Black Powder War

Will Laurence, a captain in His Majesty's Aerial Corps, is flying home from China with his dragon Temeraire when new orders redirect them to Istanbul. Britain has paid the Ottoman Empire for three dragon eggs. Laurence and Temeraire must carry them back to England before they hatch.

The errand goes wrong almost at once. The Sultan has switched sides, and Napoleon's armies are moving across the continent. Laurence and Temeraire are pulled into the Prussian campaign as the war closes in around them.

The setting is an alternate Napoleonic Europe where every army keeps dragons in its air corps. Temeraire carries a grievance of his own: in China, dragons are treated as citizens, and that sits badly beside the way Britain treats its own. Lien, a Chinese dragon who blames him for her master's death, is allied with those who oppose them.

This third Temeraire novel, first published by Del Rey in 2006, follows His Majesty's Dragon and Throne of Jade. The sea voyages of those books give way to a long overland trek. Along the way come a guide of mixed British and Nepalese descent, a very eager young dragon and a good deal of military history.