This book has some really interesting dragons and dragon-related culture and nice travalogue bits. Laurence is increasingly annoying, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s questionable if you know history or think too long. If you didn’t mind him at all last book and don’t know much about British history, and probably nothing about African history either, you’ll probably like this one.
This book is the Africa book.
There’s a while spent on setup and then the plot kicks up when, searching for this mushroom they need to cure a lot of sick dragons. They find a huge number of them in an obviously cultivated area that they don’t realize is cultivated because lol Africans, although the book tries very hard to justify it as that they just believed no one really lives in the interior of Africa and not because racism. Apparently no one has noticed they’re getting slaves from the interior yet.
After stealing the mushrooms and attacking the guardian dragons repeatedly with no attempt to recognize that they’re stealing, they finally work it out when people show up, only for the mean people to not listen to them and capture all of them and some of them are injured and die in the process (because of their attack and escape attempt) and it’s sooooo unfair.
But anyway, we learn that in Africa, they think dragons are the reincarnation of some great hero. They tell the dragon who it used to be while it’s still in the egg, then have it imprint on the entire village rather than a single human. It’s a really cool idea. It doesn’t work at all with the idea that there’s a thriving slave trade – the book attempts to explain that the slavers do hit and run tactics and kill all witnesses, but come on, it’s a dragon. You can’t really outrun one of those easily. But in every other way it’s a really cool idea. Maybe if the slavers had dragons of their own, that’d better mirror the real-world situation.
Anyway. The innocent British who totally never personally benefited from the slave trade except in the millions of ways it benefited their country have to deal with all these mean Africans who are planning to launch an assault on Britain!!!! THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND IT’S NOT BRITAIN’S FAULT IT’S JUST THE FAULT OF A FEW BRITISH PEOPLE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE FACT IT’S TOTALLY LEGAL! And they won’t accept that Laurence totally has lots of black friends and his dad tried to get people to pass a bill gradually phasing out slavery! They totally are going to eventually pass a law saying that they can only keep working the existing stolen people to death but they won’t get any new ones! How can we help you if you’re going to be like this???
Also, they murder the black guy who was with them because of prejudice about him being from a slave-taking tribe even though he was actually a former slave fighting against slavery. And when Laurence refuses to help them learn more about his totally innocent country THEY WHIP HIM. See, people can be mean no matter what color their skin is! It’s so hard being a rich British white guy.
Oh and Laurence never expresses actual remorse for the theft of their mushrooms. He just sticks on “well, we didn’t realize they were yours and you should have just nicely asked us to pay after you caught us red handed and firing on you, why are you so unreasonable?”
Also there’s this really annoying subplot about how the female captain is pregnant and doesn’t get why everyone is embarrassed about her out of wedlock pregnancy because somehow the women live in an isolated bubble while the men still understand basic social norms. I guess because it’s funny. (Also, only men understand how fragile a pregnant woman is!) It’s Laurence’s (slavery supporting but he’s a nice guy really) friend’s kid, and he wants to do right by marrying her, and instead of explaining to her why and letting her make up her own mind, Laurence gives her this nonsense explanation about inheritance rights to convince her it’s just that his friend doesn’t want to miss out on that so she should get married on a strictly legal level. Bear in mind his friend wants her to quit her job and only very grudgingly is convinced that it’s not feasible, and still doesn’t like it, and she has no idea what’s really going on because somehow isolated bubble and because no one will explain. She has no idea the guy inherits everything she owns and that he gets to have sex with her whenever he likes and the marriage vows are that she’ll obey him without question and he can beat her to death if she wants because only a man can bring a case to court. Thanks, Laurence! I’m sure this won’t end badly for her. Bonus: She blithely assumes she’ll just get a divorce if it doesn’t work out, but of course that’s something only men could choose to do (and also, her husband would then own her kid if it happened). Does anyone correct her? No, they’re too busy being scandalized by her casually mentioning divorce. But don’t worry, I’m sure Laurence’s slavery supporting chauvinist friend marrying her only out of obligation who wants her to quit her job won’t take advantage of her at all.
But the thing about dragons thinking they’re people and living in real symbiosis is very cool and all the Europeans should just die of the black plague and we could focus on the fun adventures of life when your great-grandfather is a giant dragon. Or the fun adventures of being a giant dragon who’s great-granddad to lots of squishy humans.
Anyway, at least it ends with the African dragons slaughtering their way through all the colonies.
The characters are so, so flat. The main characters come across some cartoonishly abusive slavers who managed to hide along with their slaves and Laurence is all angry and offended and frees the slaves. I’d have been much more interested in what he’d have done if the slaves had been perfectly well cared for and generally living up to the British excuses about how slaves are better off slaves. Or at least if he’d done this before learning that the African dragons were going to destroy everything because of the slave trade and in a circumstance where he couldn’t have taken the slaves along even if he’d wanted to. Then when they go back home everyone doesn’t believe them about it being revenge for the slave trade. They’re being presented as the good people, but only by making their opposition so terrible that anyone would look good in contrast.
There’s sort of something like that at the end. The British deliberately infect the French dragons with the plague, which will actually infect all mainland dragons due to how fast dragons travel between countries and end with Britain having the only force of dragons left, and Laurence betrays his country to bring the cure to them. If the story hadn’t been all muddied up with the real slave trade and trying to present Laurence as a good person with regard to that, and if this wasn’t at the end of book four of Laurence’s adventures in being really flat all over the world, the issues of dragon treatment would have come across as a real change in his opinion. Maybe having this happen at the end of the second book, since it flows naturally from seeing the dragon’s better treatment in China to discovering his own country is willing to kill off all the other dragons in Europe and Asia to gain an advantage. Instead by the time it happens it’s a foregone conclusion (in no small part because Temeraire wouldn’t have put up with it anyway) and seems to just be happening because Laurence can’t ever be bad according to the reader’s morals.