This is the seventh book in the Temeraire series (check out books one, two, three, four, five, and six) and we are getting close to the end of this nine book series folks! This book involves the squad heading to a new part of the globe again, but it also brings back beloved characters towards the end so it makes for a nice mix.
The book starts with Hammond, the ambassador to China from a few books ago, traveling to Australia. He finds Laurence there and reinstates him to help fight in South America, Laurence agrees reluctantly, and they sail with Riley towards their destination. Tragedy strikes and the ship sinks, taking Riley with it. This death is felt very keenly, which contrasts with my earlier criticism of how minor characters get slaughtered constantly. They make it to a French ship and are then marooned somewhere on land. The sailors are largely criminals from Australia and they try to capture Demane when drunk once, leading to Kulingile slaughtering them. Eventually the party makes it to civilization and learn about the customs here.
Turns out that in South America each dragon has their own village that they consider the men in it to be their property. Due to the diseases that have killed off a lot of the indigenous populations, men are now one of the most highly valued materials. The group consists of a lot of sailors, meaning that the Sapa Inca will see them, and Iskerika tries to convince Granby to marry her. Granby reveals to Laurence that he’s actually gay so cannot marry her which was a fascinating reveal to me! The French show up with Napoleon and drive the English out where they run into the Tswana rescuing slaves in Brazil. Mrs. Erasmus makes an appearance as a leader of the group, and Laurence seeks an alliance with them. This doesn’t go over well with the Portuguese or Hammond, but aviator reinforcements from England (as in Maximus and Lily) agree with Laurence. They end up capturing several large ships from the French and load up the Tswana to return to Africa. The book ends though with Gong Su (the cook) revealing that he has been working for the Chinese government the whole time, and Laurence must return there. Laurence mourns the loss of Riley as getting there will be much harder now.
A lot of things are going on in this book, but I loved the balance of new and old characters. The return of Hammond was well placed as his pompousness is very entertaining throughout the travels. And seeing Maximus and Lily towards the end was wonderful as I missed their presence for the previous book. We didn’t get much of them, but I hope that it serves as a good omen for the next installment.
There are new characters that are also fun, a South American dragon tries to adopt Hammond and basically joins them on the journey, and a French dragon gets flirtatious with Iskerika. This ticks Temeraire off, and it is interesting to see his view on Iskerika change from annoyance to seeing her good qualities.
Now the queer representation, I was shocked by this reveal because I was not expecting it at all in this book. It had not mentioned queerness at all, if anything it was very deeply set in heteronormativity. Of course though, that was probably just Laurence’s biases coming through. At first I thought it might be asexuality, but a liaison is mentioned with another officer so Granby appears to be homosexual. What is interesting is that it isn’t the majority of Granby’s personality or choices at all, but he mentions how he keeps it a secret. Laurence refers to it as a “vice” and speculates on how the looser environment of the aviators might have been ore welcoming. I hope we get to hear more about this side of Granby, even if it isn’t a major part of the story, just because it seems very brief right now.
Finally I thought the culture in South America was really interesting in comparison to everywhere else. In England men own dragons, in China the dragons are equal to men, and now we have dragons owning men. This resonates a lot with the European dragons, especially Temeraire as he tries to take care of his crew more. It is an interesting progression in his thought process as we deal with liberation of both dragons and also people from slavery.
I’m excited to see what choices get made as the series comes
to a close! Only two books left!
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