2019/30: Blood of Tyrants -- Naomi Novik

... when Laurence put his hands to it, he found he knew how to climb up, and his body remembered the seat in the elbow's crook as though he were going blindfold up into the rigging. Laurence sat still a moment with the book open upon his lap, struggling with a kind of horror between bone-deep familiarity and endless strangeness. [p. 168]

In which Temeraire and Laurence go to Japan, and then head west.

Laurence is washed up on a beach, with an extraordinarily precise form of amnesia: while he soon remembers his name, he has forgotten everything that has happened since he was captain of His Majesty's Ship Reliant, in 1804. It is now 1812.

Laurence's amnesia, and his reunion with the dragon he doesn't remember at all, is fascinating reading, but I'm not sure it contributes much to the plot. Amnesiac or not, Laurence would encounter the same people, run the same risks -- this is during the period when foreigners were forbidden to tread Japanese soil except at the trading port at Nagasaki -- and have to cross the same terrain. But of course Temeraire is distraught, first by the absence and presumed death of his captain, and then by the reappearance of his favourite human, who is behaving like a stranger. And nobody will tell Laurence much about the eight years he's forgotten, for fear of oversetting the fragile balance of his mind.

Anyway: there is not a moment to be lost. A vital mission to China -- where some bad things have happened -- and then west to Russia, where Napoleon is marching on Moscow ... Laurence has acquired yet another companion, Junichiro, who has sacrificed his own honour for that of his master, Kaneko, who first rescued Laurence. Junichiro seems to be no more than a miserable teenager for much of the book, yet does have his own agenda, as is revealed towards the end of the book.

There is a lot here that is unremittingly grim: the opium plots, rebellion, Russian treatment of dragons, and of course the relentless march of Napoleon's army. True, there are sparks of brightness (not least the moment when Laurence regains his memory: or the moment, before that, when he realises how much he cares for Temeraire) but on the whole it is far from joyous. Also, there are at least two scenes where a dragon is severely wounded (Immortalis, for instance), but apparently recovers almost instantly. Continuity issues or lack of clarity on the passage of time?

This novel ends on a cliffhanger. But the end is nigh ...