Dragon and Judge (Dragonback Volume 5) [Hardcover]

I have been a fan of Timothy Zahn since Heir to the Empire, and it has been a pleasure to watch his work subtly change and mature over the years. The Dragonback series, thus far, has been potentially his most engaging work yet, although The Icarus Hunt has historically been my favorite.

Dragon and Judge might have changed that.

I am amazed at what Zahn has managed to do in this so-called children's series - he has taken very real characters, warts and all, through deep personal struggles that most authors would not dare to plumb in literary fiction, much less sci-fi "youth" fiction. And he has done so in the midst of a fast-paced, action-filled story brimming with gloriously witty writing. Is it a sci-fi? A coming-of-age? A gritty social commentary? A deep psychological drama? A tantalizing mystery? A modern morality play? A suspenseful nail-biter? Or perhaps even an intricate allegory of deeper truths?

Zahn has that wonderful knack of taking other genres and plopping them with great skill and believability into a sci-fi setting. The Icarus Hunt was a classic whodunit; Night Train to Rigel was a deco-era spy thriller; The Green and the Gray was a clever spin on gang warfare. What Zahn has done in the Dragonback series is perhaps even more impressive, more well-rounded and well-crafted.

The story continues seamlessly as the pieces of this intricately woven tapestry begin to come together with amazing skill. The characters are consistent - growing and changing as people do in real life, reacting in believable ways to extraordinary circumstances. May I, for a moment, risk offending fans of the great J.K. Rowling by comparing these two series? I am a dedicated Harry Potter fan, but it is clear that while she is extremely talented and creative, Zahn is the superior storyteller. His characters are more consistent than hers, his suspense better sustained, his surprises more genuine, his story more flawlessly executed.

I have read many books, and I have written many myself, and I have become extremely difficult to impress. But Dragon and Judge impressed me considerably. It is a mature novel from a mature author, who has the courage to write a very moral story in an increasingly immoral world, and to do it with excellence that I know from experience is almost impossibly draining. Especially when the series has not even attained much renown. That is a mark of integrity.

To those who have not yet discovered the Dragonbacks, or Zahn fans who are hesitant to read a "kid" series, I challenge you to immerse yourself in the world of Jack and Draycos, and see if you can emerge from it without being changed. You are unlikely to encounter, in any series or novel or story, two characters you care about more than the noble ex-thief and his K'da poet-warrior. And that is what separates a good story from a great one.

Dragon and Judge is a great one.

I've been reading Timothy Zahn's "Dragonback Adventures" series with a fair amount of enjoyment through the five books so far. It's a YA series. The hero is Jack Morgan, who has acquired a symbiotic companion, Draycos, a dragonlike being of an alien species, the K'Da. The K'Da can turn two-dimensional on the skin of an appropriate host. Indeed, they need to do so at least every six hours or so. Draycos was one of a vanguard group of K'Da as well as their hosts, the Shontine, who were fleeing an evil enemy in another galaxy. They had arranged for a colony in our Galaxy, but were ambushed on arrival. Draycos was the only survivor, and luckily for him Jack turned up -- luckier still, humans are acceptable hosts.

Over several books Jack and Draycos have been trying to track the humans who seem to be helping the bad aliens arrange to destroy the rest of the K'Da. They have by the by acquired an ally of sorts, Alison Kayna, a girl Jack's age (14 or 15) with a similar skillset to Jack's -- thief, hacker, safecracker, etc. And in the previous book they discovered a planet inhabited by a species much like the K'Da, but doomed to mindlessness by the lack of suitably intelligent hosts. Alison is now host to a female named Taneem. (So it would seem -- possibly -- that love interests are in place for both Jack and Draycos, though no real moves in that direction have been taken.)

In this book the quartet head to a planet where Jack's Uncle Virge had stashed something mysterious in a safe-deposit box. No sooner does Jack arrive, however, that he is shanghaied by a group of aliens and taken to their rural home to act as "Jupa", or Judge-Paladin -- to adjudicate tribal disputes, basically. It turns out he smells like their previous Jupas -- who turn out to have been Jack's long-dead parents. Jack cooperates, while he and Draycos sense a mystery concerning an abandoned mine -- and possibly concerning Jack's parents' death.

Meanwhile Alison retrieves the contents of the safe-deposit box, and is immediately kidnapped by bad guys who have been expecting someone to take an interest in that box. Rather implausibly, what they really want is a super-skilled safecracker, to open a safe from Draycos's ship -- that may contain information about the arrival of the rest of the K'Da. In other words, these are the bad guys. Why a 14 year old girl is the best safecracker available to them is a mystery never revealed. It turns out the safe is back on the planet from a couple of books before where Jack freed some slaves -- and Alison finds herself, against her will, guilted into trying to free more slaves.

The book (as with all in the series) has great gulps of implausibility and downright silliness. But it is also fast-moving, fun, with engaging main characters. I find the whole series pretty enjoyable fluff.

Dragon And Judge is the fifth book in Timothy Zahn's Dragonback series, picking up shortly after where Dragon and Herdsman left off. As readers of the first four books will know, Jack, an orphan con-artist/thief (reformed, he insists) and Draykos, a warrior/poet of the dragon-like K'da, are working against a deadline to find out who was behind the attack on the advance fleet of refugee ships that Draykos' people were traveling on, an attack that left Draykos the only survivor. They originally only had two clues -- that the attack was carried out by mercenaries, and that the mercenaries had aliens known as Brummgas in their ranks. Now, after Jack's having first joined up with a mercenary group and then later having himself sold as a slave to a prominent Brummga household that also dabbles in mercenaries, they know all of the key players behind the attack. But they still do not know the exact time and place when the rest of the Shontine/K'da fleet is to arrive, which they must find out in order to prevent it from being ambushed.

Dragon And Judge starts with Jack and Draycos, along with Alison Kayna and her recently acquired K'da companion, Taneem, aboard the Essenay, but things quickly go awry when they decide to make a side-trip to a planet called Semaline in the hope of getting some cash for fuel. In a double case of seemingly mistaken identities, Jack is abducted by a group of Semaline natives known as the Golvins who are convinced that he is the judge they have been waiting for. And Alison is in turn abducted by the Malison Ring who believe her to be working for Jack's Uncle Virgil. The book alternates the action between what's happening with Jack and Draykos back on Semaline and what's happening with Alison and Taneem when they are taken to the Brummga estate where Jack had once been a slave.

"One of the Eytras was standing a little in front of the rest. It was, Alison knew, the position a leader would normally take. 'Good evening,' she said, nodding to all of them and then focusing her attention on the Eytra. 'Do I have the honor of addressing the Penitent?'
--A ripple of surprise ran through the group. The Eytra himself gave no visible reaction. 'I am,' he said. 'Stronlo is my name. Yours is Alison Kayna?'
--'Yes,' Alison confirmed. 'Why the name Penitent?'
--A flicker of pain crossed Stronlo's face. 'I was there when Jack Morgan offered us freedom. I failed to grasp that ofer, and have spent two months repenting my foolishness.'
--He straightened up. 'But now I have been given a second chance,' he said firmly. 'Now that you are here to free us.'
--Alison felt her throat go dry. Shoofteelee, back at the house, had had the same attitude. And the same assumptions. 'That's not exactly the case,' she said carefully. 'I came on a mission of my own.' She had a quick flash of inspiration -- 'At the request of Jack Morgan and the black dragon.'
--'She lies,' one of the Jantries murmured. 'She doesn't know the dragon. She's a spy.'
....
--'Then repeat for us the poem he spoke to the human Noy,' the Jantri said.
--'You must be joking,' Alison protested. 'That dragon has hundreds of poems swimming around his brain. I have no idea which one he hauled out for Noy.'
--'Then perhaps you do not know him after all,' the Jantri growled.
--'The poem begins this way,' the Compfrin beside her offered helpfully.
--'The night was calm, the battle near,
-- The enemy was set with fear,
-- Their eyes had hearkened,
-- The sky had darkened
-- Memories we held so dear.'
--'No,' came a quiet voice from behind them.
--The entire group spun around, their weapons snapping reflexively up into ready positions. And there they froze as a muffled gasp rippled through their ranks.
--Taneem was crouched above them on a large tree limb, her silver eyes shining like tiny moons in the darkness. 'That was incorrect,' she said into the taut silence. '_This_ is the correct poem:
--'The night was calm, the battle near,
-- The enemy was wet with fear.
-- Their ears were hearkened;
-- They had darkened
-- Memories we held so dear.'
--She switched her tail, her eyes shifting to the Jantri. 'I am not the black dragon,' she said. 'But perhaps I will do.'

This fifth book is more on a par with the first two volumes, particularly as it advances the plot considerably with a number of revelations, most significant of which is Jack's finding out who his parents really were and who he really is. However, like the third and fourth volumes, it still annoys me at times in that the plot sometimes requires certain characters to either be dumber than they are or at the very least conveniently forgetful. There's still a lot to be wrapped up in the sixth and final volume, and I look forward to reading it and seeing how it all ends. Recommended.