"Throne of Jade"

[fiefoe]

Naomi Novik's sophomore entry starts slowly, without the exuberance of its predecessor. Action, when it comes, is still intense but doesn't bring satisfaction -- but then, it's not simply a dragon warfare book anymore.

• Laurence .. perceived how well they had distributed themselves around. Four of the smaller dragons darted upwards; the rest dropped perhaps a 100 feet in height, and Accedare was once again hard to tell from the decoys.
• "Digby, cast and mark that height," Laurence said;...  Digby took the small round-shot, bored through and tied to the height-line, and tossed it over Temeraire's shoulder, the thin silk cord paying out with the knotted marks for every 50 yards flying through his fingers.
• (Fireworks come to the rescue:)  the rockets that lay in the padding of straw were wildly elaborate, red and blue and green like something out of a child's nursery.
• Harris stood up from the gun and turned, grinning wide and gap-toothed, then fell with a look of surprise, his arm and shoulder gone.
• But if part would not yield, then all must perforce bend: even as Temeraire stopped his roaring and went flashing by, the whole ship turned away, driven broad-side to the wind.
• Already the battle seemed very like a nightmare in his own memory: the endless gaudy stream of the fireworks and the red light of the cannon firing.. the slow descent of the wave, like a curtain lowering upon a play.

Marine adventures:

• The Allegiance's smallest kedge anchor as large as the best bower on another ship; its flukes spread wider than the height of a man.
• At the summit of the waves the whole curving horizon was full of the heaving, billowing sea.
• The creature's body was immensely long; its head and  forelegs vanished beneath the waves on the other side of the ship, and its hindquarters had not yet emerged,
• Abruptly a section of the starboard railing just by the gun burst under the pressure into great jagged splinters.. Chervins threw up his arms, gargling around the shard in his throat, and slumped over the gun;

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