Tongues of Serpents

Captain Will Laurence has been convicted of treason and sent to the penal colony of New South Wales, with the dragon Temeraire beside him. They land in a young settlement with two factions: supporters of William Bligh, the deposed governor, and followers of the rebel John Macarthur.

Laurence is assigned to find a route over the Blue Mountains. His friend Tenzing Tharkay, meanwhile, looks into a smuggling ring operating in the colony.

Then a dragon egg is stolen. Laurence, Temeraire and their companions, Granby and the fiercely competitive Iskierka among them, head into the harsh Australian interior to recover it.

The chase runs through desert country and up to a northern port. There the party meets dangers more immediate than the court politics they left behind in England.

This is the sixth book in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, set in an alternate Napoleonic Wars where every nation keeps dragons in its air forces. Del Rey published it in the United States on 13 July 2010. The pursuit across an unmapped continent drives the story, and the egg's fate hangs on it.