Empire of Ivory

Rating All Ages Genre fantasy Publisher Del Rey External Links Official Temeraire Website

Naomi Novik's alternate history series Temeraire reimagines the Napoleonic Wars by giving both Britain and France an Aerial Corps. And what an Aerial Corps -- several tons of walking, talking, flying dragons, handled by riders assigned to them since birth. Without scrimping on the fantasy, Novik recreates 19th century British society with wincing accuracy. Will Laurence, who becomes Temeraire's handler utterly by chance, is a former Naval officer born into a respectable family, and social niceties fairly squeeze out of his pores, something that cannot be said for other aviators, whose lifetime commitment to their dragons leaves them outside polite society.

The fourth book of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Empire of Ivory, starts with a bang -- literally. She drops us directly into a fierce dragon chase off the coast of Scotland. Temeraire and his recently acquired flock of feral dragons return to Britain under harassment by French forces, and find no air support waiting for them along the coastline. Upon safely landing, they discover all of Britain's dragons have fallen to a sort of tuberculosis, wasting away in quarantine pits, coughing, sneezing (cause for real concern from the acid-spitters), and refusing to eat. When Temeraire is found immune, he recalls a brief illness he suffered in Africa and realizes the cure may be found there. Temeraire and his formation, including Lily, the acid-spitting Longwing, and Maximus, the wasted but still enormous Regal Copper, are loaded aboard a dragon transport captained by Laurence's former lieutenant Tom Riley, and moved to Cape Town.

After testing much of the local vegetation and livestock on Temeraire, a cure for the dragons is found in a mushroom that has the opposite effect on local cattle; in fact, it makes them so ill that the farmers uproot it whenever it is found. This leads the aviators and physicians to scour deeper into the African underbrush for a large enough supply to send back to Britain. While ultimately successful, the search leads to their capture by a tribe of African dragon-handlers who believe their dragons to be reincarnated ancestors. The handlers accuse the British aviators of stealing medicine, and the dragons hold them responsible for stealing their "grandchildren." While Lily's now-healthy formation succeeds in rescuing their aviators, the Africans, armed with a supply of stolen rifles and a horde of very angry fire-breathing dragons, drive the British completely from the continent.

Novik uses the setting to make some clever social commentary. The reaction to women serving in the Aerial Corps' (Longwings will only accept female handlers) has created discomfort for polite society throughout the series, but when Laurence learns that Catherine Harcourt, Lily's handler, is pregnant with Riley's child, his sensibility and her pragmatism find no common ground. Slave trading and civil rights inform much of the novel, as Temeraire, having seen dragons' exalted position in Chinese society, finds their treatment as beasts of burden in England unacceptable, and Laurence, paired with William Wilberforce, sees an opportunity to bring attention to dragon rights by lending his voice to the abolitionist movement. Laurence invites a freed slave turned missionary on his voyage to Africa, creating tension bordering on open hostility, save for their proper Victorian manners, between Laurence and Riley, whose family owes much of its fortune to the slave trade.

This novel moves at a slower pace than the first three, and depends on the reader's emotional investment in the well-being of Maximus, Lily, and the other dragons to keep the pages turning. Any reader who has read this deep into the series will have that investment and then some. And having seen the effects of the dragon's illness and followed the quest for the cure, discovering Britain's plans to thin Napoleon's aerial superiority and the decision this forces on Temeraire and Laurence will leave the reader cheerfully impatient for Novik's next novel.