Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik

This book became much more compelling in its final third (as an exploratory party in Australia finds a new method of Chinese shipping after all sorts of trouble). I appreciate that Novik is doing a lot to keep the books from becoming repetitive (Laurence and Temeraire's association with Britain is questioned, for one thing, and the locales keep changing), but because the plot started as a wild goose chase, it was hard to get into it until all the threads came together at the end. I will still read the next book when it comes out, but this series definitely started with its strongest book.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

This book is a complex meditation on the nature of love, responsibility, and honor set in Dejima, a Dutch trading post near Nagasaki, around the turn of the nineteenth century. It took me a little while to get into this book because there are many characters and many bits of plot going on--and people drop out of view for long portions. Still, I was fascinated not only by the feel of the place and time, but by the characters, who confront greed, corruption, and temptation on all sides.