Review of Sundown Girls, by L. S. Stratton

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sundown Girls

by L. S. Stratton

Nancy Paulsen Books, 2026. 293 pages.
Review written October 19, 2026, from a library book.

Less than a year ago, Naomi Ward had lived alone with her mother. Sure, they moved around a lot, but she was surprised one day when her mother was arrested for kidnapping her when she was a baby – and she had to go live with her “real” family, with a sister and brother and a new name.

Now it’s summer, and the family is vacationing in southwestern Virginia, just outside a town that was once a sundown town – where Black people weren’t allowed to be in the borders after the sun went down, or they’d be met with violence.

Naomi smells an awful stench in the air when she gets near the town, which no one else seems to notice. And then she starts seeing a ghost girl outside her window in the woods trying to tell Naomi something. But that pales in comparison with the casual racism her family encounters, including a truck that seems to want to run them off the road. And there are missing posters for a girl that no one seems to care about. And then Naomi finds the car of some neighbors gone down the side of the mountain, with their daughter missing.

The very first chapter foreshadows Naomi trapped in a basement with two other girls, so we know all these sinister forces – distressed ghosts, missing girls, and racism – are working toward a thrilling conclusion. And along all of it, Naomi is trying to deal with her parents who love her but don’t know what to make of her and think she’s overreacting to the sinister omens.

And I learned more than I wanted to know about Sundown Towns along the way.

PenguinTeen.com

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Review of Chain of Ideas, by Ibram X. Kendi

Audiobooks, Current Issues, History, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Chain of Ideas

The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

by Ibram X. Kendi
read by the author

Books on Tape, 2026. 20 hours.
One World, 2026. 550 pages.
Review written October 19, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I checked out the audiobook version of this book, but I had some other audiobooks to listen to first, and I did not finish the book before the loan period of 21 days was up. I was impressed with the book, but the amount of information was a little overwhelming. I knew I’d want a copy of the book to write a review, so I decided to finish up by checking out the print version and reading that.

This book is a massive work of history. The author had so many notes, he put them on the internet instead of in the book – and it’s still 550 pages long.

This book is about the global spread of “great replacement theory.”

Great replacement theory can be defined as a political theory that powerful elites are enabling peoples of color to steal the lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedoms of White people, who now need authoritarian protection.

Great replacement theory is not only a racist and antisemitic idea. Like a virus, Camus’s great replacement theory has mutated all over the world into sexist, ethnocentric, homophobic, transphobic, and especially Islamophobic variants. Appealing to men, ethnic majorities, heterosexual and cisgender people, and Jews and Christians (usually through a mythical “Judeo-Christian” construct), great replacement theories warn that women, queer and trans people, ethnic minorities, and Muslims are coming to take their lives, livelihoods, cultures, electoral power, and freedom: Feminists purportedly dominating men in South Korea. Transgender young people, who comprise less than 0.002 percent of collegiate athletes, said to be taking over sports in the United States. Albanians supposedly boxing out Macedonians in North Macedonia. Sub-Saharan Black Africans apparently displacing Brown Arabs in Tunisia. Muslims professedly terrorizing Hindus in India. Roma people apparently taking out non-Roma people in Central Europe. Homosexuals allegedly “grooming” heterosexuals in Russia. Even “evil” gangs ostensibly replacing “the good people” in El Salvador. Wherever there are lines between privileged and disadvantaged groups, between groups in the majority and the minority, new mutations of great replacement theory seem to arise.

It disturbed me how global this sweep of ideas has become. I was reading Kristen Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne during the same time period I was listening to this book, and there were times when they talked about the exact same thing, to the point where it felt repetitive and I couldn’t remember which author had said which idea when. But Jesus and John Wayne talks about white Evangelicalism and the rise of Christian Nationalism in the United States. This book is about global politics.

The Chain of Ideas referred to in the title is about a series of linked political ideas that bring great replacement theory to authoritarian politics. And Ibram X. Kendi shows how the ideas in the chain have their roots in Naziism. Here’s how the book is organized:

There are ten links in the chain of ideas. Each of the ten sections in Chain of Ideas tells the story of a single idea, set in a different nation, featuring a different great replacement politician as its main character, while chronologically narrating periods of electoral growth for great replacement parties. The sections connect these political ideas to their historical antecedents, making Chain of Ideas transnational and transhistorical. The seeds of great replacement theory emerged at the end of the nineteenth century “when the establishment of modern nationalism in the West concurred with the high days of European colonialism and imperialism,” sociologists Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar explain. Enslavers, colonizers, eugenicists, fascists, segregationists, dictators, apartheid officials, and – most of all – Nazis all expressed earlier versions of these same ten ideas, or of great replacement theory.

The book is 550 pages and 20 hours long, so I can’t give as detailed a picture as I’d like. But let me give the section headings so you know what the ten ideas are in the chain.

Link 1: “Privileged groups lose out as disadvantaged groups gain.”

This is the basic great replacement idea. This section features Marine Le Pen in France.

Link 2: “Inequity data should be ignored.”

The whole great replacement idea is based on perceptions, not on facts. This section features Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Link 3: “Bigotry is prejudice and interpersonal discrimination.”

Great replacement theorists don’t want you talking about racist or bigoted systems. This section features José Antonio Kast of Chile.

Link 4: “Bigotry against historically disadvantaged groups is over.”

This idea teaches that we have gotten past bigotry and racism. This section features Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom.

Link 5: “Bigotry against privileged groups is on the rise.”

Make the privileged feel discriminated against, especially if any effort is made to adjust for historical inequities. This section features Geert Wilders of the Netherlands.

Link 6: “Majority and privileged groups are indigenous to the nation.”

This is the idea that “real Americans,” or the indigenous people in other countries are White folks, or precisely the groups with the most power. This section features Alice Weidel of Germany.

Link 7: “Fight for freedom as patriots, like the nation’s founders.”

Because privileged groups are the real patriots, fighting for their privileges is patriotic. This section features Pierre Poilievre of Canada.

Link 8: “Stand in the legacy of antislavery, anticolonialism, civil rights activism, and antifascism.

See how the ideas are linked? Because fighting for privileged groups is the real patriotism, they are in the noble legacy of all who have fought for justice. The politician featured in this section is Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

Link 9: “Insurrections against democracy protect the nation.”

This is how you get the firm belief of the J6ers that they were protecting the country. This section featured Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

Link 10: “Fight for privileges provided by dictators instead of power provided by democracy.”

And so we see how great replacement theory has led us through this chain of ideas to authoritarianism. The politician featured in this section is Vladimir Putin of Russia.

You’ll notice that Donald Trump doesn’t get a section to himself. Rest assured that he is mentioned in every section. But this isn’t a book merely about the United States. I learned much about what’s going on in the rest of the world that I didn’t particularly want to know.

I hope this all has intrigued you enough to pick up the book or place a hold for the audiobook. There’s much information provided explaining and expanding on each link in the chain, especially giving examples relating to the featured politicians. I did like that the chapters are short. In the print book, that helps me grasp the ideas. (In the audiobook, it just barrels through chapters quickly; in print I can do a chapter a day and have an amount I can digest.)

Opening your eyes to underlying ideas is a good way to combat them. I hope this book will reach a wide audience.

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Review of Threshing Day, by Rebecca Yarros

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review 0

Threshing Day

by Rebecca Yarros
read by a full cast

GraphicAudio, 2026. 5 hours, 35 minutes.
Review written October 21, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

Threshing Day in the Empyrean universe is the day that dragons choose their riders. The riders are chosen – or, mostly, they die. Don’t offend a dragon, or you’ll be burned to a crisp. Don’t fall off on your first flight, or, well, you’ll splatter.

This short book tells about the Threshing Day experiences of thirteen of the important characters in the Empyrean trilogy, so it’s probably better to read it after the other three books, as there are some spoilers – mainly finding out who gets paired with a dragon on Threshing Day and who dies. It also alludes to an important death that happens in one of the other books.

The most amazing thing about this audiobook was the production quality. There are sound effects throughout, and a cast of 39 people read the parts. We hear sounds of a forest in the background – and so many sounds of people screaming in the distance that it felt a little comical. The dragons are given effects to sound like imposing voices heard inside the character’s head.

Honestly, the stories felt a little repetitive. I knew that everyone featured would pair with a dragon, so I couldn’t fully enter into each character’s angst. And it’s been awhile since I listened to Onyx Storm, so it took a little bit of time for me to care about the characters – and I’d forgotten how brutal and violent that world is. Honestly, who sets up a military academy where they have to read a death roll every morning because so many recruits die? I wasn’t entertained when one of the featured characters saw another group of cadets burnt to a crisp by a dragon because they didn’t come at it the right way, and did it as a group.

Still, it was nice to see a human side to people like Imogen, and of course good to learn more about Xaden and his dragon. And yes, the production was amazing. If you’ve read the other books in the series, I do recommend trying this on audio.

rebeccayarros.com

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Review of Melodies of the Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes, compiled by Shamar Knight-Justice

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Melodies of the Weary Blues

Classic Poems Illustrated for Young People

by Langston Hughes
Art by 23 remarkable artists
Compiled by Shamar Knight-Justice

Harper, 2026. 48 pages.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This book is a picture book compilation of 23 poems by Langston Hughes and illustrated by 23 different distinguished artists.

What a wonderful way to introduce children to the work of this great poet! The thought and care that went into each artist’s illustration combines with the powerful words to pull you back to this book over and over.

There’s an Introduction from the compiler, Shamar Knight-Justice, then after the poems we’ve got a biography of Langston Hughes, a timeline of his life, and paragraphs about each of the 23 artists.

I believe this book succeeds in the goals set out in the Introduction:

Good poetry makes you feel something, whether you want to or not….

When creating this version of The Weary Blues, we wanted to ensure that the artistry matched the depth of its words. Each spread embodies nuance and layers. Poems of The Weary Blues have found their way into various collections and have been illustrated by talented creators before. This anthology of artists represents a different take and a unique challenge: seamlessly weaving together the artistic identities of twenty-three different illustrators in a way that is cohesive.

We hope that this body of work evokes emotion. That you see yourself reflected in the words that were written over one hundred years ago. That you are transported back to the time of the Harlem Renaissance, that you hear the jazz and the blues at their start, and encounter Hughes’s work from a new vantage point.
We are excited to reinvent such a canonical work. This book is meant to honor an icon.

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harpercollinschildrens.com

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Review of The Girls Who Grew Big, by Leila Mottley

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

The Girls Who Grew Big

by Leila Mottley
read by AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, and Khaya Fraites

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
2026 Alex Award Winner

This isn’t a book I would have picked up, except that it won a 2026 Alex Award, which is given to the previous year’s ten best books published for adults that are of interest to teens. The award process ensures that these books are well-written, and I haven’t regretted putting them on hold. (This one is popular enough, it took a long time for the hold to come in.)

The Girls Who Grew Big is about a gang of teen mothers who hang out together in the town of Paduah, on the panhandle of Florida. “Gang” probably isn’t the right word, though that’s probably how the town sees them. More than once the audiobook describes them as a coven – though the only magic is the magic of community.

There are three viewpoint characters. Simone’s the one who started the group when she gave birth to her twins in the back of her red truck. Now the kids are five years old and they live in the truck, parking where they won’t get tracked down by Child Protective Services, and often hosting the rest of the girls in the group. Simone can give tips for getting babies to nurse or other tricks of parenting. The twins’ father is around just enough to pay attention to them now and then – but also to keep the authorities off their backs.

Simone’s brother Jayden is in love with Emory, who recently gave birth to his son. The school counselor wants to push her to a special school with accommodations for teen mothers, but Emory is determined to finish her senior year as valedictorian and go on to college. She brings her baby to school in a sling, and the teachers will just have to deal with that.

And then a new girl comes to town from Indiana named Adela. Her parents sent her to her grandmother’s place when she got pregnant. She can have the baby, give it up for adoption, and their rich friends need never know. She can go back to competitive swimming and maybe regain her hope (or at least her dad’s hope) of swimming in the Olympics. But when she gets to know the girls, life starts looking different.

So that’s the pot this novel starts with, and very soon, the pot gets stirred. These girls that folks from the town dismiss or look down on are figuring out what they really want in their lives and how they’re going to get it. And along the way they’ll learn that they are not people to be dismissed.

leilamottley.com

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Review of Another Tongue, by Yevgenia Nayberg

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Another Tongue

by Yevgenia Nayberg

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2026. 36 pages.
Review written September 23, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This picture book explains simply to children what it’s like to move to a country where they speak a different language from the one you were born hearing.

Here’s how it begins:

This is your tongue. [Picture of a kid sticking out their tongue]

This is your mother’s tongue. [Picture of a woman holding a toothbrush and sticking out her tongue.]

The first language you learn is also called a mother tongue!

It is the first language you hear as a baby.

The book goes on to talk about how you learn all the words in your mother tongue.

Different countries have different mother tongues.

When you come to a new country, you may not understand the language at first.

Your ears may get tired of listening to the new language.

The new language may taste funny on your tongue.

There are amusing pictures with all of that, and collaged letters flying around the pages.

It goes on to talk about learning the new language, some words being easier than others, and often making mistakes.

But little by little,
the new words will
begin to make sense.

They will connect.
They will feel
like your own.

And from then on, you will be bilingual. Which means someone with two tongues!

What’s your mother tongue?

It’s all so simple, and by addressing the entire book to the reader, you feel the frustrations and triumphs of trying to get another language right. The pictures are imaginative, and the examples are silly (“Vampire State Building”), and it’s a delightful story about an abstract concept becoming understandable to kids.

Added later: I love the book all the more after looking up the author and discovering she’s Ukrainian.

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Review of The Last Dragon on Mars, by Scott Reintgen

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

The Last Dragon on Mars

by Scott Reintgen
read by Landon Woodson

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written October 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Last Dragon on Mars is the first in a trilogy about spaceships powered by dragons, featuring a crew made up of thirteen-year-old humans.

As the book opens, we meet Lunar Jones, an orphan who lives on a relocation center in Mars and takes care of the other kids there by working as a scrapper – when a storm goes through, he goes out into the wastes to dig up scrap metal to sell.

That first mission doesn’t go well (though we get to experience all the drama of the attempt), and Lunar takes refuge in a military zone, because the likelihood of being killed there is still less than the certainty of being killed by the other scrappers who are stealing the prize he found.

But in the military zone, Lunar follows some tunnels and discovers a massive underground habitat – and a dragon nobody on Mars knew about.

When the military folks in charge of the hidden base try to kill him (because of course they do), the dragon stops them – he’s chosen Lunar as his dragoon.

But not everyone wants there to be another dragon. The dragon is young, and the kids who were selected and brought up to train with him are about Lunar’s age, all young teens. The man in charge who arranged all this (except the part about Lunar joining them) has reason to believe dragons on other planets may not be happy to hear about another dragon on Mars.

It’s not giving anything away to say that Lunar and his new friends end up flying on a dragonship with their lives at stake.

I won’t even try to explain the whole world-building with a dragon for each planet and each moon and star. But it’s all built smoothly, with no lull in the action – we learn details because lives are at stake. And it adds up to battles in space with spaceships powered by dragons. What could be better?

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Review of Why Did Jesus Have to Die? by Adam Hamilton

Christmas, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

The Meaning of the Crucifixion

by Adam Hamilton

Abingdon Press, 2025. 121 pages.
Review written April 28, 2026, from my own copy, ordered via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

I’ve read several books about the meaning of the crucifixion, and especially offering alternatives to the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. Some stand-outs include Did God Kill Jesus?, by Tony Jones; A More Christlike God, by Bradley Jersak; Creation and the Cross, by Elizabeth Johnson; and Lamb of the Free, by Andrew Rillera. My personal favorite by far is still Lamb of the Free, but I have to admit that it’s written with super academic language, pretty much directed at scholars and other Bible nerds. Its point is understanding the entire sacrificial system in Scripture, and a side effect of that understanding is showing that the penal substitutionary theory simply doesn’t fit.

However, much as I love Lamb of the Free, it’s pretty clear that this new book by Adam Hamilton is much less intimidating for your average Christian to pick up to better understand Christ’s death. It would work much better for going through with a small group, and it’s even in six chapters – pretty much asking to be a study during the season of Lent.

He is also not at all combative about atonement theories. He’s not looking to get you to reject one and choose another that you like better. He does cover penal substitution theory and the questions it brings up. Rather than outright rejecting it, he asks what can we learn from it?

This is his overall approach to all the theories, and I find it refreshing. Looking at the prologue to the Gospel of John, where Jesus is described as the Word, the Logos, he explains how that lens can change our view:

If we begin by seeing the Crucifixion and the atonement through the lens of John’s prologue, then we can recognize that Jesus’ death is not primarily a transaction, mechanism, or formula – it is not a divine quid pro quo where one thing automatically results in another (Jesus’ death procures our forgiveness, for instance). Instead, the Crucifixion is first and foremost a Word or message from God. This Word has the power to save, to deliver, to rescue, to redeem, to forgive, to heal, to inspire, and to love. It is intended to move us, to change us, to open our eyes and our hearts, to transform us, and to heal us and the world. We might call this the Logos theory of the atonement or simply refer to the Crucifixion as God’s Word.

When we understand this, our question changes from “How does the Crucifixion work?” to “What is God seeking to say to us through the Crucifixion?” Paul notes, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved” (I Corinthians 1:18, emphasis added). It is the message of the cross – God’s Word to us through the cross – that has the power to save. Each of the various metaphors used in the New Testament, and each of the different popular atonement theories in the church, are ways the disciples, and believers ever since, have heard God speaking through the cross. Each captures a different dimension of this Word. The focus is not understanding a mechanism, but rather hearing and accepting God’s Word of redemption, forgiveness, and love.

In the chapter on the penal substitution theory, he elaborates on this:

In moving away from seeing the Crucifixion as a formula or equation, but instead as God’s message to us, Christ’s death is not something God needed in order to forgive us, but something we needed in order to understand and accept that we are forgiven. In seeing the Crucifixion as God’s Word, we see God demonstrating the pain he himself experiences as a result of human sin but also the lengths to which he is willing to go to save us from it.

At this point, let me say that I don’t like the title of this book. I’ve heard this question myself – but always from people who have been taught that the penal substitution theory of the atonement is the very definition of the gospel – and that Jesus had to die in order for God to forgive us. Implied in the question is, “If Jesus didn’t have to die for God to forgive us, then why did he have to die?”

God forgave humans long before Jesus’ death! Read Psalm 103 if you don’t believe me. The Hebrew Bible is full of statements declaring God to be compassionate and gracious and forgiving sins. So I strongly believe that Jesus did not have to die in order for God to forgive us.

Adam Hamilton does take this up in the Postscript to the book, and says he considered calling it instead, Did Jesus Have to Die?. He shows many places where it is clear that Jesus could have turned away from the cross, and that he laid down his own life rather than having it taken from him.

Jesus didn’t have to die. While his death was a result of opposition and injustice he faced, it was more than that. He believed his death would accomplish God’s purposes, purposes we have described in the previous chapters and perhaps others. For these reasons Jesus chose to submit to a horrible death. He believed that through it, he would change the world. This is captured in the words he spoke shortly before his death. “‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me.’ (He said this to show how he was going to die)” (John 12:32-33).

So Adam Hamilton does discuss several theories of the atonement – including New Covenant, Redemption, Moral Influence, and Christus Victor. But it’s important to him to look at them as metaphors rather than mechanisms.

The New Testament authors used metaphors and analogies to describe the significance of Jesus’ death. These were drawn from Scripture as well as legal, economic, relational, and battlefield images, to name just a few. But at times we confuse the metaphors for mechanisms and, instead of hearing them as analogies helping to explain the meaning of the Crucifixion, we read them literally as though they describe processes and transactions and formulas for how the cross “works.” It is the nature of metaphors and analogies that they break down when pressed too far or taken too literally.

The beauty of this book is that Adam Hamilton doesn’t try to show us which is the “correct” theory of the atonement. Instead, he guides us to see beauty and meaning in each one.

As I’ve noted, the use of these various metaphors, ten of which I’ve included in this book, is more like poetry than physics, more like art than algebra. This is why I’ve suggested that when we read the New Testament’s various “atonement theories” we’re meant to ask not, How does Jesus’ crucifixion work? but instead, What does it mean? What is it God is trying to say to us?

Added October 23, 2026: I wrote the above review before I knew that Adam Hamilton is running for United States Senate in Kansas. I think it bodes well for a lawmaker to be able to find good out of multiple atonement theories. Where I figure out “which one I agree with” – he shows us beauty in each one. I think that’s a good thing for someone who wants to represent all the people of his state.

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Review of The Fall of Iris Henley, by Jennifer Graham

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Fall of Iris Henley

by Jennifer Graham
read by Eva Kaminsky

Macmillan Audio, 2026. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written October 20, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put this audiobook on hold because it was very popular with our library customers, and it turns out that was a good tip. The Fall of Iris Henley is about a senior in high school who’s top girl on her cheer squad – the top of the pyramids and a flyer who does tricks in the air, caught by her squadmates.

But this year, their football team isn’t starting out in great form. They’ve lost a star player, Rocky, who was Iris’s boyfriend, and the cheer squad has lost the former top girl, Lynette, who had been Iris’s best friend. They were found together, dead, with the gun in Rocky’s hand. They’d been sleeping together behind Iris’s back, but nobody knew why Rocky would have killed them both.

And then an anonymous poster on their school’s private social media app comes up with a new theory – Iris did it. And that theory gains traction throughout the school. At first, her cheer team backs her up and sticks by her side, but something happens to challenge even their loyalty.

Iris was at a cheer sleepover the night in question, so she should have an alibi. Trouble is, after Rocky accidentally sent her a text that she knew was meant for some other girl, Iris got so drunk, she has no memory of the rest of the night.

The book is filled with cyberbullies and real-life bullies, constant questions for Iris about whom she can trust, and of course a conclusion filled with danger. Gripping suspense right from the beginning that feels all too realistic as cyberbullying gets way out of hand.

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Review of Blood of Tyrants, by Naomi Novik

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical 0

Blood of Tyrants

by Naomi Novik
read by Simon Vance

Tantor Media, 2013. 13 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written May 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

After reading a Naomi Novik book I’d somehow missed when it first came out, The Summer War, I was checking Libby for any other books by her I might have missed – and remembered that I never did finish the Temeraire series.

The reason was that I started the series listening to audiobooks on CDs, and after Book 5, the library no longer had them on CDs. At the time, I wasn’t listening to eaudiobooks, hadn’t downloaded Libby, and was skeptical of ebooks altogether. Well, the pandemic changed that by eliminating my commute for a few months. I discovered that listening to eaudiobooks on my phone could lighten not just my commute, but housework as well. I can even listen while posting reviews I’ve already written.

So I did go back and listen to the next book about Temeraire the magnificent celestial dragon – but other audiobooks that had recently come out or that I was reading for award committees got my attention first. But I listened to Blood of Tyrants, which is Book 8, and am happy to say there was no wait to check out Book 9, League of Dragons, which Libby says is the final book in the series. So I am going to finish this wonderful series at last.

The series is set in an alternate reality during the Napoleonic Wars – where dragons are very real and are used in battle something like ships were during our Napoleonic Wars, complete with crews riding in their rigging. The pattern of the books is O’Brien’s Master and Commander series, but with dragons. Our protagonist, William Lawrence, was even a naval captain before a captured dragon egg imprinted on him. After Temeraire hatched, they became a pair. Since that fateful meeting, in the books they have traveled to every continent except Antarctica. Napoleon has been much more successful than he was in our world, since, after all, he has dragons.

Naomi Novik is no longer even pretending to write standalone books. This installment begins and ends in the middle of the action. Now, I had not remembered how the last one ended, but at the start of this one, Lawrence has washed up on shore after a shipwreck somewhere in Japan – and he has lost his memory of the last eight years and everything about Temeraire.

Now, I am not a fan of amnesia in fiction. I feel like it’s a lot more rare in real life than it is in novels. That did help me with all I didn’t remember about Lawrence’s adventures as it slowly came back to him. But at the start, we’re in two plotlines, with Temeraire desperately wanting to go find Lawrence, but needing to get the ship back in sailing condition and take care of the dragon egg they were transporting. Meanwhile, Lawrence is in a Japan that was closed to foreigners, and he wants to stay alive but get home – he thinks he should get back to his ship, having completely forgotten Temeraire.

Anyway, I won’t say anything about the plot, because you should only read this book if you’ve read the seven others before it. As things continue, they progress to fighting Napoleon in Russia with the help of Chinese dragons.

I do highly recommend this whole series. Simon Vance reads all of them, and brings the world of an English naval gentleman to life. I know when Temeraire is speaking by the voice alone by now. And Naomi Novik has built an incredible world in these books. She’s literally built the whole world, as Temeraire has visited every continent (except Antarctica) and found different kinds of dragons on each one. In fact, a new area of concern in this book is that the Russians treat dragons very badly. So Lawrence and Temeraire don’t want to fight for them unless they stop abusing them – but that ends up in some feral dragons on the loose and a whole new set of problems. And winter is beginning in Russia.

This time I vow I’m not going to take as long a break before I tackle the next book, so hopefully I’ll remember better what’s going on. But I’m sure of one thing: Temeraire is going to continue to fight – both against Napoleon and for the rights of dragonkind. And he’ll continue to try to get Lawrence to wear shiny clothes.

naominovik.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?