#Kulinguile

[star-temeraire]

man temeraire was straight up not having a good time in tongues of serpents

[captainlaurence]

Look. There are so many dragons in this series I love with my whole heart.

However

Demane and Kulinguile are so Special and I’m rooting for them every step of the way.

[poisindonottouch]

Crucible of Gold, by Naomi Novik

I’m writing this bloog to dip my toe back into book-blooging, which I used to do, and then fell off the wagon hard in 2017. Also, I’m not even trying to catch up with the books I’ve read thus far this year either, because if I wait until I have the energy and interest to do that, I won’t bloog a single thing.

This is a reread, and also this is the book 7 in the series, so super spoilers for the series..

Spoilers under the cut. 

A (not quite) brief summary: Hammond, the ambassador to China who was responsible for Laurence being adopted into the imperial family, flies to Australia on one of the long-distance dragons to find Laurence and Temeraire, and reinstate them to the lists. Laurence, you remember, was convicted of treason after sending the cure of the dragon plague to Europe, and was then sent to Australia instead of hanged because he’s too risky to kill, what with Temeraire and all, and because he did very helpful (and morally abhorrent) things when Napoleon invaded England.

At the beginning of the novel, we find Laurence and Temeraire living a bit outside of Sydney, working on their pavilion. Laurence was decided to never do something against his conscience again, and is settling into being a farmer.

Hammond wants Laurence, Temeraire, Grandy, and Iskierka to go to Brazil to deal with the Tswana dragons. They bring along Demane and Kulinguile as well, because the other aviators in Australia are awful and don’t believe that Demane is a proper captain, despite his enormous dragon. 

The Pacific crossing goes awry with the sinking of the Allegiance, and everyone almost dies, until they come across a surprise French dragon transport who saves their lives, takes their surrender, and then maroons them on a deserted island so the British aviators and dragons can’t interfere with whatever secret mission they are on. We find out later anyway, because Roland is awesome, and they make it to the Incan empire.

The French are attempting to get the Incan Empress to marry Napoleon. Iskierka disrupts this by proposing that she marry Granby instead, and we find out that Granby is gay. Anyway, the plans fall to pieces because Napoleon himself shows up and the British flee at dawn with just enough warning.

A note about the Incans: their dragons are similar to the Tswana dragons in that they are responsible for whole villages (ayllus), though the Incans don’t believe their dragons are reincarnated tribal elders. So Hammond gets picked up by an Incan dragon named Churki who claims him and his entire family as her new ayllu.

After fleeing and making it through the Amazon, they arrive in Rio, make peace with the Tswana by convincing/forcing the Portuguese to make a truce, and capture two French dragon transports to take the Tswana and liberated slaves back to Africa.

At the end of the novel, Gong Su reveals that he has been working for the Chinese crown prince, and instead of returning to England, the British dragons (which now include Lily and Maximus and formation) go to China instead. They do this, as it might give them a hope of aligning China with Britain against Napoleon.

Reactions:

I love the dragons. Temeraire is wonderful, and very inhuman. If Naomi Novik wrote sci-fi, I bet she’d do a good job making the aliens sympathetic and wholey inhuman as well. (Hey Novik, maybe write some sci-fi?) Iskierka is hysterical as well, and there were several times that I laughed out loud at their hijinks, or Laurence and Granby’s reaction to them.

I think the Incan dragons are interesting. I like how each dragon has an ayllu, and how they have tighter-nit family units than the European dragons. I like how the dragons have their own government, along side the human one. It’s interesting that the Spanish didn’t destroy the Incan Empire, but disease did. The population is much reduced from 200 years before.

I enjoy that Granby is gay, though we maybe could have gotten it a bit sooner than book 7 of 9, and also, other than the plot point of marrying the Incan Empress, it never really comes up again or has any bearing on the story. So, maybe this series could use a fair number more queer people in it.

By this point in the series, the events of the Napoleonic Wars and the general state of the world have really diverged due to the existence of dragons. This is truly a world war, at this point, with wars in Europe, Africa, and South America. It’s interesting how dragons disrupt colonialism and slavery, and it’s curious to imagine what the 1900s and 2000s would be as a result of this divergent history. Already, we see the Spanish turned back from the Incan empire, the Tswana dragons ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and North America looking fairly different because the United States never existed as such, and the native peoples of North America weren’t wiped out in the same way.

In the scheme of the series, I like this book more than Tongues of Serpents, which I found to be very long for how little happens. That being said, man do these dragons spend a lot of time traveling. I wonder how the existence of dragons would affect the invention of airplanes (they probably wouldn’t invent them) and travel in general. Would it ever gain the kind of high speed we see today? China, in the novels, has fast courier dragons who quickly get mail from place to place... Would there be call for the invention of trains? Faster ships? The industrial revolution?

I want a series set a 100 years in the future where dragons have become more integrated into European society. Temeraire is still alive, but Laurence obviously isn’t. What would the world be like?

I’ll probably read a couple books outside the series before I finish the 8th and 9th books. I remember liking them quite a bit.