usullusa | Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik (Reply)

His Majesty's Aeriel Corps has been struck by a mysterious illness and it's a matter of time before all the dragons are wiped out and Napoleon waltzes in and claims England for his own. But there is one dragon left unaffected: Temeraire. So Temeraire and his Captain, Laurence, are sent on a mission to Africa to find the cure.

I liked Empire of Ivory much less than the first three books in the Temeraire books. It's sounds good, but the book tries to do too much. It tries to take on the African slave trade, and women's rights in what is essentially Victorian England, and the political situation in Africa, and it doesn't follow through or spend enough time on any of it. It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but haphazard in a way that made it seem disrespectful to me.
Plus, you don't throw in an entirely new culture in a story and then not use it. Laurence and his crew get kidnapped by the Tswana, which means the reader is shown a lot of interesting things about their relationship with dragons and their internal structure and all sorts of cultural tidbits and then... Laurence gets rescued and none of that was important after all. Oh wait, they show up and trash all the African ports so the British have to withdraw, but what was the point of all the stuff we learned about them? They could have trashed the ports without that. It's not even a proper explanation of anything. There's just enough detail to make the reader curious and then Novik says NO and barrels on with other plot points. COCKTEASE

The whole thing isn't very tight. They bounce around and problems happen and then the problems are solved and new problems arise and there just isn't a driving goal. There wasn't enough structure to the novel. By halfway through the story the problem of the illness has been solved but the book keeps on going!

Plus I was intensely annoyed by the fact that the last fifty pages or so are obviously set-up for the fifth book (sitting on my shelf) and had no business in this book at all. It's not a good series unless each book is self contained. That said, the last fifty pages are the most interesting. I won't give it away, but Laurence and Temeraire make an enormous decision that's going to alter the tone of the next book entirely. Part of the problem with book four was that there wasn't enough going on internally for the characters. They were being challenged physically, but not emotionally. Book five will definitely solve that.

I know I spent a long time complaining, but it's still a fun read. It's got dragons and battles (though there weren't enough of them in this book), and wartime politics and otherwise awesome stuff. And Novik is really good at action sequences. I definitely recommend the first two, (and I guess the third book as well, since two and three are closely connected). I'll let you know on Victory of Eagles.