Crucible of Gold

Crucible of Gold
by Naomi Novik
Recommended Ages: 13+

The other day, I tried to tell my dad – who is a few books behind me, reading through this series – where things stand in this book for the dragon Temeraire and his human companion, Will Laurence. The effort brought home to me very forcefully how eventful these novels are of alternate-history warfare in the era of Napoleon. Space (that is to say, your patience) does not permit me to bring you up to date on what's going on in this installment of the Temeraire series, especially if you haven't read the books up to this point yourself and you don't want me to spoil them. Perhaps it is enough to say that amid Napoleon's wars of conquest, as the United Kingdom's allies fall one by one and the British increasingly stand alone against the whole world, once again (after so many times already) the nation's hopes pivot around one very independent-minded Chinese Imperial dragon and his pilot, Capt. Will Laurence formerly of the Royal Navy.

They've seen and done things relating to dragons and aerial warfare on the English Channel, the Cape Colony of Africa, Imperial China, Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Prussia, and most recently Australia; they've distinguished themselves in repelling a French invasion of England; they've disgraced themselves by smuggling the cure of a dragon plague to the French. Now, after being struck from the list of Aerial Corps officers, sentenced to death for treason, and his death sentence commuted to exile in Australia, Laurence suddenly learns that he's been restored – although his conscience tells him this is only a convenient legal fiction, like the one that (a few books ago) declared him the adopted son of the Chinese emperor.

Man and dragon join a transport ship bound for South America, where the French have unleashed the fury of the Tswana – a group of African tribes who believe their ancestors are reincarnated as dragons, and who intend to take back the people who have been taken from them by the slave trade – against the Portuguese colony of Brazil. Their assignment is to save the U.K.'s Portuguese allies from this disaster, so that British armies can land in Portugal and begin the campaign take back Europe from Napoleon. But their journey turns into what one might call "a series of unfortunate events," without any overstatement. Whenever you think what's happened is as bad as it can get, it gets worse. We're talking shipwreck, capture by the enemy, marooning on a tropical island, mutiny and then, after escaping all that, becoming unwitting guests of the Incan Empire, where the surviving party of three dragons and somewhere around 200 men find themselves being moved around like game pieces in a deadly duel of diplomacy.

Speaking of duels, one of the dragons in Temeraire's party has to fight one. One of the men faces the terrifying prospect of being married to royalty. Surrounded by exotic customs and creatures, strange breeds of dragons and another wholly unique way of ordering the relationship between men and dragons, the Temeraires are almost lulled into being surprised by an ambush. From the high Andes to the sweltering Amazon jungle, they survive aerial attacks and chases – and all that's before they confront the boss challenge in Rio, where French transports are anchored in the harbor and Tswana dragons nest in the city's ruins while the Portuguese, holding their remaining slaves hostage in a fragile stalemate, expect Laurence and Temeraire to uphold their interests with deadly force. It's a tricky dilemma and no mistake, considering the pair's anti-slavery sentiments. But with the whole world falling down before Napoleon, what else can they do?

What else, indeed? As always, whatever Temeraire, Laurence and their party do is supremely entertaining. While they pull off history-changing hijinks and become, more and more, a personal match for Napoleon and his own Imperial dragon, Lien, their growing party of followers – over whom Temeraire develops increasingly proprietary feelings – grows from a scurvy lot of ne'er-do-wells to a fighting force capable of carrying off the climactic battle that I was hoping to see by the end of the book, and that I rejoiced to see when it came. Between some excellent fights, it has passages that develop the quirky manners of the world in which it takes place, the memorable characters that populate it and a scenic landscape of breathtaking variety. Besides action, suspense, surprise, comedy, tragedy and a few hints of romance, it has, at center, the relationship between one man and his dragon that continues to pull us in. There are only a couple more continents for this series to touch on, and I can't wait to go there and see what these characters find and how they leave it changed behind them.

This is the seventh of nine Temeraire novels, immediately following Tongues of Serpents and followed by Blood of Tyrants and League of Dragons. Naomi Novik's latest book, The Last Graduate, is scheduled to come out in June 2021.