeraire is about the Napoleonic wars, but the ending was satisfying and it was not constant grimness from the start to the end. The Blade Itself is just relentlessly brutal and dark. There are no happy scenes in which someone is happily cozied up with a tankard of ale in front of a fire or is dancing with a partner and imagining a contented life.  There's nothing but bleakness, anger, and confusion.

If that's your jam, awesome. Joe Abercrombie is for you. If that's not your jam, don't read this book. I will not be reading further into the series and doubt I will pick up any additional books by this author. 

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is the author behind my beloved, dreadfully uneven Temeraire series about flying dragons in the Napoleonic war.  I have a lot of fond memories of that series, even as I remember endless battle scenes and not enough dragons for me.

So when I ordered Spinning Silver from the library, it was not clear to me what I would be getting. Something fun and fast-paced?  Something dreary and boring? Who knows?  It's a mystery!

Well, it was both, of course. This book was sold to me as a feminist retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin tale. Remember that fairy tale?  The king forces a girl into spinning gold from straw, but the girl only does it because she uses magic from Rumpelstiltskin. The girl agrees to give her firstborn to good old Rumpelstiltskin in repayment for his services, but when the girl's firstborn arrives, she reneges on the deal. Eventually she was able to get out of the deal by guessing Rumpelstiltskin's name. 

The first third of Spinning Silver was excellent. There was fantastic world-building and you meet two strong young women who are really holding their families together. 

And then we're introduced to a third young woman who is basically good at hiding.  And then it gets boring.  

Here's what I enjoyed:

1) There are multiple POVs in the book and the author doesn't treat you like an idiot and write the name of the character who is telling that chapter in giant letters at the beginning.  She assumes that the reader is smart enough to figure it out by using context clues. I appreciate that she's not writing down to me.

2) The characters of Miryem and Wanda are amazing. They're smart, capable of long-range planning, and cooperation.  

3) The world building was cool. There's this mundane world that lives right next to a fairy world, but the non-fairy people know not to mess with what's not theirs. It was interesting to see magic work, although I wish I had a slightly deeper understanding of the rules of magic.

Here's what I thought ruined the book:

1) Irina is boring. Her sections were never interesting because all she did was flee and speak in riddles.

2) The romance plotlines were not romantic at all.  I desperately wished for Miryem to just kill her husband and get it over with.

3) The main conflict was ill-defined and its ending even more so. It's almost as if Novik had spent all her planning in building the world and then didn't know how to wrap it up it a happy ending, so she just...kind of didn't.

Best quotes:

"I took as much of Da's work as I could. I didn't want to make a row of dead babies and die." (page 18)

I mean, right? Who does want that?

"It stopped even being a fortune, the way you could say a word too many times in a row and turn it into nonsense." (page 237-238)

I think "wider" and "descent" turn into complete nonsense after you say them more than three times in a row.  I was teaching a GMAT problem once and had to say "and wider" about six times in six sentences and by the end, I wasn't even sure what I was saying.

Words I looked up:

Boyar: a member of the old aristocracy in Russia, next in rank to a prince (page 69)

Mured: shut up in a closed space (page 87)

Dotard: an old person, especially one who has become physically weak or whose mental faculties have declined (page 282)

A Deadly Education (The Scholomance #1) by Naomi Novik

In general, I am a Naomi Novik fan. Her writing tends to be hit or miss for me, but more on the hit side. I have fond memories of the Temeraire series (DRAGONS!), although it does seem like every other book was a bit of a slog. I even thought the first part of Spinning Silver was pretty great. And, just as I had taken A Deadly Education out of the library, a friend told me all about how much she loved it, so I took it as a good sign. A Deadly Education is the first in a trilogy and I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that I've already requested the other two books from the library.

So what we have here is a magical school. But this is not Hogwarts, with its cushy common rooms and Pomona Sprout to heal our broken bones. This is the Scholomance where death lurks behind every corner and to survive, you have to be lucky, smart, and allied with the right people. El, our heroine, is lucky and smart, but she's an "independent," which is to say that she's not allied with people from an enclave. Because of this, she's really struggling with keeping her magical skills sharp. But then Orion Lake comes along, saving her life, and suddenly she has friends, but the school is getting more and more dangerous.

There's a lot to like here. I am a big fan of the Scholomance and its history. I really dug how there are malaficaria, monsters and evil beasties, everywhere. El was frequently looking under her bed and around corners and even in the mashed potatoes and I really liked how Novik never dropped this, so as a reader, you were always on edge. I liked that we got to see El doing work - building a magic mirror, learning languages, and even doing exercise to build up her magical energy force, mana.  I like how El's friends seemed to come from a variety of backgrounds, racial and class. I liked a lot about this.

But there's also a huge whiff of a romance here. I would definitely liked to see this trilogy go by without a romance. I want a young adult series about bad ass young women in an evil magic school in which the plot ends up being about kissing. I want to see it about them improving their skills, working with other people, and having success that doesn't wrap around a romantic relationship. I do understand that this is a young adult book, and young adults are exploring their sexuality, but, geez. I just don't want it. 

I'll be back for more, though. I can't quit the Scholomance without knowing what becomes of El.

4.5/5 stars

Okay, apparently there's been some controversy about a couple of passages in the book potentially being racially problematic. I think this controversy is overstated, Novik has apologized and intends to change some language in future printings, and I don't think it should dissuade anyone from reading the book. This blog post covers it better than I ever could, so I leave it for you to read at your leisure.

Things I Looked Up:

Burj Khalifa (page 150) - Tallest building in the world, a skyscraper in Dubai.

oubliette (page 275) - A secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling. This seems like a particularly specialized word and now I'm trying to figure out ways to bring it up in my everyday conversations.

Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga #4) by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Buhold is the fourth book in the Vorkosigan Saga, but is the first full-length one if you read in internal chronological order, which is how Bujold herself recommends you read the series, so there you have it. It seems like I just jumped into the middle of things, but I didn't really.  I'm following instructions.

Once again, I am using r/fantasy's Top Books by Women 2021 and that is how I even stumbled on this series.  Bujold is royalty in science fiction, up there with Anne McCaffery, Ursula K LeGuin, and Octavia Butler, and it's a glaring missing entry in my reading history.  I've only read about a quarter of the books on the the above linked list, so I have a lot of reading to do.

This book introduces us to Leo Graf, an engineer mysteriously sent to join the Cay Project, but he wasn't given any other real information about it. When he arrives, he learns he's there because this jerk he once worked with requested him and he learns that there's been some biological engineering happening and he's introduced to quaddies. I'm not going to say more than that because I don't want to spoil things. 

Turns out that for boring reasons, his company, GalacTech,

(sidenote: I just love this name. It seems exactly what a giant inter-galaxy corporation run by ruthless capitalists would be called.)

wants to stop the project and destroy the quaddies. Leo does not want that to happen. Viva la Revolucion!  

I mean, I read this book in a few hours on a rainy Sunday, hunkered down on the couch with my cat.  It's readable and interesting and posits an absolutely fascinating world. I am, as you can imagine, eager to read more. These books get recommended all the time for a reason and I'm excited to get started since I imagine this will go into the pantheon of my much-beloved science fiction and fantasy loves with Realm of the Elderlings, Murderbot, Wayfarers, and Temeraire. Ordering the next book from the library right now!