Draycos is a K'da poet-warrior, a dragonlike being who maintains a symbiotic relationship with the humanoid Shontine. As refugee species, they seek a new home
after being devastated by the Valagua. Draycos and his Shontine host are the first of their kinds in the Orion's Arm section of the galaxy... and aboard the first
ship attacked by traitorous contacts there. His host dead, the ship crashed and damaged beyond hope of repair, Draycos has only six hours before fading to
nothing... but fate hands him a most unusual chance at life.
Fourteen-year-old Jack Morgan has more problems than most humans twice his age. Raised by Uncle Virgil, a con artist and thief of superior talent, he is now alone
and on the run for a theft that - for once - he didn't have a hand in committing. It would be one thing if it were just the police looking for him - he knows how
to handle cops - but Jack's nemesis is the Braxton Universis megacorporation, one of the most powerful businesses in the galaxy, and those business types don't give
up easily. While hiding out on an obscure planet, he sees a space battle bring down an unfamiliar alien freighter. Jack goes to investigate, and finds himself
chosen as the new and unwilling host of Draycos.
The dragon offers him a deal. If Draycos helps Jack figure out who framed him, then he expects the boy to help him discover who tipped the Valagua off to the
Shontine/K'da refugees' plans. Helping anyone but himself goes against everything Uncle Virgil taught him, but Jack doesn't seem to have a choice.
Review
This was a fun, quick, and action-oriented sci-fi story. Draycos the K'da is an interesting addition to the annals of literary dragons and dragonlike beings. He
exists as at three-dimensional creature, but when he "rests" on a host he is a two-dimensional living tattoo, the rest of him stretched in another dimension.
Draycos also has an interesting personality, truly a warrior and a poet. Jack is burdened by a dark past, but still hopes - against his own jaded nature - that
someday he can live a "normal" life. Their enemies are not stupid or obvious, and neither are our heroes. I look forward to the next installment in what the cover
claims is a six-part series.
Jack Morgan, the fourteen-year-old human orphan, and Draycos, the dragonlike K'Da poet-warrior, have searched tirelessly for a clue about who betrayed Draycos's
species and annihilated the first wave of would-be refugees from their distant sector of the galaxy, but thus far have come up empty. Draycos saw no markings on the
enemy craft, but their precision movements led him to believe that they were trained military, probably mercenary forces... an observation that leads an increasingly
desperate Jack and Draycos to gamble their own safety by joining up with a likely outfit. It was supposed to be easy: fake their way into the system, get the data
they want, and escape. Mercenaries in the Orion Arm traditionally recruit kids about Jack's age, paying their parents handsomely for two to five years of service, so
he shouldn't look out of place during his short stay. Besides, not even mercenaries would send barely-trained children into a combat zone... or would they?
Review
Pretty fast-paced, this story takes up roughly where the first book left off. New potential allies and enemies are introduced between bouts of action, and Jack
continues to struggle between his own better nature (and Draycos's warrior ethics) and a lifetime of self-interest and theivery learned from his late Uncle Virgil
(and perpetuated by Uncle Virge, the shipboard AI Virgil left behind.) If I clipped it a point, it's because the ending seemed a bit pat, wrapping up in typical
serial fashion with most everything resolved save just enough plot progress to launch everyone into the next episode/book. Of course, I have every intention of
reading the next book anyway, but some elements still felt a bit trite.
In the few months they've been together, Jack and Draycos have been kidnapped, shot at, set up, and beaten up in their efforts to both clear Jack's name
and discover who sold out the K'da/Shontine refugees to their enemies. After their previous adventure ended with them escaping nearly empty-handed, they're
running out of ideas, and out of time. Now, with the deadline of the K'da/Shontine refugee fleet arrival looming closer, Jack has come up with a desperate
plan.
They know that their enemies use Brummga mercenaries and slaves, so the boy thief intends to go straight to the source, on the planet Brumm-a-dum. Here, with
some help from Uncle Virge, Jack plans to sell himself into slavery, break into the slavemasters' computer systems to get a client list, then make his escape
in the dead of night. Easy as apple pie for a boy raised as Uncle Virgil's apprentice, and with a K'da poet-warrior on his side to boot. But the plan falls
apart almost from the beginning. Soon, Jack and Draycos find themselves in much deeper than they expected, learning firsthand the hopelessness and horrors of
slavery. The question now isn't whether Jack will unearth any information on the traitors. It's whether he and Draycos can escape a lifetime in
shackles.
Review
Like the first Dragonback books, Jack's adventure moves at a steady clip, not bogging down in too much technobabble or setup. Still, there's time
for some character growth and reflection. Under Draycos's honorable influence, Jack's own conscience - something the late Uncle Virgil and the virtual Uncle
Virge have done their best to stymie - shows signs of life. Seeing slavery up close and personal suddenly makes it seem less like a cultural quirk (as he'd
justified its existence previously) and more like a travesty that should be beneath even the brutish Brummga. Draycos, too, finds himself changed by the outlook
and attitude of his host, learning the value of trickery and even developing a taste for vengeance. He undergoes a few other, less predictable changes as well,
after being with a human host for several weeks, changes that indicate that a K'da's relationship with its host species isn't just skin deep as he'd always been
taught. The other characters Jack encounters aren't especially original or deep, but they carry the action along decently; since it's mostly an action series,
that's all I could really ask. The story wraps up with a fireworks-riddled climax (as I've come to expect from the series), and with sufficient plot advancement
to carry Jack and company into the fourth book. I expect I'll track down that fourth book, and the two after it, when I open up a little room in my reading
backlog.
The young human thief Jack Morgan and his companion, the symbiotic K'Da Draycos, have been through many adventures since they met and formed their unlikely
partnership. Though they've learned much about the forces who attacked Draycos's scout ship upon their arrival in the Orion's Arm section of the galaxy, they're
no closer to discovering why, let alone how to stop them from exterminating the rest of the refugee K'Da species when they drop out of hyperspace in a mere
couple of months. Having learned which mercenary group was hired for the job, Jack plans to break into their computers. The plan goes wrong almost immediately -
but he's saved by an unexpected benefactor, the mysterious girl Alison, whom he met while impersonating a soldier recruit. When Jack and Draycos run for their
ship, they wind up with Alison on board.
They flee to the primitive world Rho Scorvi, where Alison claims she has a planned rendezvous with friends. Here, amid the primitive yet peaceable natives, Jack
and Draycos discover something unexpected: the Phookas, simple scavenger beasts that appear to be degenerated relatives of the dragonlike K'Da. While Draycos is
still reeling from the shock - his people, after all, originated from far across the galaxy - the mercenaries turn up, eager to recapture Jack on orders from
their powerful employer.
Jack, Alison, and Draycos head for the cover of the world's thick forests, taking a group of natives and Phookas as protection. Here, they will have to learn to
trust one another... and Draycos must face truths about his species that defy everything he ever learned.
Review
A bit of a ratings dip, here, but still a fairly decent, fast-moving adventure story. Jack finds himself adapting surprisingly well to not only the primitive
life of a Phooka herdsman, but to the K'Da code of ethics that contradict everything his con-artist uncle ever taught him. More comes of developments in the previous
book, that the symbiotic K'Da are bound to their hosts as more than just a place to "rest" in two-dimensional form. I clipped it because it started to feel like
Zahn was padding the tale, drawing out discoveries and bursts of combat. I also found Alison irksome on occasion. Still, I expect I'll track down the last two books
in the series eventually.
Young interstellar thief Jack Morgan and Draycos, his symbiotic K'da poet-warrior companion, are hot on the trail of the enemies intent on destroying the
refugee K'da fleet, due to arrive in less than two months. They've also picked up a pair of allies: Alison Kayna, a young girl with a past just as checkered
as Morgan's own, and Taneem, a female K'da who was, until very recently, merely a subsentient "Phooka" on a forgotten backwater world. Jack barely knows the
first thing about Alison, let alone what her motives might be, but she's come through for him in a few scrapes, and he and Draycos are in no position to turn
down assistance.
While en-route to an outpost of the Malison Ring mercenaries, trying to track down more information on the whereabouts of Arthur Neverlin and his dark allies,
Jack makes a detour to the small spaceport at Semaline. A group of rustic local aliens, the Golvins, mistakes him for a circuit judge. They take him to their
isolated canyon home to deal with an eleven-year backlog of petty issues. Simple as they seem, they aren't to be trifled with, and the Golvin canyon is
essentially a prison. When Jack learns that his late parents were the last judges, his desire to learn the truth about their deaths overwhelms his desire to
escape, and even Draycos cannot sway the boy.
Alison, meanwhile, has problems of her own. An excursion to find Jack turns into an abduction for her, as well - only her captors are Malison Ring employees
seeking skilled thieves and safecrackers for a very special job. She finds herself thrust into the very heart of the conspirators plotting to destroy the K'da
people. If she plays her cards right, she might find the clues Jack and Draycos have been searching for... or she might buy herself (and Taneem) a one-way
ticket to an unmarked grave.
Review
The second-to-last book in the series ratchets up the tension at a nice pace. Jack's sentimental sidetrack to Semaline, so pivotal to the plot, has the
faintest whiff of plot convenience, but he manages to have some interesting adventures as he learns what happened to his parents. Alison gets a good half of the
book to herself, as she simultaneously must use her wits to stay alive in the proverbial lion's den and continue the education of Taneem, who still has a lot to
learn about being a K'da and a companion. The story reads fast, and the ending is reasonably satisfying. That's pretty much what I wanted when I picked it up, so
it gets a solid Good rating. Hopefully, I can track down the final volume sometime to see how Jack and Draycos's adventures end.
Time is nearly up. The boy thief Jack Morgan and Draycos, his symbiotic K'da poet-warrior companion, have scoured Orion's arm, scrambling for clues as to who
attacked Draycos's ship with a devastating weapon - known only as the Death - that shouldn't even exist in this part of the galaxy... an enemy intent on wiping
out the K'da species as soon as the last survivors of their decimated population emerge from hyperspace. The trail has led them to the boardroom of the Braxton
Universis megacorporation, through the cold-blooded world of interstellar mercenaries, along a tangle of traitors and dead-ends, and ultimately to the feet of a
trio of conspirators willing to endanger the entire population of the Orion's Arm, not just the K'da. Draycos and Jack may know who their enemy is, but they don't
know where they will strike, let alone how to stop them. Destroying the Death weapon will take every trick Jack knows, every drop of courage in Draycos's black
blood... and, possibly, their own lives.
Review
An action-packed conclusion to a fast-paced series, Zahn brings all the tangled threads together into one grand finale. At times, those threads trip each other
up, with enough double- and triple-crosses to make one's head spin, but for the most part the pace clicks along much as it has throughout the Dragonback series.
What cost it a half-star in the ratings was the overlong wrap-up, some of which feels more like information dropped out of the sky by an author in a hurry than a
genuine plot revelation. I also felt that some of the enemies were left too one-dimensional, even for a Young Adult title. In the end, I was reasonably
satisfied.
The galaxy-spanning Quadrail is a wonder of the ages, connecting distant star systems will all the ease and convenience of an Earth railway, but while the
rail's operators, the Spiders, seem happy enough to run the trains, they have remained mostly aloof from deeper interaction with the alien species who use
it... until now. Earthman Frank Compton used to be a high-ranked agent with the powerful Western Alliance until he unearthed a political scandal that ended
several careers, including his own. Now he's working freelance - and he has just found a strange young man who, though on the edge of death, lived just long
enough to hand off a Quadrail ticket made out in Frank's name. Via the mysterious woman Bayta, the Spiders are reaching out to him. They want to hire him to
investigate a possible impending attack on one of their stations: an unprecedented blasphemy on one of the core galactic resources. Frank's investigation
takes him light-years across space, through the heart of alien politics, to uncover a vast and chilling conspiracy that is about to secure an unbreakable
stranglehold over the entire galaxy.
Review
I've previously read Zahn's adventurous middle-grade Dragonback Adventures, and from the concept I thought this would be along roughly the same
lines: numerous aliens and casual planet-hopping and plenty of adventure, and if sometimes it stretched credulity it would ultimately be fun and interesting
enough to breeze through. Unfortunately, Night Train to Rigel doesn't breeze, but rather clunks and lurches and breaks its own back around hairpin
bends that don't always make sense and action sequences that exist for the sake of action sequences.
Zahn openly and even gleefully bases the story on old thriller and suspense movies, particularly Hitchcock and train mysteries, but while some authors can
pull off the retro vibe, it just plain doesn't work here. The narrator Frank spends a lot of time hiding his true motives and deductions from the reader.
His ostensible partner, the walking "mysterious lady" cliche Bayta, spends a lot of time hiding her true motives as well, while needing to be rescued and
have things explained to her. (She is also, near as I could tell, the only female of any species in the entire galaxy. There's vague mention of females in
the background of maybe two scenes, but every other named character was male or referred to as "he", even the ones with no stated gender. Makes one wonder
how any race became populous enough to colonize multiple worlds, unless cloning is all the rage. Either that, or no race has women in any position of
power, which is even more demeaning than eliminating the gender altogether. But, I digress...) Frank encounters a slew of oddball aliens (that don't
ultimately seem all that alien underneath the scales or fur), which the reader is supposed to keep track of, among numerous star systems and outposts and
planets and moons that the reader is also supposed to keep track of. Through this all wends a collision of conspiracies and secrets and lies which I
honestly stopped caring about by the 1/3 mark, lost in a sea of interspecies testosterone with lots of fist fights and tired cliches and other ways in which
square-jawed old school hero Frank proves human men to be the superior race of all alien races by figuring everything out despite all the half-truths he's
fed (though he doesn't bother letting the reader in on it until the end, because to heck with letting the reader in on the plot.)
By the end, with the possible exception of the Quadrail concept, I didn't care about the galaxy or anyone in it, least of all Frank Compton, so I lacked a
certain emotional investment in the climax and resolution. Though I got this as a Kindle 3-pack, I will not be reading on.
