Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik

In an attempt to get through old books (again) and give them away, I'm burning through the Temeraire series this month at a pretty consistent speed. Maybe it's because the other books I'm reading are just not very interesting, and I keep veering back to the fun reads! As helpful as craft books are, they're incredibly boring, let's admit. Sometimes you just want to shut your brain down a little bit and get lost in something fun.

Interesting cover variant.

In this, the second book of the series, Temeraire and Laurence are confronted by Chinese envoys who have heard of Britain's acquisition of a Celestial dragon. Yet again, we have authorities trying to separate the two, in a kind of star-crossed-lovers battle to stay together. Eventually it is agreed for the envoys, including a prince, Yongxing, to accompany Temeraire AND Laurence AND his crew back to China. Naturally the envoys still want to separate them, and naturally Temeraire and Laurence intend to resist. Once there the pair learns how differently dragons are treated in China, much to the disadvantage of Britain's coverts. Here we don't see dragons used as slaves to the British military cause, but treated as people in their own rights, able to travel the cities at will, purchase goods, or even starve. The price of freedom, one might say.

Here, too, Temeraire meets Lien, the albino Celestial and companion to Yongxing doomed to become the series' regular antagonist in future books. Interesting how her white color, the color of death, is seen as exceedingly unlucky, and after Yongxing's death her life pretty much falls apart because of it. You can't help but feel something for her, even as she seeks to return the damage on Temeraire. You can see how it comes from a place of hurt and anger, and so hats off to Novik for so deftly portraying that kind of turmoil, especially in a non-POV character.

 The sentence structure is often really clunky again, but that's something I want to address further with the next book, Black Powder War. Right now I'm focusing more on analyzing how to plot, with the idea that structure at a sentence level is something that is infinitely easier to teach than structure at a plot level. The Temeraire books are interesting in that, as far as external plot, there's not actually a whole lot of arc to get through. The first book was, essentially: Laurence meets Temeraire, they train, they fight some battles. What gave the book depth was exploring their relationship and that with the people around them. Here again, we find a relatively simple external plot. Laurence and Temeraire travel by ship to China, a few things happen along the way, they get to China, they meet Temeraire's family relations, there are attempts on Laurence's life, and then everything is resolved. It's not particularly complex, but it's the way that we explore this that makes this series work. I think this is owed to Novik's characterization ability (also something I want to work on in my own work) and her ability to lay out a believable historical setting with a draconic twist.

Overall it's a good read. I guess I can't claim it's revolutionary or literary gold or anything, but it's fun and entertaining, and pretty appropriate for a younger reader, too. It explores some philosophical issues in an interesting way, especially in this book, where we delve further into the subject of slavery, both human and dragon. Another issue it picks away at is class, though couched in terms of Chinese imperialism. An interesting way to talk about various issues of freedom and rights.

Overall: 3 stars

Amazon: Throne of Jade

More reviews: Throne of Jade on Librarything  (Average 3.83 stars)

Throne of Jade on Goodreads (Average 3.90 stars)