Tuesday, May 1, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) by Naomi Novik





Blood of Tyrants is the eighth and penultimate book in Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series, which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is basically a series based upon "what if the Napoleonic Wars involved sentient dragons?"  Like previous books in the series, Blood of Tyrants features series protagonists Captain Will Laurence and his dragon Temeraire visiting new parts of the world and discovering new cultures - both human and dragon - in their ongoing quest to help defeat Napoleon.  In this book, in particular, we discover the dragons of Japan and Russia and get a better look of the military dragons of China (last seen in Book 2, Throne of Jade).

The end result is a book that's one of the better ones in the series - mainly because it does the thing the series does best: feature abundant dragon-dragon interactions.  They're so great (more on this below).  The book doesn't quite match the series' high point due to reliance on an annoying amnesia subplot, but it's just below that point and remains extremely fun to read.

*Note: I Listened to this in audiobook format, which was well done, except that somehow between book 6 and book 8, the audiobook changed the pronunciation of Demane, which is really annoying.  Worth the listen in this format.  


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
On their way to China, the ship carrying Laurence, Temeraire and his fellows is caught in a storm and badly damaged....and Laurence is swept overboard.  When he wakes up, he finds himself on the shore of Japan, all alone, and lacking any memories of the last 8 years....as far as Laurence knows, he's a naval captain, who can for reasons he can't fathom can speak Chinese and has a Chinese Saber on him.  And the Japanese government is extremely hostile to foreigners and has a culture of dragons that would be strange to any British aviator, nevertheless one missing memories.  And with Temeraire being the only one aboard the British ship who still believes Laurence may not be dead, things may be dire for Laurence's chances of survival and making it back to friendly shores.

But even if Laurence and Temeraire can be reunited, things on the Eastern Side of the World remain dire for the British Cause.  In China, the British Alliance previously cemented by Laurence's "adoption" into the Imperial Family is in jeopardy by Conservative Noble forces who seek to maintain the country's policy of isolationism....by any means necessary.  And Napoleon is finally making a move himself into this part of the world, with an invasion of Russia with the largest army that has ever been known to the Western World.  If he isn't stopped in Russia, Napoleon may not be stopped anywhere....but are the Russian forces and their treatment of dragons, worth the defense?
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Like several of the other Temeraire books (Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, Crucible of Gold), Blood of Tyrants can often feel like 3 separate novellas combined into a single novel, with each focusing upon Temeraire and Laurence in a different nation - in this case, part 1 deals with Japan, part 2 with China, part 3 with Russia.  This works out pretty well because Novik is a master at introducing new dragons and cultures in a way that can't help but fascinate.

Again, the best part of the series has been interactions between our heroes (and others) with different dragons with different personalities and cultures.  Here we have 3 cultures of dragons and human-dragon interactions - Japan, China, and Russia, - and they're all fascinating.  We've already seen China before in this series way back in the second book, but this book gives us a better look at how that culture looks from a military perspective, which differs fantastically from the Western powers.  We even get glimpses of American Dragon culture (which is the one area of the world the series never visits) in Temeraire's interactions with an American Dragon trader.  Novik treats each culture with general respect, although the Russians are painted with a rough brush - but this brush is clearly based upon historical Russian treatment of their serfs at the time, so it works.

Each of the dragons introduced is full of character, even when the series doesn't send a lot of time with them, with several new dragons - an old Chinese General, a Shrine Dragon, and a Russian lightweight with more than meets the eye.  So even when the main group of dragon allies disappears from the plot in the 3rd part, the book never feels devoid of interesting and often fun interactions.  nd aside from the dragons, the human leads continue to be interesting aside from Laurence, with the running side plot of Demane-Roland's relationship returning to play and Granby and Tharkay remaining excellent side characters in the plot.

I should add this book features some interesting dragon battles of a scale previously not seen in the series, so if you're a big fan of warfare combat scenes, you'll enjoy those here.   Those things aren't why I read the series but they're solid if you care about those things in your books.  The ending of Napoleon's Russian invasion is predictable if you have any knowledge of real life history, but Novik manages to still make both the battles and the overall sequence of that invasion interesting and surprising nonetheless.

What holds this book back from being truly one of the best in the series are two things: one the amnesia plot trope is kind of annoying, especially this late in the game, and leads to some artificial-feeling awkwardness. Second, the book ends on kind of a cliffhanger (which isn't really picked up in the next book, oddly) in such a way that it feels like the book ends about 1-2 chapters short.  I'd again as well that the same complaint I've had with every book in this series since book 4 (seriously, check all my reviews) still applies: yet again, it's hard not to see Napoleon, the series antagonist, as the clear good guy in this war, and this book only further encourages this belief.

Still, Blood of Tyrants is a very solid addition to the series and an excellent set up to the end of the series, with the finale coming up next.


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