Finally, finally, after everything, despite everything, I finished the Temeraire series. I started reading Temeraire after my partner recommended it to me with the tagline "Napoleonic War with dragons" and I feel like I've been to as many places emotionally as Laurence and Temeraire have been geographically. Feelings all over the map.

The final book does contain what you might expect: driven out of Russia by General Winter and the allied forces, Napoleon puts forth his last, terrifying effort to dominate all of Europe and our heroes--ALL of them--gather together to oppose him. Novik breaks up this basic fighting plot with wild, suckerpunch twists, which were honestly the highlight of the book for me.

In general, the Temeraire series is very hit or miss: while I was glued to the first three, my interest waned during the various Road Trips to Hell books and then bounced back during the fascinating world-building of the Incan Empire and the end of the slave trade. Novik painstakingly sets up the themes like the practicality of honor/pride on an individual and governmental level; multiculturalism/cross-cultural exchange; the concept of "rights" and who is worthy of them; the effectiveness of various types of government. This last book contained all that in microcosm. Some plots and character moments tickled me pink while my eyes glazed over during others.

My eyes wouldn't have been so glazed if I had read the other books more recently. The cast of the series is huge, and everyone gets at least a few minutes of screen time. The upside of everyone getting pages is obscure favorites are back, but the downside is the original squad gets fewer. Sometimes it stretched belief that enemies or forgotten allies appeared instead of Granby, Harcourt, Little, Keynes, or Tharkay, but I sped through anyway.

Because hOLY dAMN, Novik was ruthless with her plot. I'm unsure if she was limited in her page count or what, but this book should have had another hundred pages or so, to truly do what Novik wanted to do. I can only describe the pace as "breakneck" because things kept happening with little or no time to truly process them, for the reader or the characters. This brutal pace sped up towards the end with frequent fade-to-black on important scenes that should not have been fade-to-black. It left subplots and characters hanging. The ending itself, while definitely pleasing, is so abrupt that it seems deux-ex-machina. So while I made coo-ing noises and gripped my copy white-knuckled at some points, at others I literally fell asleep.

*throws confetti* honestly, this series and LEAGUE OF DRAGONS specifically are well-written, globe-trotting adventures with giant dragons and I love them. There are bad parts and good parts, but I'm glad I read the series. The good parts made me incandescently happy.