This, the third tale of Temeraire the dragon and Captain Will Laurence, was a bit of a downer. I don’t mean that the quality has slipped, but only that this particular tale is rather more somber. In the previous volume our heroes travel to China, there to discover whether Laurence will be forever separated from Temeraire or not. Naturally, the answer is no; and as this volume begins they are preparing to return to England by sea, following some lengthy repairs to their dragon transport. Laurence then receives orders to proceed to Istanbul as quickly as possible, there to accept three dragon eggs from the Sultan and transport them post-haste to England. It’s clear that the transport will not be repaired in time, and our heroes set off along the Silk Road through Central Asia.

This first bit was undeniably fun; I’ve done quite a bit of reading about Central Asia, and it was neat to read a fantasy novel set in that exotic yet familiar milieu. The sequence in Istanbul was less so, as Laurence spends much of it in a corner of the palace being treated like a mushroom, a condition all-too-familiar from the previous book.

And then, eventually, our heroes leave Turkey and get caught up opposing Napoleon’s attempts to destroy the Prussian army—and that’s a long, hard, hard slog with few bright moments. There’s nothing like watching a train wreck in slow motion to get you down, especially when it’s your friends on the train.

Our heroes eventually win through to safety, but even that isn’t wholly satisfying, as they do so in somewhat equivocal circumstances, and the book ends before we find out just what Laurence’s superiors in the Corps make of his decisions since leaving China. Fireworks are to be expected.

So on the one hand, Black Powder War was a bit of a disappointment; on the other hand, I’m all the more eager to read the next book in the series, Empire of Ivory, which is due out at the end of September.

In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton sketches the story of a sailor who travels the seven seas and finally comes to shore in a strange and exotic land near a temple shining with brilliant lights….and discovers that he’s back in England and the temple is Brighton Pavilion. It merely looked strange and exotic because the sailor was seeing it from a new angle, and with no preconceptions. (The sailor’s homecoming is a metaphor for Chesterton’s conversion to Roman Catholicism.)

Manalive is a short novel which plays with the same paradox, but with a twist. Innocent Smith is a man so alive, so in love with life, so keen to remain fiercely in love with life and with all the good things in it that he purposely becomes that sailor, travelling far from home (both literally and metaphorically) so that he can return and see it with new and freshly delighted eyes.

Honestly, I’m not quite sure what I think about it. That is to say, I enjoyed the book. Chesterton is always fun, and he always takes a bit of effort. But I’ve not yet made up my mind about Mr. Smith and his program. It’s worth pondering, though.

This is the sequel to His Majesty’s Dragon; I enjoyed it just as much as its predecessor. Captain Will Laurence’s dragon, Temeraire, is a Chinese dragon, a Chinese dragon of a most superior breed. Temeraire’s egg had been destined for the Emperor Napoleon, a gift from one emperor to another; the Chinese are outraged that Temeraire has been matched with a common “soldier”. They insist on Temeraire being returned to China.

Of course, it’s difficult to get a dragon, especially a large dragon, to do anything it doesn’t want to do; and Temeraire refuses to go without his Captain. There follows a delightful sea journey by dragon transport, rife with incident, and a lovely if rather confrontational and Byzantine sojourn in the Middle Kingdom. But stout English virtue must necessarily triumph, and such is the case here.

Next, Black Powder War.

There are certain kinds of book that my eyes no longer see on the bookstore shelf. For example, as soon as I realize that this is the fourth book in an epic fantasy series I’ve never heard of, by an author I’ve never heard of, involving plots and characters of the sort I’m all too familiar with, my eyes slide right on past. Similarly, though I’m very fond of dragons I have become suspicious about books or series involving dragons; the chance of finding anything really new is small, and the chance of finding something trite, tired, or painfully twee is large. Consequently, I’d never looked at His Majesty’s Dragon, never even spent a moment glancing at it.

A friend urged it on me again this summer, and I finally picked up a copy…and when I opened it was enthralled until late that evening, when I turned the last page.

The premise is almost too silly for words. It is the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the precise era of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. (Novik is also a fan of Patrick O’Brian.) England and France are fighting on land, on sea, and…in the air. On dragon back. Both countries have an elite aviation corps based on their nation’s breeds of dragon. There are many different kinds, from small, quick breeds used for courier duties to enormous breeds who fly with a full crew, carrying bombs and rifleman in addition to their own offensive weapons: claws, teeth, and (in some cases) fire or acid.

Our hero is a frigate captain who captures a French ship with a dragon egg on board. Securing such eggs is vastly important to the war effort: England needs every dragon she can get, and as it is likely a French breed it can bring new blood into England’s dragon-breeding efforts. However, the egg is about to hatch. The newly-hatched dragon must be “harnessed” immediately—”impressed”, in the language of Anne McCaffrey, though Novik doesn’t use that word—or it will be feral, and of no use except possibly for breeding. Naturally our hero is the one the dragon chooses, much to our hero’s dismay; now, through no choice of his own, he must leave his beloved navy and become an aviator.

This is not a deep or serious book, and Novik is no O’Brian. She occasionally slips in her knowledge of the age of sail; at one point she refers to a transport ship as being so enormous and drawing so much water that it cannot even enter the harbor; then she spoils it by saying the transport draws 20 feet. But I know from other reading I’ve done recently that Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, draws about that, or a little more, and Old Ironsides is just a heavy frigate. But Novik spins a fine yarn, the perfect book for a summer evening, and I’ve lost no time in acquiring the two sequels.

Charles Stross cracks me up—sometimes, anyway—and definitely does so here, with The Jennifer Morgue, a sequel to his earlier The Atrocity Archive. The earlier book concerns hacker, sysadmin, and mathematician Bob Howard, an occult operative for the Laundry, a British black ops bureau which prevents well-meaning computer scientists from opening gates to other dimensions and thereby allowing the Great Old Ones to return to our time and place and devour our brains while re-establishing their rule over the planet they once knew. It’s a delightful mixture of computer science geekery, intenet humor, and Lovecraftian horror which I found hysterical and chilling by turns.

Howard returns in The Jennifer Morgue, which adds Ian Fleming’s spy novels to the mixture in ways that I am not even prepared to describe. The horror is toned down—this is more of a thriller than a horror story—but the book might be even funnier than its predecessor. I laughed out loud regularly, and read snippets to whoever was nearby. Here’s a sample:

“In case you were worried about BLUE HADES, Professor O’Brien speaks the language and is qualified to liaise. She’s also completed her certification in combat epistemology and can operate as your staff philosopher should circumstances require it.”

Wouldn’t that be a great name for a blog? Combat Epistemology. I like it.

There’s some strong language, and a certain amount of sex (Stross is riffing on James Bond, after all), and the humor is directed at a particular group; but if the above sounds at all like fun, be sure to grab a copy. And get The Atrocity Archive as well.

Chesterton is always fun, and so I picked up this, a book I’d not seen before, with glee when I ran into it on a business trip a couple of months ago. It’s his last book, a collection of essays originally published in various Catholic magazines.

I enjoyed it, but can only recommend it to the Chesterton completist, as most of the essays are much more dated than the best of his books. He frequently refers to events, celebrities, and controversies of the day, and though I’ve got some notion of the 1920’s and 1930’s there were many references I found completely obscure. Those new to Chesterton would do better to start with The Everlasting Man or Orthodoxy or The Man Who Was Thursday instead.

I did not cordially like this book, I fear; there’s far more debauchery and gender-bending than I’m comfortable with. The tale concerns a young noblewoman who is trained as a swordsman by her “mad” uncle, the Duke of Tremontaine; his goal is not simply to scandalize society (though he succeeds in that) but to ensure that his niece will be able to make her own decisions in life, and will never be forced into a marriage or other life choice against her will—indeed, to ensure that she will never be subject to the norms of society, and can make love to whomever she prefers. It’s not a particularly original theme, these days, nor one that seems like it needed to be done yet again.

All that said, there were a couple of points that made me laugh out loud. In one, a young unmarried lady is discussing with her parents a new play adapted from a romantic novel:

“The Black Rose is in a new play,” Lydia said, “and all my friends have seen it. May I go?”

“Oh, dear,” sighed her mother, “it’s that awful piece of trash about the swordsman lover, isn’t it? All my friends were mad for that book when we were young.”

“It’s not trash,” her daughter said. “It is full of great and noble truths of the heart. And swordfights.”

Alas, the novel itself could use more of both.