Once again I find myself ambivalent about cheering for the dastardly British military, but in this volume dragon and rider are obliged to take a slow boat to China as a result of the diplomatic contretemps caused by Temeraire's capture and subsequent indoctrination into the British Imperial war machine. The voyage is long and rather tense, but the eventual arrival in China is a revelation, and I quite fancy the idea of Temeraire going back and sparking a revolution amongst the dragons of Britain, I can't imagine that will go down well at all.