Previous book here.
I think the author pretty much wrote herself into a corner before this book. The last two books have been pretty shocking and involving, and dramatic things involving Big Life Change have happened. At the end of the last one, a big change was made that changes the entire book situation.
However... by virtue of sort of following history and how that sort of thing works, well... inherently this story is not remotely as interesting as all of its predecessors. And that was a big problem. I got it when the book came out--and it's not all that long, either-- but I have been slogging through it and only just finished it. I'm not sure if I want to continue reading the series if something doesn't happen in the next book--maybe I'll just flip through it and see if there's a plot to it first. I wouldn't recommend that people buy this one so much as they might skim it in a store and wait until the next one, because not a whole lot happens in it that you'd miss.
I hate writing a review like that for a series that I like, but... it's a slog to read this one.
I don't really want to go below the spoiler cut to review this, but it'll spoil earlier books if I don't, so... *sigh* here we go.
Two stars. This one fell flat for me too. Sigh. I wanted to like it, but... I think the switch in plotlines might have just killed this series, or at least made me wish it ended with the last book.
Spoiler space
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So Laurence and Temeraire have been exiled to Australia. It's very boring. And there's no cows for Temeraire to eat, forcing him to subsist on kangaroo. And Governor Bligh is a pain in the ass. And Rankin (you may recall him from earlier books, the snooty fellow who abused his dragon) has come in to pick up one of the three eggs that Temeraire brought to Australia with him. NOBODY is happy about this, but nothing can be done. Though amusingly enough, the dragon he ends up with, well... let's just say we're not going to have the same kind of situation as happened with Levitas. This is probably the best part of the book, all things considered.
Anyway, for reasons... I honestly can't recall WHY this happened at this point. Maybe to get away from Bligh? I don't know. But for whatever reason, our cast of characters (Laurence, Temeraire, their staff, Rankin & dragon, Granby and Iskierka, and other random people, and the eggs) go out to the Australian outback and spend 80% of the book wandering around in the desert, hot and miserable, and Temeraire gets sick, and it's stupefyingly dull. The only action is what happens to the eggs, but it's not enough to keep me from feeling like I'm sick of the travel already. I've had that feeling reading certain books in the Kushiel series-- I appreciate the attention to detail Jacqueline Carey does, but after awhile you just want to say, "One, two, skip a few, I'M TIRED OF READING ABOUT THE JOURNEY ALREADY," and that so happens here. Except not a whole lot is happening during the journey either. The end picks up a little bit more (and thankfully, "one two skip a few" happens on the way back), but in the end I don't feel like much happened, and L&T sound like they're just going to still be sitting around bored. What the heck? It's not like they aren't offered opportunities either.
So... in short, I was mostly really bored. Argh.
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