Gold and dragons

I've been falling behind on documenting books read, but I did want to note that I cruised through Naomi Novik's latest, Crucible of Gold, last night, and really liked it. The last one, Tongues of Serpents, read like a transitional chapter in the series-as-novel, an exercise in getting from here to there; it's not like nothing happened in it, but it felt like a set-up for the next thing. Which in some ways it was, though in retrospect it was more a way to give Laurence a job to do while he was out of the service because they can't let him back in right away. Of course I can't help comparing it to The Letter of Marque which is the anomaly in the Aubrey/Maturin series, the one where Jack is out of the Navy, and Jack is up and down the Med and sailing to Sweden and cutting out ships and getting shot and avoiding being kicked by horses, an unreasonable number, for a naval engagement, and then there is the absolutely lovely ending with Stephen and Diana and the tower and the balloon dreams and singing Mozart. It is perhaps my favorite novel in the series, and the first one I read; those things are not unrelated, of course, but I love the way it fits into the series as a whole despite being an odd bit out. I don't think if I'd read Tongues of Serpents first in the Temeraire series I'd have gone back to read the rest.

But, on to the new book, which works much better in the Novik method of sending our heroes to a new place and making them cope. I really liked the idea of the Incas having forced out the Spanish with the help of their dragons - one can't help wondering how they would have gone on without that conquest, and here it is, although naturally the dragons change everything. And I liked seeing Hammond again, and oh dear poor Granby. So, I will read the next one (though perhaps not buy it) and look forward to seeing them back in England. For a while.