Tongues of Serpents (Naomi Novik)

Tongues of Serpents
(The Temeraire series, Book 6)
Naomi Novik
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Will Laurence, former captain of the English Navy, and Temeraire, the Chinese Celestial dragon whose hatching whisked Laurence from the seas to the skies as an aviator, were once the pride and talk of England, heroes in the ongoing war against Napoleon. After a journey to China opened their eyes to what a nation can become when it befriends instead of enslaves its dragons, and after Will helped Temeraire stop England's planned genocide of the French dragons, the two were deemed agitators and branded traitors. Now shipped off to the New South Wales prison colony of Australia, on the pretense of helping start a dragon covert in the lawless land with three surplus eggs as foundation stock, it is hoped that they will avoid causing further trouble.
Trouble, unfortunately, finds them even before they arrive in the harbor. The colony governor Bligh - late of the HMS Bounty - has been deposed by his own army, and demands justice, or rather retribution. Since Laurence is no longer technically a captain, the Aerial Corps has sent a commissioned officer to take one of the hatchlings as the official commander of the fledgling covert: none other than Captain Rankin, an abusive aristocrat who already let one dragon die through gross negligence. There's also talk of smugglers using the colony as an outlet for goods circumventing the British monopoly on Oriental trade. Then one of the precious dragon eggs, on the verge of hatching, is stolen.
Temeraire and Will find themselves embarking on a new, dangerous adventure, one that will take them through the heart of an unexplored continent, along the razor's edge between honor and patriotism, and into dangers both political and corporeal.

REVIEW: Once again, Novik serves up an alternate-history adventure filled with action, intrigue, and insights into the complicated social, political, and moral fabric of society during the Napoleonic War era. Removed from England and all contact with their old covert-mates and friends (save for letters, for the most part), Temeraire gets to explore the bizarre and deadly world of colonial Australia, a land that hardly needs fantastication to boggle the imagination. It seems a world apart from the European conflict... but, of course, even in Australia, global troubles cannot be escaped forever, as Laurence and Temeraire discover to their dismay. My main complaint is that, at under 300 pages in length, the story felt short. Removing them from the immediate conflicts reshaping Europe (and Africa, and the Americas as we learn) makes for a marked change of pace, but it also makes the story seem more like a sidetrack or interlude than a tangible progression of the first five novels. Some of the characters and situations felt like setups that never quite panned out, and at times I had the vague impression that Novik was filling pages rather than plot. I know there's at least one, possibly two more Temeraire books planned, but I still thought a little more could've been done here. On the whole, though, I enjoyed this book, and fully intend to keep reading so long as Novik wants to keep writing.