Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory [Library of Babel]

I appear not to have booklogged Naomi Novik's earlier books, which is something of an oversight. I think they got lost in the transition between the old booklog, and posting booklog entries here.

At any rate, Empire of Ivory is the fourth book in the Temeraire series, which starts with the Hugo-nominated His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire in the UK). These are set in a fantasy version of the Napoleonic wars, and follow the adventures of William Laurence, the captain of a ship in the British Navy who comes into possession of a dragon egg. When it hatches, and the dragon inside bonds with Laurence, he finds himself inducted into the dragon corps of the military, and numerous adventures follow.

This has been described as "Patrick O'Brian with dragons," and that's pretty accurate. The books are loaded with details about life on dragonback, interspersed with episodes of swashbuckling. The books are set at the very height of the Napoleonic wars, with Bonaparte running wild on the continent, and England feeling beseiged, with Nelson and the Royal Navy keeping the French from crossing the Channel (with some assistance from the dragon corps).

This, of course, makes absolutely no sense if you stop to think about it. And that's precisely the problem with Empire of Ivory.

His Majesty's Dragon hit the ground running, with more or less non-stop action as Laurence got a crash course in dragonflight, learning all about aerial tactics and the ins and outs of running a dragon crew. Throne of Jade sends Laurence and Temeraire to China, where a constant stream of exotic settings and palace intrigue keep the reader from dwelling on the premise. Black Powder War started to wobble a bit, though, as Laurence and Temeraire make their way back to England through Central Asia and the Ottoman Empire. The slower travelogue plot isn't quite as compelling as that of the first two books.

Empire of Ivory takes a while to get going, and for me at least, that was the doom of the book. The slow pace and society setting forces you to think about the whole premise, which suffers from all the usual problems of alternate history, in spades.

If dragons have been around and in military use from time immemorial, the whole history of Europe ought to be completely different. It makes no sense at all for there to still be a war in the early 1800's between England and France, with the French commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte following the overthorw of the Bourbon dynasty, and the British navy commanded by Admiral Nelson.

And from that point, everything starts to look contrived. The dragon corps is held in approximately the same social regard as street vendors, for no really obvious reason other than to provide a thin justification for things not really being any different than in our world. The dragon aviators have anachronistically modern attitudes toward gender roles, but this is all a huge secret from the rest of society, in order to preserve the Regency feel of the rest of the setting. The main character just happens to be a staunch abolitionist (or whatever the British term of the time would be), so things aren't too distressing for a modern reader, and the Chinese just happen to have enlightened attitudes toward dragonkind, which our protagonists are quick to latch on to.

As long as the action keeps going, this is only a background problem. The slow start of Empire of Ivory forced this stuff to the fore, though, and not only did this make it hard to get into the book, it crippled the rest of the plot. The titular Empire throws the lack of historical divergence into sharper relief, and the climactic events of the Africa plot didn't resonate as strongly for me as they should've because they felt of a piece with the numerous other scenes in which the suspiciously modern attitudes of the dragon corps prove to be superior to the rest of society. It felt less like a comeuppance earned in the natural course of the story than the author making a point. "Wish-fulfillment" is probably too strong a term, but that's the direction in which things go wrong.

I understand why the background things are the way they are-- they're set up to keep the familiar feel of the Napoleonic/ Regency setting. It's an extremely canny move, aimed at readers who aren't me-- I don't ordinarily care for fiction about that era, so carefully reproducing the look and feel of fiction about that era adds no value for me. And juggling things around to preserve that look and feel runs the book smack into one of my pet peeves. In much the same way that James Nicoll can't ignore bad orbital mechanics, I can't get past bad alternate history. Or, rather, I can, but only so long as the plot keeps me from thinking about it.

So, in the end, I wasn't terribly happy with this book, for reasons that probably don't translate all that well to anybody else. Kate liked it more than I did, and I think that, my biases aside, it's a fine entry in the series. For me, though, the slow start threw the problems with the premise into the foreground, and the book never fully recovered, even though there are some lovely bits in the Africa section.