A review by whosevita
Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

3.0

I'm gonna be hones, I listened to the audiobook on 2x speed and for most of it my brain was just off. I really don't like politcal fantasy and this book was very much that. This book was mostly just court politics and them being on a boat to China. And to be honest, there are many characters in this book and I still don't know who's who. When people died, I did not care. I literally didn't remember who they were. Sometimes a little description would be nice. Especially at the beginning of the book. It's very ambitious that Novik thinks we remember all the characters by name only. Anyway, I really liked the friendship between Laurance and Temeraire as usual. It seems to me that this book will follow seperate plots per book with the overarching thread of the Napoleonic wars. I haven't decided yet if I want to continue. If I didn't have the audiobooks to my disposal I would have definitely already quit. It just isn't that interesting to me. Normally I read this stories mostly for the characters. Even though I really like Laurance and Temeraire, the rest of the characters leave me cold. There's also barely any real development. There was like a slight tension between them but it gets quickly resolved. Temeraire has loved Laurance unconditionally since the very beginning-like all dragons and their handlers- so there's no real development in their relationship. Laurance is just as perfect as always. He actually annoys me a bit lol.
Super disturbing that temeraire has dragon sex though. I know that's he's like matured in dragon years and stuff, but I still saw him as a child. But I guess it wil come back later? Maybe like a seperate arch that temeraire has a child? I would so not enjoy that lol.