“Black Powder War” by Naomi Novik

This is the third installment in the Temeraire series, which I am definitely hooked on (you can read about the first book here and the second one here). It continues to expand the world of Temeraire, and develops Temeraire’s revolutionary thoughts which I am so here for.

Opening of the book has the squad in China, where their ship gets busted so they have to fly over land. As a result Laurence picks up a guide, Tharkay, who remains a bit of a mystery throughout the book, sometimes seeming sinister and other times helpful. They make it through the desert and from there get to Istanbul where their mission is to obtain 3 dragon eggs for Britain. From there it seems like a bit of a mystery as the officials there say that they cannot give them the eggs as the British ambassador has taken off before the payment was finalized. Laurence does some digging and decides to simply steal the eggs as they were paid for and finalized. They make off with the eggs and from there end up in Austria fighting off Napoleon. The albino dragon Lien has joined Napoleon and seeks to crush Temeraire and co for killing her captain. The egg holding a fire breathing dragon hatches so Granby finally gets his own dragon, and Tharkay saves the day by bringing back a group of feral dragons they befriended earlier, and the book ends with the whole squad heading back to England.

Alright so we are a little short on the action in this book, but there is a lot of traveling which is cool to see because then you see the towns along the way. Feels very “Game of Thrones” in that way. There are also some cool characters that get added, such as Tharkay and the feral dragons. You definitely see the rest of the world, and I thought the glimpse we get of Austria and Turkey were a lot of fun, although we aren’t there long enough to get a true picture of it. It feels a little untethered with all of the traveling around, but with the smaller crew it still feels close so it doesn’t matter as much.

Temeraire is determined to get back to England and liberate the dragons there. Laurence is trying to dissuade him best he can as he doesn’t think that Temeraire will be successful, at one point saying that they have to defeat Napoleon first, but Laurence is slowly warming up to the idea. I am fascinated by this plot point because it means the author has to reckon with how you change society to make others more accepted. There are some parallels for humans, for example a big point is that infrastructure needs to change so that huge dragons can navigate streets. Humans need to be less scared of dragons too, making a sort of case for a disability parallel or other marginalized groups. I think it’ll be so cool to see how this progresses.

I am excited to see them head back to England in part so that there are more consistent characters. Having characters appear for only one book is a little frustrating, but I’m hoping with this next book Tharkay sticks around for longer. I’ve mentioned previously that characters keep dying without much fanfare, and with this one it felt less like that because the crew was smaller so you can’t kill them off without implications.

I think that’s enough for now, but onwards to the next installment! It is great to dive into a long series that really has me hooked, I have not done this in a while.