Crucible of Gold

 

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After the dip in excitement and action that was the last book, I was worried that the Temerarie series had gone the way of so many others – after a few books the series just loses its flair and continuing to read it becomes a mildly satisfying chore rather than an enjoyable pastime. This happened with Skullduggery Pleasant and Artemis Fowl for me, so I don’t mind admitting that I was rather scared when I cracked the cover of Crucible of Gold.

Laurence and Temeraire are set to accept their new lives in the penal colony of New South Whales when news reaches them that Napoleon has not only invaded Spain but also forged an alliance with the Africa’s Tswana Empire and brought revolution to Brazil. The government has turned to Laurence, convinced that he is the best man to negotiate a treaty. And so, reinstated, Laurence and Temeraire embark for Brazil but their mission is thrown into disarray when they are forced to land in the hostile territory of the Incan Empire where an old enemy appears to tip the scales further towards disaster.

At this stage of the series the plot tactics to allow Laurence and Temeraire to continue their wartime adventures seem to be becoming a little bit hand-wavey, but we won’t let that get in the way of a good story. While still massively disheveled and fallen from their former stature, our heroes are nonetheless back to travelling the world and having grand and dramatic adventures surrounded by new and excessive hardships.

In Crucible of Gold, we are introduced to the unique dragons of the Incan Empire and the book very largely in part becomes an anthropological culture study of the relationship between humans and dragons in this part of the world. While these parts of the story are fascinating on a novel level, they are also helping to shape the larger story arc – as Temeraire and his draconic friends are exposed to these different ways of thinking, they begin to question their relationship with humans in their own country. This brings a lovely tingling of anticipation into the series, as we have to wonder if the British dragons will grow to resent their country’s attitudes towards them and rebel.

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The type of action and excitement that colour the earlier books is back with more dramas, more character development, and more fascinating environments, making Crucible of Gold is a compelling read that catapults the series out of its slump from the sixth book. I can’t wait to crack the cover of the next one!

Author: Naomi Novik, 2012

Published: First published in Great Britain by Ballatine Books, 2012. Pictured edition published by HarperVoyager, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 2014.

Crucible of Gold is the 7^th book in Novik’s Temeraire series. Its follows Temeraire, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, Victory of Eagles, and Tongues of Serpents.

Tongues of Serpents

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After the excitement and change in story direction in Victory of Eagles, you can imagine that I was very excited to crack open the cover of the next instalment: Tongues of Serpents. I was particularly excited about this one because it is set in Australia and I was very keen to see what sort of dragons and relationships with dragons Novik could come up with for my country.

Laurence and Temeraire have been convicted of treason and transported to the prison colony of New South Wales. Three dragon eggs have been sent along with them, set to be handed over to officers stationed at the remote outpost. Upon arriving, Laurence and Temeraire find a young colony in turmoil, drunk, and teeming with rebellion. The heroes accept a mission to pioneer a route into the interior of the country and map out the landscape, but disaster strikes when one of the dragon eggs is stolen and the mission turns to one of rescue. The race to recover the egg before it hatches leads Laurence and Temeraire to a shocking discovery that presents a new obstacle in the war between Britain and France.

As I said before, I was very excited about this one because it’s set it my own country and I was very eager to see what sort of dragons an environment such as Australia’s would house. Sadly, I was disappointed on that score. While we do get to meet some new dragons, Tongues of Serpents is the long, slow book of the series with the majority of the story being eaten up by the trek into the country’s uncharted territories and the hardships that come with it. Eco-horror films such as Long Weekend and Wake in Fright depict the Australian outback as a nightmare country and to be fair, it is. Books such as Voss and Gould’s Book of Fish go into excruciating detail the way in which the harsh environments can twist and torment the body and mind so much that the poor traveler simply implodes, and this book – an instalment in a wondrous fantasy series- does the same thing.

The book primarily chronicles the scouting-turned-rescue mission and the many challenges that the unknown environment of this landscape. Over the course of its pages we experience fatigue, dehydration, bushfires, storms, and even bunyips. While there is still plenty of action to keep the fingers flying, I found this book to be the weakest of the series so far and I actually struggled a bit to remain interested. Both our heroes are going through an understandable but irksome bout of depression and emotional lethargy and so the book does rely on external, environmental forces to keep the story going. Thus, the balance between physical and emotional action is off and makes Tongues of Serpents a book that offers a reading experience that mirrors the long and arduous trek of its characters.

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But perseverance can be a virtue, and the third act of the book does pick up and regain the vim and vigour that is so delightful in the series, so I would recommend you keep on keeping on. At the end of it all, I am still invested and eager to know what is going to happen next.

Author: Naomi Novik, 2010

Published: First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers. Pictured edition published by HarperVoyager, London, 2007

Tongues of Serpents is the sixth book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. It is preceded by Temeraire, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, and Victory of Eagles.

Victory of Eagles

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I’ve been thinking recently about the driving forces of series and how they usually fall into two categories: character narrative and environment narrative. Most series fall into the first category with the characters having some sort of overarching quest narrative, the steps of which flesh out the episodes or novels: series like Harry Potter or Skullduggery Pleasant. Then there are series that are all about the world and made up of individual escapades from a whole cast of characters, e.g. the Discworld series.

I’m at a point in the Temeraire series where I’m starting to wonder what’s driving it and where it’s going. It’s an interesting series because it is absolutely driven by character narrative – Captain Laurence’s efforts to do his part in the war- but as the quest narrative to win the war is not down to one character or even a handful of characters, it occasionally feels as though the environment is driving the story, making it tricky to see what the overarching story really is. I have just finished the 5^th book in the series and I’m starting to wonder what other narratives are actually at play.

Temeraire and Laurence have been separated and times are bleak. Laurence is condemned to be hanged for treason and Temeraire has been removed from military service and sent to the breeding grounds. The situation for Britain is even worse: France has breached the Channel barricade and invaded southern England. Despite being at odds with their own Government, Laurence and Temeraire still have a steadfast duty to their friends and country and determine to turn the tide of the invasion before it’s too late.

There’s always a book where the series begins to swerve, potentially taking you in an entirely new direction, and Victory of Eagles is certainly the one that does that in this series. Focusing more on the emotional struggles of Laurence and Temeraire at the book’s start, the action and excitement that we’ve come to expect makes a well-balanced appearance midway through, setting things in motion of a more political nature that hints of a new narrative trajectory.

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As a reader, I like to become enveloped in the moment I’m reading about and so I don’t tend to look ahead to the potential narrative outcomes of the story, letting them be a surprise at the opportune moment. But the hints that are dropped through a number of actions and opinions during this book, have definitely set my mind whirring with possible outcomes and piqued my intrigue to see what happens.

We follow a lot of our favourite in Victory of Eagles, as well as meet a number of new endearing characters whose quirks and escapades keep us turning pages. It’s another great instalment in a great series!

Author: Naomi Novic, 2009

Published: HarperVoyager, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2009

Victory of Eagles is the fifth book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. It is preceded by Temeraire, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, and Empire of Ivory.

Witches Abroad

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The human experience is a weird, sometimes woeful, and wondrous thing. While a lot of it is made up of suffering, anxiety, hardships, and bad luck, a substantial portion of it is filled with lovely things such as fairytales: gifts that keep on giving for years and years and years.

I have just closed the cover on Witches Abroad, the 12^th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in which he very cleverly creates another hilarious adventure by taking two aspects of human existence and reshaping them for better and worse. The first is travel and the absolute nightmare that it can be, and the second is fairytales and how dangerously limeless they are.

Ensuring that a young servant girl does not marry a prince should be a pretty easy task – you would think. But for the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick, it could not be more difficult. When Magrat inherits a magic wand and becomes a Fairy Godmother, she discovers that she must travel to Genua, a place where fairytales are running rampant and Happy Endings are making everyone miserable. With the ‘help’ of Granny and Nanny, she must stop a servant girl from marrying a prince and free the citizens of Genua from fairytale tyranny. That is if they can ever get there – between the language barrier, transport troubles, and questionable cuisine, it’s going to be a long trip.

Our favourite trio of witches is back and getting up to and into even more trouble than they have done before. Between Granny Weatherwax outconning conmen and Magrat solving world hunger with pumpkins, Witches Abroad is another fun and hilarious romp into an area of the Discworld that we have never seen before. Reminiscent of the bayous of Louisianna mixed with a swamp-tropical jungle, Genua seems like the last place in which to find fairytales. Pratchett overtly references practically every classic take you can imagine from The Wizard of Oz to The Frog Prince to Cinderella.

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As well as a laugh-out-loud trek through swamps and familiar plotlines, the book is a commentary on the woes of travelling as well as an exploration into how it can affect relationships. While happy endings are the Big Bad in this book, in a similar way to Moving Pictures and even Soul Music, it’s the strain that travel can put on relationships that keeps us flipping pages. Travelling unearths another layer of personality and I have seen what could have been lifelong friendships fall apart because the parties went travelling together. Of course this is not always the case, but it happens and it’s another layer to this book that makes it a well-rounded and compelling read.

‘There’s no place like home’ is definitely a message that comes out to play in this story, working wonderfully with Pratchett’s signature wit and dismantling of beloved stories. Witches Abroad is another delightful read in the Discworld series!

Author: Terry Pratchett, 1991

Published: First published in Great Britain by Gollancz in 1991. Pictured Corgi edition published 1992.

Witches Abroad is the 12^th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

Gould's Book of Fish

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We often think of history as that which has already happened. An event, a person, a time period that has been and gone. Of course, with humanity’s habit of chronicling and revisiting history through the artistic means of art, film, and literature, history is certainly something that is gone but not forgotten. Made up of great and memorable characters, daring and disastrous adventures, lessons, mistakes, triumph and regret, history is a self-replenishing wellspring of inspiration for the artist.

This is certainly the case with the most recent book that I have just closed the cover on: Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.

Rotting away in a flooded cell in the penal colony on Sarah Island, William Buelow Gould – forger, liar, murderer, and artist – chronicles his new life in Australia. Brought as a convict to suffer and slave, his modicum of artistic talent provides him the hope of avoiding life in a chain gang: he is commissioned to illustrate a book of fish. Thus begins the final days of silly Billy Gould who discovers beauty, love, and mirth anew as well as the dark side of ambition and the true horror of irony.

Richard Flanagan is a celebrated Australian author, and rightly so. This is the first book of his that I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Crisp and lyrical prose that is both poetic and ‘artistic’ and horrendously crass and filthy – much like the stories it describes- fills the pages of Gould’s Book of Fish, creating a fictitious historical account of Tasmania in 1826 that at times feels a little For Whom the Bell Tolls and at others The Master and Margarita.

Told in the most part from the perspective of Billy Gould, the book recounts a particularly horrific and disgusting part of Australia’s history while at the same time inserting some ridiculous characters and stories that bring a level of hilarity and oddness to the landscape. Amidst the madness of the Surgeon who speaks to severed heads, the Commandant who dreams of building Europe on the untameable landscape of Van Diemen’s Land, and Castlereagh the pig who is the Devil incarnate, William Gould experiences the miracles of a change in perspectives, a change in life goals, and a change in physical form.

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I found this to be a beautiful and engaging read that was also rather challenging. A black comedy that also features some scenes fit for any horror film set against the terrible Australian outback, this fictional memoir is a remarkable piece of work from one of Australia’s most celebrated writers and is definitely worth the read if you are looking for something different.

Author: Richard Flanagan, 2001

Published: Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited, 2001. Pictured edition published by Penguin Random House Australia, 2018

Circe

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The word ‘classic’ is a wonderful word that is used to describe everything from characters to colours. It refers to things that are considered timeless, still holding their clout after thousands of years. Like the Greek myths of the Titans and Olympians. Like hundreds of other people, I have a love for Greek mythology and this week I decided to indulge that little pleasure with a book that explores the adventures and misadventures of a lesser-known goddess, Circe.

Born an unexceptional daughter of the Titan Helios and the nymph Perse, Circe lives a lonely childhood being neglected and shunned by her family, and then a lonely eternity when she is exiled from her home and sent to live on an isolated island where she becomes the Witch of Aiaia. But a great many things can happen when you have an eternity to work your magic and discover your true self.

Written by Madeleine Miller, Circe cleverly retells a bunch of classic Greek myths with the fresh spin of being told from the perspective of one of the bystanders. Circe as a character in Greek mythology is always on the fringes or tied in in some subtle way to a heap of great stories and Miller does a very clever thing here in which she alludes to these stories, but not necessarily retell them and it is that that keeps readers compelled to turn pages. Over the course of Circe’s lifetime, which spans just over three-hundred pages, we get to relive gripping tales such as that of Theseus and the Minotaur, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Odysseus and the Cyclops, and the Trojan War.

It's funny, I absolutely powered through this book but it kind of reminded me a little of my reading experience of The Slap. Most, if not all the characters in Circe are not particularly likable people and while some are overtly awful that they inspire hatred towards them on the part of the reader, all the others are subtly and inwardly awful and I found, personally, that it was no love of characters that kept me reading into the small hours of the morning. It was the familiarity of the setting and the classic narratives that were the driving force in this book. Of course this is for me, I can’t speak for anyone else. But I think that is what made this book clever in my mind: it’s not so much the fleshing out of a character that we’ve seen minutely and heard about briefly, but a piggyback novel that promises epic tales by constantly alluding to them and getting you excited. And I guess in a way you get them, but it’s a diluted sort of satisfaction, a bit like the watered-down wine people would have with breakfast back then.

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Miller’s prose is both blunt and flowery. It reads with a dramatic tone that absolutely works for the story and its setting, but also harbours some clever little tidbits that indicate just how much time has passed and language has changed. Initially, it’s a little jarring and discombobulating when you first encounter it, finding a weirdly modern-sounding phrase come out of the mouth of some character, but it’s actually a very clever way in which Miller shows us the passing of time. Keep in mind that we only follow Circe, an immortal goddess who lives alone on an island.

Circe is a fresh and clever dive into the classic world of Greek mythology and makes for a very good lunchtime, afternoon, and bedtime read. Stories within a story that’s filled with hope, yearning, drama, comedy, and of course, hubris. I quite enjoyed it.

Author: Madeleine Miller, 2018

Published: Little, Brown, & Company, USA, 2018.

Reaper Man

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So, after the bedtime story fun of Tolkien, I decided to dive back into my habit of Pratchett before bed, continuing on with book 11 in the Discworld series: Reaper Man.

The Powers That Be have decided that Death has become too much of a character and have thus enforced an early retirement. What they hadn’t counted on was Death deciding to spend their final days trying to get a life. As can be expected when there is no one to coral the deceased, a great bout of chaos ensues including newly deceased wizards returning as zombies, ghosts overpopulating the spirit world and getting on each other’s nerves, and inanimate objects taking on a life of their own. Meanwhile on a farm far away, a tall stranger appears looking for a job. Turns out he’s really good with a scythe.

What I’m slowly starting to realise about the weird and wonderful work of Terry Pratchett, is that you can always expect the unexpected. What I mean is you always know that you’re in for a story that starts travelling in one direction and veers right off the road entirely. You never know if you’re going to end up in the surrounding woodland or at the bottom of the sea, but you do have enough foresight to put on your seatbelt.

Reaper Man, like many of its predecessors, is a book made up of two to several stories that run parallel to each other, seem to have some sort of relationship, but never really meet. On the one hand, we have the story of Death going missing and trying their bony had at a mortal job. Their disappearance sparks the strange story of newly deceased wizard Windle Poons and the strange snow-globes that seem to be appearing all over Ankh-Morpork. And then, of course, there is the social and philosophical commentary of the author that makes you think about the nature and quirks of your very existence by positing very serious questions such as, what does the' life of the city’ really mean? and, should the undead really have to hold meetings to discuss their rights?

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Pratchett delivers a delightful cast of zany characters from the bumbling and incomprehensible wizards of Unseen University to the Fresh Starters: a group of undead activists. The humour and imagery of all the chaos that pads out the pages is riotous fun, making Reaper Man another compelling tale in an already tumultuous series.

Author: Terry Pratchett, 1991

Published: First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1991. Pictured Corgi edition published, 1992.

Reaper Man is the 11^th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.