Dragons vs. Drones
The Dragons vs. Drones series, Book 1
Wesley King
Razorbill
Fiction, MG Action/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Themes: Cross-Genre, Dragons, Girl Power, Portal Adventures, Robots
***+
Description
When Marcus was four years old, his father, a specialist with the CIA, walked out the door into an Arlington thunderstorm... and never came home.
Everyone said he must've been a traitor who stole secrets and fled to Russia, but the boy won't believe it. He's dedicated eight years to tracking
down what really happened. Finally, he thinks he has the key: a series of violent storms on a predictable schedule, counting down to a tempest just
like the one his father vanished in. Riding to the center, a lightning bolt carries Marcus to another world - him, and the five drones that were
following him.
Dree was born to a family of dragon riders, the protectors of the land. She even had the rare ability to touch a dragon without needing special
protection from their flame-hot scales. But it was a different world, and Dracone was a different city, back then. Now the new Prime Minister is
pushing an industrial revolution, devouring resources and turning on the dragons that used to be humanity's allies. She had to drop out of school and
work in a forge to help feed her family - and she even loses that after a mistake with an experimental metal toy. Only her forbidden friendship with
the Nightwing dragon Lourdvang keeps her from giving in to despair. Then, just when things couldn't get any worse, a windburst drops a strange boy at
her feet... and deadly metal flying machines start attacking her city.
At first, it seems like a simple, if tragic, accident: the drones must have been following Marcus and got pulled through the portal. But drones don't
act without orders, and their strikes are too coordinated to be glitches. Someone seems to want both Dracone and the realm's dragons wiped out, and
only Marcus and Dree, with the dragon Lourdvang, can stop them.
Review
I have to give this one credit for the most accurate title I've encountered in quite some time. It is, indeed, a story of dragons fighting drones. It is also a fairly devastating look at drone warfare, the utterly random and impersonal destruction rained down on a populace who cannot hope to fight back, and the hypocrisies of governments (such as, unfortunately, America) that talk about peace and stability while they wantonly torture civilians and raze the landscape for nothing more than simple greed, not to mention the empty promises of economic revolutions. Computer geek Marcus starts out as the average middle-grade underdog, down to his inability to talk to girls, but when need be he steps up his game. Dree struggles with her own past, including the loss of a father who still lives: a former dragon rider, he was crippled when forced to work the docks after the dragon purges began, and has been a meek shadow of the brave hero she grew up with ever since. Even the dragons have their own issues and personalities and cultures which sometimes interfere with the cooperation they'll need if they want to survive this devastating new war. Some elements of the plot require a certain suspension of disbelief - a prodigal programmer boy armed with only a laptop and a girl from a culture that has figured out welding but not gunpowder or microchips deconstructing and replicating drone technology, for instance - but, hey, that's what magic is for, and the action is quick enough that one generally doesn't have much time to overthink. The ending, unfortunately, fouls things up with a cliffhanger; this book does not announce that it's part of a larger series. Also, the belief suspension gets a trifle hard to maintain going into the finale, given a few revelations. Those issues aside, Dragons vs. Drones delivers exactly what it promises, a fast-paced action story where magic and science collide.