Victory of Eagles
By Naomi Novik
Del Rey, $25
384 pages, ISBN 9780345496881

Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller Find it in a WorldCat library Compare prices at major online bookstores

Send this review to a friend

REVIEW BY JEDIDIAH BERRY

It was the historical Admiral Jervis who declared to Parliament in 1801: "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea." In Naomi Novik's version of the Napoleonic wars, the French do come by sea‹and by air. Because the French, like the English, are blessed with the good fortune of an air force comprised of dragons.

Readers familiar with the Temeraire books (already optioned for film by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson) will find much of what they have come to expect from Novik's work in the fifth volume of the series: rousing tales of espionage and derring-do, high-stakes aerial combat and the good fun that arises from old fashioned English stoutheartedness meeting the amiable fierceness of dragonkind. ("Pigs are good eating, all the way through," one dragon states, just before raiding an enemy supply depot.)

Victory of Eagles opens with the dragon Temeraire separated from his beloved Captain Laurence, who is imprisoned and awaiting execution on charges of treason. Temeraire, banished to the kingdom's breeding grounds, must negotiate with dragons who solve their disputes with politics rather than displays of strength. Tested in new ways, Temeraire becomes a leader in his own right, and directs a company of the unharnessed dragons into battle against the French. By the time he is reunited with Laurence, however, Napoleon is poised to take London.

Novik's treatment of the conflict is stirring, but the real story is to be found-necessarily-in how the heroes' lives are altered by the war. Temeraire, bearing the responsibilities of an officer, struggles to adapt to the expectations of his superiors, even while fighting for fair treatment and proper wages (because even trained dragons covet treasure). Laurence, meanwhile, questions his decision to prevent the spread of a dragon plague by providing the French with the cure. Branded a traitor, he must witness the thousands of casualties resulting from a war that would have been prevented had he allowed the foreign dragons to perish.

What emerges is a tense and exciting war novel, its thrills tempered by difficult questions about the personal-and far-reaching-costs of loyalty.

Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, forthcoming from Penguin in spring 2009. He is an assistant editor of Small Beer Press.