Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik

Shipwrecked and cast ashore in Japan with no memory of Temeraire or his own experiences as an English aviator, Capt. William Laurence finds himself tangled in deadly political intrigues that threaten not only his own life but England's already precarious position in the Far East.

I'm so torn by this book, as I am with the Temeraire series on the whole. On one hand, there's so much that I like about it – in this book, for example, we continue to find out more about how different cultures deal with dragons being around in their society. I found the Russian experience of dragons to be very interesting, and neatly paralleled to the interactions between Russian aristocracy and its peasantry (which eventually came to a head with the Russian revolution). The big action set pieces, which relate to Napoleon's attempts to invade Russia in 1812, were all really fun to read as well. If someone is a student of history, though, it's intriguing to see how little of an impact dragons ended up having on the entire course of the war.

At the same time, I found the amnesia storyline to be fairly uninteresting. It seemed like an unnecessary attempt to inject an artificial level of drama into the character interactions. With everything that Temeraire, Laurence, and the other characters have been through, there's plenty of other material to mine for drama without adding this. The other main conflict in the book is Temeraire and Laurence's romantic lover subtext coming oddly close to plaintext. It's an odd plot, and I don't particularly care for it, so reading through their lovers' spats was a bit boring.

Overall, if you've read this far into the series, Blood of Tyrants is definitely a worthwhile read. Rumour has it that the next book in the series is going to be the last, which I think is something of a blessing. It's an enjoyable series at many points, but it feels like it's reaching a natural ending point (not just due to the fact that the Napoleonic wars eventually ended, either).

It's a minor peeve, but it irks me every time I hear it: unlike in English, words in Latin are gendered. “Excidium” is neuter gender (not ungendered!) and it is jarring having it applied to a male dragon - the suffix -um applies to inanimate things. Not male dragons.

I could ignore this one for the sake of an English captain not knowing any better - but then there's “Eroica”! Named by a Prussian captain - when German also assigns gender to all words and such a mistake just could not happen. The word “eroica” is feminine-gendered and, again, is used as a name for a male dragon. Ugh.