book: Blood of Tyrants

[psocoptera]

Blood of Tyrants is book 8 of 9 in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, possibly the best so far. I remember being somewhat lukewarm about these somewhere around book 3-5 but by now I am sold sold SOLD. Gah, what can I say that isn't completely spoilery. There is some lovely slow build over the arc of the series and as we approach the end we're getting some excellent emotional payoff. Also lots of action. I would recommend them to people who liked the Vorkosigan books.

Also am I a bad person for wanting to sit L.A. Meyer of the "Bloody Jack" books down with this series and say, SEE, this is how you do a globe-trotting Napoleonic war long series, you give it an actual plot arc, you let people's actions have weight and consequences, don't just send your characters bopping around as tourists. I guess Novik is writing AU and Meyer is trying to stick to actual history, which he does not want to make his fictional characters the movers and shakers of, but, it really seems like the problem is more that Novik has been writing with an end in mind and Meyer is just spinning us along.

Comments

[ursula]

Have you read Patrick O'Brian?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I have not, although I've read some fanfic. I'm certainly aware of them as the ur-long-Napoleonic-War-series, and would sort of like to read them someday.

[ursula]

They're worth the time investment (there are some annoying plot developments involving the female characters, but of the sort that fanfiction was invented to make right).

I find that the action sequences in the Temeraire books really pale in comparison, though: Jack Aubrey spends a lot of time solving tactical puzzles using careful planning and practice, whereas solutions in the Temeraire books often boil down to Dragon Power Ex Machina. (I haven't read the new one.)

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to know there's an endpoint for the Temeraire books; I much prefer reading a series--well, if not all at one go, not with a year or more between books, if there's a lot of arc stuff (as opposed to mysteries, where the arc if any is in the characters' personal lives, and so it's much easier to remember). So when it's a still-being-written series, I tend to want to go back and reread the earlier ones, which takes a freakin' long time. So maybe in a couple of years, or whenever the ninth one is out, I'll go read all of them. Knowing that #8 is so awesome will hopefully keep me plowing through whichever one it is where they go to Africa, which I did not like nearly as well as the previous ones I'd read.