I will say that I'm puzzled by the line at the beginning of the book about Operation Bulldog forces being attacked by Inner Sphere bondsmen on Jaguar planets. That seems directly contradictory to both the portrayal of the Jags as being particularly brutal and oppressive occupiers of Inner Sphere planets that did not enjoy civilian support at all as well as repeated places where it was made clear that the Jaguars did not allow bondsmen from the Inner Sphere to regain warrior status due to having a touman consisting only of Trueborn.
There's an attempt to show that not all Jaguar administrators were the same, and that not all Jaguars were of the same mindset. There are shades of gray in that fur. Keep in mind that Judith Faber was taken as a bondsman by the Smoke Jaguars on Tukayyid, so while it wasn't common, it was done.
Combine-born Jaguar bondsmen, led by Akodo Haru, were a key plot point in the MechCommander game. This is an attempt to reconcile the game events with canon. Yes, the sourcebooks (written from Anastasius Focht's or Phelan Kell's POV) do portray the Smoke Jaguars as brutal, unimaginative killers with nothing but disdain for freebirths. But maybe those POV accounts didn't capture the full story.
Moreover, if the Jags were planning to launch a new assault on the Inner Sphere, aiming for Terra, they'd want all their Trueborns on the warpath. Who guards the OZ, then? Perhaps using bondsmen for garrison duty was considered a suitable way to keep the rear area secure while putting maximum force towards gaining the ilClanship.
