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.