Victory of Eagles

[sawyl]

I've just read Naomi Novik's latest Temeraire novel, Victory of Eagles, which I thought quite wonderful — I particularly enjoyed playing spot the historical figure, something made rather more difficult than it should have been given that all that I know of Napoleonic history I've gleaned from War and Peace and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Here, then, are a few thoughts on the subject while it remains fresh in mind.

Things are looking bleak for Temeraire and Will Laurence, with the former abandoned to the rain of the dragon breeding grounds in Wales and the latter imprisoned for treason. But Will's brooding and Temeraire's attempts to organise his Welsh fellows are overtaken by events when Napoleon seizes the advantage and invades.

The traitors soon find themselves pressed back into service in an attempt to hold London, but their work counts for little when the British forces find themselves caught between the forces of Napoleon and Davout. Giving up London for lost, the British flee to Scotland where command passes from Wellesley, who in turn recruits Laurence to lead a campaign of absolute war against the foragers for Bonaparte's aerial forces.

Victory is probably the best of the Temeraire series so far, possessing a darkness not present in the other novels. Much of the darkness stems from Laurence's character; his inability to reconcile the fact of his treachery and his associated desire to do his duty by surrendering to his judicial fate with the knowledge that his actions at the end of Empire of Ivory were morally in the right. His sense of despair is compounded when Wellesley asks him to take the fight to the French and to offer no quarter, a task that Laurence's position makes it impossible for him to decline.

The dragons, who under Temeraire's Whiggish guidance grow to the point of insisting on their own ranks and salaries in return for their duties in the Air Corps, offer a useful balance to the strictly duty-bound human characters. They can't quite understand why Laurence shouldn't have accepted money for helping the French dragons at the end of Empire or why he becomes upset when he learns that Napoleon is, however obliquely, attempting to pay back the debt in his own way. Thus, the dragons' bafflement as to the manners of the early 19th century act as a proxy for the reader, emphasising the ostracism suffered by those who fail to show sufficient patriotic spirit and underlining the internal sense of duty felt by Laurence and his fellow officers.