Huzzah!

In the bookshop I found the new Temeraire book, Victory of Eagles, and I've been spending much of the past two days reading it. It's a good 'un, and includes the entrance of one Arthur Wellesley, known in the book as General Wellesley, and in the real world becomes the 1st Duke of Wellington, and he goes around being pragmatic, efficient, and extremely ruthless. It's a nice change, as in previous books the heroes have been stuck working for bumbling, close-minded and annoying people and get stuck trying to decide where their real duty lies - following incompetent and self-serving orders, or being recalcitrant and achieving something. Wellesley is also causing people to question where their duty lies, but at least by following his orders people know that they'll be looking after Britain. For the greater good?

With all historical novels, there's always a certain tension between one's knowledge of real world events and the alternate version presented by the author - in this case, by the inclusion of dragons as air force and the change in tactics and historical events that would mean. At this point, Novik has completely gone off the map, there is no history book that will tell you what's more or less supposed to happen, as there was in Black Powder War; from now on we get to find out how the Napoleonic Wars are going to turn out when she's ready to tell us and not before. It's very exciting.

My main negative point is this: the proof reading in the edition I read is just plain careless. The spelling is correct - automated spell checkers can give us that at least, but there are many places throughout where words are missing, or shouldn't be there, or the pronouns are messed up. It's annoying having to break out of immersion in order to work out what the writer meant, and I would have expected a professional publisher to do better.