Throne of Jade is even more easily summed up than the last one.
Did you thoroughly enjoy His Majesty’s Dragon? Then you’ll certainly enjoy this one.
Did you think it was okay, but not the best thing ever? You’ll probably still like it.
Do you have knowledge of how terrible this timeperiod actually was, and trouble turning off your brain? Probably should skip this.
The problem is, it’s a lot easier to roll with “historical British, only not huge dicks” when you’re just hanging out with them. When you start to bring in other countries to be huge dicks to the poor British, things break down a bit.
Throne of Jade starts off with some politicking, but it’s quickly shifted to ew politics sucks. As usual, I liked the educated ambassador fellow, because he was enthusiastic and liked knowing stuff and was interested in other cultures, but as usual, the rest of the book is spent on how much he sucks while the main character is great because he’s not some mealy mouthed diplomat!
Oh, also there’s a bit with the main character goes on about the evils of slavery in what seems like it’s just there because it’s the right opinion to hold. It’s not a particularly nuanced view. And I noticed a distinct lack of one of the major contemporary points about slavery, that the slaves were worked to death within a few years. Once upon a time, the British pointed to America as an example of how to humanely treat slaves, because they were that much worse. Who watched the Lincoln movie? I liked how well it showed that just because people are supporting something we currently support, it doesn’t mean they aren’t racist assholes by the present standard.
You may well not want to hear about that kind of thing in happyfun escapistland, but then why make it specifically historical Britain? Why not some fantasy country that’s similar, but without the elephant skeletons in the closet?
The heavy focus on China has similar problems. China is the big powerhouse being mean to poor Britain, and it doesn’t even work well as a YAY A CHINA NOT CRUSHED BY THE WEST because they’re getting portrayed as such dicks in the process. It’s hard to forget the way the whole business went down in reality.
Also like midway through the main character has this little internal speech about how free trade with China would benefit both the British AND the Chinese, dammit, why can’t the fools see…?! And naturally the good ending of this is exactly that.
There is some business with dragons being treated differently in China, which is really intriguing and has a lot of great scenes about it but it doesn’t seem very well thought out as a whole. The Chinese dragons have all sorts of rights and can choose what they want to do. Also, they are in a billion carefully designed breeds which could only happen if there’s enormous amounts of artificial selection. The book never explains how the two situations coexist, nor does it explain what actually happens when a dragon bred to carry messages decides it wants to be, say, a farmer the way it’s claimed they can. And, of course, there’s the problem that dragons need enormous amounts of food and would need to earn much more money than an ordinary person just to stay alive.
There’s certainly room for that to develop, and perhaps if the book was set here and truly about China rather than China-by-way-of-the-West, this would have been better addressed. I’d really like to see the mechanics of how dragons coexist with people on a day to day basis. And the British side of it was done well enough, where they just completely don’t realize stuff like that a poem written from the point of view of a dragon could be written by a dragon.
I generally found the China bit far more interesting. For example, their own army has female dragonriders because Mulan in this managed to get a dragon, and you can’t change a dragon’s companion, so the emperor solved the problem by saying that the dragon part of the army is an exception to the usual male-only rule. Then families that didn’t want to lose a son started sending in their daughters instead. There’s potential tension in that, girls getting sent off because they’re less valued but ending up in a position of power as a result, which is missing in the British version that’s just that they have some women there because a few dragons only bond with women. China is pretty stereotypical, but it’s still a lot more interesting and vivid than the world of last book.
I found the ending incredibly disappointing. For most of the book is seems like the Chinese have some legitimate grievances but then it turns out that the representative is just evil. So it’s one of those books that presents itself as being about politics, then resolves things at the last second by saying that doesn’t matter.
The character who doesn’t like the main character turns out to be plotting to kill his brother and take over, despite the fact that he willingly chose an albino dragon (seen as cursed) and gave up his chance at the throne to do so. When I hit the point that his dragon’s revealed, I thought it would be part of the main character finally realizing the other guy isn’t actually a dick but just doesn’t like England for legitimate reasons, because he was really nice to take her and give up the throne, right? That’s the point of this? Nope, apparently “willingly lost chance at throne” just means you’re evil and going to try to murder your brother for it. Yep, in an utterly shocking turn of events the albino is linked to evil because media sure is overflowing with respectfully treated albinos and it’s about time someone took them on!
Then everyone else wants to be BFFs with Englishguy Main Character, down to being completely fine he got a member of the royal family killed (with, as far as I can tell, no actual evidence to prove it was justified), and everything’s solved, because it wasn’t actually a cultural clash or anything, it was just one guy causing problems because he was evil! Yay!
Basically, the ride was enjoyable, but even more than the last one, it falls apart if you think about it for a second, and the actual resolution is terrible.
There’s a really cool sea serpent who shows up for a short scene, though, and a lot of other vivid, well-described moments. In pieces, this book is delightful.
Ah, so you’ll be doing the whole series? I never bothered to read past Temeraire, so it’ll be interesting to get a sense of how the books moved on from there.
Probably! I’m going to at least do the first four this month.
At least there are some possible explanations for why most types of Chinese dragon seem to choose the job for which their sub-species was bred. If breeds have a genetic advantage in performing certain tasks, they’re going to be more efficient at them. Specializing could then lead to more money and treasure, providing an incentive to stick to a certain job. No use for a messenger-bred dragon to try its appendages at farming if running dispatches for the army is so much more lucrative.
Socialization could be another reason. There’s a pretty rigid hierarchy among the Celestials and Imperials (and lots of social classes and ethnic groups for the people in China), so the system may potentially include all other dragon breeds. The most prestigious opportunities available to a dragon from a particular breed could, over centuries of structuring dragon classes and careful handling, be made to coincide with that job which benefits humans the most. There’s also the probable difference in schooling, with only the elite breeds receiving the kind of advanced tutelage seen in the capital, while the bigger and more aggressive breeds are taught a similar program to the British and the lower-class breeds do with some sort of vocational training. Thus, not many dragons looking above their station (because they don’t possess the skills, or see no need for it, or see themselves as unworthy), and even less opting for a job “bellow” their standing,
Now I’m wondering if/how the Communist revolution in China would occur in Temeraire’s alt-history. And afterwards, would prestigious heavy-weight breeds be sent to be “re-educated” in the country-side, forced to perform the hard labour formerly reserved for lower-class dragons, like their human counterparts? Would there be populist dragon courts? And before then, dragon war lords?!
I was more skeptical looking at it from the other side – if they’re willing to take one sapient species and split it into a hundred specialized subtypes, why are the human Chinese still homogeneous? Where did they get the idea of relatively fair examinations to pick human bureaucrats when the dragons function on a bloodline is destiny model? And why did they apply that human model back to the dragons when it flies in the face of what they’re doing with the breeding?
And there’s still the problem of a valuable dragon type going fuck you I’m a poet, although I guess the idea dragons are all super concerned about their pile of gold means the invisible hand of the market is more reliable than usual.
Probably because most of the hundred specializations depend on physical characteristics, of which dragons possess a huge spectra. It’s relatively easy (at least in Temeraire alt-genetics, which are admittedly wonky) to breed for radically longer wing span/more aerodynamic shape/harder scales/special acid and fire-breathing abilities with such diversity, and then socialize and incentivize the resulting dragons to perform the job they are considered most suited to. You have to wait about 13-15 years for human sexual maturity, compared to the dragons’ 18 months, and what do you get in return? 10 extra cm of height? A 15% increase in muscle mass, granted the people in question get enough quality food to build that mass up? The nobility is already considered superior in intelligence, so no need to breed that trait in the general population (also, I don’t believe they’d succeed even if they tried. Intelligence is sort of… tricky and maleable, biologically speaking).
Also, there hasn’t historically been much mixing between ethnic groups within China. Maybe the prevalence of dragon breeding could have elevated that particular stigma, maybe not.
Selective blindness and double standards could explain the relative fairness. Once you get to sit the civil service exam you’re only accepted and promoted through merit (in theory), but you do have to get to that point first. Neither women or 90% of the peasantry had any chance to get that far, among humans. Common dragon breeds may not have it much easier, being taught enough formal education to get around China but not enough to pass a rigorous written examination. Lo and behold, a couple common dragons get through by going above and beyond what is available to them, while the vast majority of the draconic civil service continues to be made up of dragon breeds considered intelligent and suited to academic work (like their human counterparts, educated children of the merchant/middle class and lower nobility). Every dragon’s destiny is equal, but some are more equal than others.
I mean, yes, the books didn’t explore Chinese dragon society half as much as they arguably should have, but what we did see doesn’t technically contradict the realms of logic and possibility. As I see it, at least.
But dragons take years just to hatch, and then apparently stick around for centuries. (It also seems they produce very few offspring over that timespan, given how much trouble Britain has with breeding more.) Even with their ridiculously convenient genetics, breeding them should take much longer than humans, and you’re stuck with any mistakes far longer than with humans. Even starting with very little genetic variation in the humans, they should easily been able to produce variation in size and musculature by now.
Plus, the sort of people who breed their sacred dragons with a strong eye for their actual traits, as must have happened to the celestials from the start, should have pretty quickly noticed their own human nobility fails to live up to the same standard. If nothing else, the dragons themselves should have started complaining about the poor breeding habits of the humans, and it seems like celestial dragons outrank everyone but the human imperial family.
Really, the only way to really fit it into China’s culture would be to drastically roll back the number of breeds and remove the idea they’re human created. Say China was the cradle of the species so they started off with a couple very different breeds which they discouraged from interbreeding. The intelligence and general quality of the dragons arise from rewarding smart dragons with better posts and the dragons themselves preferring to breed more with the most successful while less successful dragons may not reproduce at all. Other areas don’t prioritize smart dragons at all (if anything they seem to dislike it) and crossbreed left and right, so they’re left with a wide range of traits but nothing that’s as good in the couple niches the pure breeds of China have.
Fair enough, but any of those small variations in average physical characteristics among human subjects would still pale in comparison to the usefulness of breeding dragons. Maybe there have been attempts, but I don’t see how they would have been considered successful; the most likely outcome is that the whole enterprise was written off as not worth the effort and control it takes.
As for breeding a smarter and superior nobility, I can’t help but think those efforts would fail due to the mothers’ genetic contribution being overlooked. How would you even moderate for traits a woman is likely to pass on to her children, if you don’t know how strong she is (being mostly locked up and, well, foot-bound) or how smart she is (having basically no opportunities for education or showing her thoughts). Female dragons seem to be treated fairly equally to their male counterparts, all things considered. Then there’s in-breeding, which is a bigger issue in human genetics.
Now that you mention it, human fertility probably does outpace that of the dragons’, but Britain’s breeding problems make very little sense. Once crisis strikes in Book Four, there’s suddenly “over a dozen eggs estimated to hatch within six months”, implying there must be some way to speed up/synch the hatching process. It’s possible the Chinese, along with their superior gene selection, have also figured out a way to use that to their advantage. Then the exceedingly slow and unreliable method of Celestial reproduction would be the exception, not the rule.
Your alternate idea for Chinese dragons sounds very intriguing, but I still maintain the system in the books is on the whole consistent and mostly logical.
Consider just how many people you’re working with in a country the size of China. Any useful changes would leave you with a large pool of people to work with. Breed smaller workers for light work and they take less food plus they can’t rebel as well. Breed stronger workers for your soldiers and blacksmiths. China already had a class based society that involved breaking people into different groups and even preventing marriages between some groups.
The gender issue isn’t a problem – just as we can breed cows to produce good milk despite only the females displaying the desired traits, you could easily rank women based on the traits their male relatives displayed, and also consider any traits they could both display (so, even if you banned women from being blacksmiths, you’d still know to pick the most muscular woman to have the blacksmith’s kids). If anything, the real problem is the reverse – the more attention they pay to objective characteristics for this, the less it makes sense they’d devalue women so completely, but that’s related to the general issue that it’s hard to believe they’d even develop the same level of sexist Confucianism in a world where they had intelligent female dragons who have full rights the whole time.
Now, if the dragons started off in distinct types that were just refined, it’s a lot more workable – in that case, you declare that nature has given everything its proper place and everyone should seek to be the best at what they’re meant to do and not try to rock the boat, and say the same thing applies to the gender division. Female dragons have a different place than female humans, just like the merchant is different from the peasant and the messenger dragon different from the soldier.
Once crisis strikes in Book Four, there’s suddenly “over a dozen eggs estimated to hatch within six months”, implying there must be some way to speed up/synch the hatching process.
Well, Britain has at least a few hundred dragons, right? They’re just not all breeds that are good in a fight. Plus they have more dragons total than they can actually field, since some have rejected a captain. So having a dozen total eggs ready to hatch and maybe a few more dozen developing seems reasonable.
The real question is how long will it take those to hit maturity and start producing new eggs? From the first book dragons seem to hit sexual maturity quite fast, but no one seemed to have any interest in having Temeraire breed as soon as he was able. That would suggest that fertility may take longer to develop, as it does in a lot of animals, and that the actual egg production is even more spotty.
China probably could design dragon breeds to reproduce faster, but what real incentive do they have? There’d still be the major problem that any breeding misfires are going to be around for centuries, you’d have worries about overpopulation, and in the time you spent trying to breed them for earlier hatching you could have been working on any number of more useful traits – particularly when early hatching probably comes with all sorts of health issues that’d then need another round of selection to fix up, just like breeding for tiny dogs initially gets you a breed of sickly runts.
Okay, I’ve pretty much reached the limit of my dragon-genetics imagining abilities. Your points on gender are, as always, really fascinating and I wish they were explored more in the book.
I’m sure I’m wrong about how it works as well, I’m not sure anything really fits the data from the books.
This series has a bit of a problem with anticlimaxes, in my view; a lot of things are not very well resolved, and I remember feeling similarly dissatisfied with Throne of Jade’s ending. I don’t ultimately care that much because adorable dragons are very adorable, but in general plot tends not to be a strong point of Temeraire. It’s a shame.
Maybe it’s fairer not to really consider it in terms of books with beginnings and endings, since the individual plots seem like they’re just there because you need those for a book. The real focus is just on the main characters running around doing or talking about things. If it were fanfic it’d probably just be some single million-chapter story.