Book review: Tongues of Serpents

Today's book review is Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik.

This is book 6 in the Temeraire series.  It's a fairly complete episode, but pretty much everything good about it is what it brings from the previous books.

This book is a big disappointment.  I'm a big fan of the series to date, so I  was really excited about getting to spend more time with probably my favorite imagining outside of my own head of one of my favorite kinds of creatures.  Unfortunately, while Temeraire is still pretty much the same wonderful person, he's being dragged along by a plot that, for most of the book, seems contrived, silly, and full of people making choices that don't really seem to make sense just to get us to the next scene.  It does get better toward the end, but a major chunk of the story just plain didn't work for me.  Fortunately, there are some hints of interesting developments in the world's political situation, so there's reason to hope that we won't visit this again and whichever of the possible upcoming adventures comes to pass will let us forget about this.

OK, it's not that bad.  It's just not very good, and I was expecting much more.  6 out of 10.

( plot summary )