Tongues of Serpents is the latest offering in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. For those who have not discovered Temeraire yet, think Horatio Hornblower with dragons: a brilliantly simple premise in which the Napoleonic wars are fought not only on land and sea, but also in the air – in this case by dragon force. With this one simple alteration to our reality Novik manages to turn history as we know it on its head and creates a brilliantly imagined alternative reality where air travel is normal and dragons are a familiar part of the natural world. The world she describes, peopled with historical characters at once recognisable and at the same time completely foreign to us, is brought alive masterfully by Novik, and part of her genius is her seemingly effortless ability to intertwine a completely new and sentient species into a familiar historical landscape, complete with the language and values of the period.

With Tongues of Serpents, Novik goes Down Under, continuing the story of the dragon Temeraire and his captain Lawrence after their deportation to Australia. Given the fact that their previous adventures have been set amidst war, political manoeuvring and Empire-building across three continents, it is unsurprising that a story set in the backwater of a British prisoner colony should be immediately less exciting. To some degree the lack of immediate action helps the atmosphere of the book and the reader can easily gain a sense of what it must have been like to be deported, without promise of pardon, to rot at the far ends of the earth. Novik’s descriptions of the wild and alien landscape, painted in strange colours and populated by malicious demons further foster a sense of the alienation felt among the Western settlers and even their unconventional dragons. Novik also continues to explore some of the moral issues that she has examined in previous books and it’s interesting to see how she compares different world views through the eyes of both Lawrence, the upright 19^th Century naval captain whose entire upbringing has been formed around the ideal of Duty and British supremacy, and Temeraire, the Chinese dragon whose views are formed solely by experience rather than indoctrination.

Despite all this, however, there is definitely the sense that this book is primarily a place-holder in the series, setting up the story for the protagonists’ next big challenge. Tongues of Serpents is certainly well-written and it’s interesting (particularly for Australian readers) to see what’s happening in this part of the world. However I couldn’t help feeling that Novik has placed her story here largely so she can tick Australia off her travel list and take a breather before plunging back into the fray. Napoleon is still bent on world domination, old protagonists are stirring once again, and it is inevitable that Temeraire and Lawrence will once again be called back into the maelstrom of what is rapidly shaping up to be the First World War. Against the previous titles in the series Tongues of Serpents is by far the least engaging. However with three more titles projected in the series, this instalment avoids disappointing – and ultimately does its job admirably of whetting readers’ appetites for the next Temeraire adventure.

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