Amazon review....

[conuly]

I️ thoroughly enjoyed the Temeraire series, right up until this book. Like the others, it was well-written with a brand new setting and a brand new plot. However, the plot while starting out good, wobbled in the middle, and collapsed entirely in the end. Maybe someone else could appreciate the wishful deviation from history and what will assuredly be a miraculous recovery from the ending in the next book, but not me. I’m done with the Temeraire series, which saddens me because it was, up until this book, a very pleasant, historically brilliant series to read.

For context, the series in question features dragons in the Napoleonic Wars.

Comments

[siderea]

he doesn't have any direct encounters with the slave trade

Point of order: Temeraire is a person, the ownership of whom is contested and is a major plot point from the first page. Lawrence participates in the slave trade.

Even if he, and most readers, don't realize it.

[erinptah]

...look, I figured you were referring specifically to the human slave trade, because the issue of dragon-ownership-as-slave-trade is directly and explicitly confronted.

Temeraire starts making serious plans to change their legal and social status in Britain by the end of book 2, and it's an ongoing project throughout all the books. He explicitly compares his situation to human slavery -- that's the context in which "Laurence is pro-abolition" first comes up at all. Laurence grapples with the comparison, decides it's justified, and spends the rest of the time advising Temeraire about the most pragmatic ways to move his cause forward.

I'm not sure how anyone who's read past book 1 could miss it. Those anvils are dropped hard.