maiakobabe 's review for:

Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik

4.0

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This book took me longer to get through than the previous three of the series. The dragons of England have caught a plague, which is wasting them away and killing them one by one. In a desperate attempt to find a cure, Laurence, Temeraire and a few of their squadron sail to Capetown, the Dutch colony beginning to establish itself in South Africa. There they search for a cure, a rare mushroom that grows only in the deepest forests. Novik has clearly done a lot of research and her portrait of this alternate version of Africa in 1805 is given equal thought, care, and fantasy dragon culture as the other countries that the series has visited. I still found myself very nervous, reading a white author working in a fantasy version of such a painful historical period. The horrors of the slave trade are not ignored, nor is the hypocrisy and greed of those who continually vote to maintain its legality in England. I don't think that authors should avoid writing about this period, but I couldn't read it without anxieties about misrepresentation, and on whether this book (only 12 years old) would show its age. I will definitely be picking up the next one, because this one ends on a dreadful cliffhanger. I might take a little break before I jump into it though.