This is the sequel to His Majesty’s Dragon which I wrote about previously (you can find it here). This follow up comes right on the heels of that book, and also deals with some consequences from the finale of the first book.
As Temeraire has been revealed to be a Celestial dragon from China, we get dropped into a meeting that several British officials are having with Chinese officials with Laurence in England. Laurence has been separated from Temeraire as they negotiate whether to return Temeraire to China or not. Of course the British officials don’t want to, but they also do not want to anger the Chinese officials since the relationship between China and England is not the best. This eventually ends quite predictably with Temeraire getting annoyed, grabbing Laurence, and flying off. He returns to the other British dragons just in time for a fight, which Laurence joins in since he’s basically going to be accused of treason after this.
After the battle, they decide to send both Laurence and his crew with Temeraire to China. Laurence even gets his previous second-in-command from the navy to sail them there. And they have to take the whole Chinese delegation with them. The Chinese prince tries throughout the voyage to get between Laurence and Temeraire by feeding Temeraire Chinese food, which is much more elaborate and similar to what humans eat, so Temeraire takes a liking to it. He also enjoys learning poetry that dragons in China have written. Laurence survives a few attempts on his life as well, although he cannot prove anything. Throughout Hammound, the translator from Britain, tries to spin all of this in a way where they can get a British embassy in China and they butt heads quite a few times.
Once they get to China, the most striking thing is that dragons are treated essentially like people. They can go where they like, spend money, write, and everything. The Chinese prince turns out to have an albino Celestial dragon, a sign of bad luck. The others avoid her, but despite that dragons roam throughout the streets and don’t cause any alarm. Temeraire sees this and loves it as he has been pining for more freedom in England. Things come to a head when a gang tries to kill Laurence and his crew, Temeraire was off with a lady dragon and gets mad, so when the next attempt on Laurence’s life comes in the middle of a performance, he kills both the assassin and the Chinese prince. The albino dragon is enraged but the death of her companion causes her to stand down. Laurence is then adopted by the Chinese emperor to both cause the Celestials to stay in the Emperor’s family, and gain some favor for Britain in China.
By far the most interesting part of the book is the contrast between the treatment of dragons between England and China. As a reader, it is revealing to see this and realize that yeah, dragons don’t have freedom in England. But you don’t question it too much in the first book because you’re still learning about the world so Laurence’s assumptions are your own. Seeing Temeraire get slowly radicalized and then enthused about returning to England to change the treatment of dragons is really exciting to see, I’m most interested in seeing how he decides to pull that off back in England.
The other aspect of the book that is slowly bothering me more and more is the treatment of characters within the crew. We are given snippets about them, some characters just have names and others have more of a personality, but the bulk of the ones that die have little more than a name. It feels a little frustrating as a name gets dropped and you don’t have a context or a background to pair it with. When a character is killed off with just a name, it feels like you either should know more about them to mourn them more, or just shouldn’t know them at all and not have this burden with it. I just wish it went more one way or another, are these throw away characters or are they actual people we should be upset over? And since they’re all essentially in the army it isn’t uncommon for characters to end up dead or drowned but there also doesn’t seem to be a real decrease in the number of people in the crew anyways.
I already got the third book in the series, I’m excited to
see where it goes from here! It has been a while since I got this into a series
so this is really nice.
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