There's a sense of the threadbare in this one, a plot pulled forward more for its own sake than from a feeling of inner motivation. Coming from the plod of the previous book, this mostly feels like an attempt to renew a status quo from earlier works: travel and action, but it continually feels contrived, with the writer's need to create tension and dissonance all-too plainly evident.

That said, there's still a lot to like about the book: the writing is crisp in many ways, and I find the general worldbuilding intreguing.

My largest qualms come mostly through a continuation of character growth degradation, especially on the part of the dragons. The intrinsic motivations for the dragons have been becoming steadily more and more frail, and Temeraire seems to be constantly mired in a sort of backward juvenile innocence that I find frustrating after his early potential for a rather nuanced and important socio-philosophic perspective. Rather than pitting his burgeoning self awareness against Laurence's Royalist politics, we see an increasingly jealous character. While I might otherwise enjoy the subtle touches of Western dragon lore regarding the urge to hoard, it seems to be overtaking the character of all the dragons to a point of obsession. This leaves very little room for further growth.