Dragon's Heart, by Jane Yolen
This is the long-delayed fourth book in Jane Yolen’s “Pit Dragon” series, and probably the concluding one. While it makes a better ending to the series than the third book did, as a reading experience by itself, I was underwhelmed.
I still really like Dragon’s Blood, which takes a very old story - young person bonds with cool animal, escapes rotten life - and tells it with clarity, conciseness, and grace, so that it seems classic rather than clichéd.
In this particular version of the story, bonded slaves on a desert planet may buy their way out of slavery, though this is so ridiculously difficult that very few ever manage it. But Jakkin, a boy at a ranch which trains dragons for gladiatorial combat, plots to steal an egg, raise the dragon, train it to fight, and PROFIT - sorry - escape slavery. (I should note that slavery in this context is nowhere near as horrific as it was in, say, the US, but is more like being an indentured servant, that is, it sucks but no one’s getting beaten to death.) Unsurprisingly, complications ensue. I loved the realistic details of life at a dragon ranch, and the lovely way that the dragons communicate, in bursts of telepathic color.
I was not thrilled with the sequels. I don’t think it’s horribly spoilery to say that Jakkin discovers more sophisticated dragon communication… but the talking dragons were so much less interesting than the color-communicating ones. And though I see why Yolen wanted to tackle the looming revolution, I was less interested in that than in the dragons. Also, honestly, Yolen is better at dragons than she is at revolutionaries.
Dragon Heart has problems with pace and editing. While a fair amount happens, the length and pace make it feel as if not much is - it’s significantly longer than the other books in the series, but there’s about the same amount of plot. A number of potentially interesting situations are set up and then never delved into, like the dragon pregnancies and Slakk’s encounter with the drakk, while pages and pages are spent on nothing in particular.
Apart from artistic problems, this book was largely not telling the story I wanted to read. I was interested in the dragons, and Yolen was interested in social change, and while her portrait of a slave/owner society struggling to cope with legal equality was quite believable, I wanted to read about dragon hatchings and dragon communication and so forth.
Oh, and there was a lot of pus and puking. Too much for my taste, in my opinion. (In fact, though it isn't nowhere near the worst offender on the vomit front, it happened to be about the tenth novel I've read in a row which had vivid vomiting descriptions, causing me to write and then cut from this review a lengthy rant on vomit in literature. If you are unlucky lucky, maybe I will post the rant by itself later.)
This sounds like I hated the book. I didn’t hate it. But Dragon’s Blood is still the only one I’ll ever re-read.
ETA: Ack, sorry for the lost spoiler cut! Here it is.
With Akki finally getting her own point of view and being quite a feminist, I was baffled that her action consists of ditching Jakkin to save the world without even telling him she’s going (still not sure why she didn’t tell him), getting kidnapped, and getting rescued by Jakkin. She does save the world… in an epilogue. Huh? Meanwhile, Jakkin gets to be bad-ass and fight a trog invasion. I am positive this was not meant to come across the way it did, but there it is.
Dragon's Blood: The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volume One
Dragon's Heart: The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volume Four
I still really like Dragon’s Blood, which takes a very old story - young person bonds with cool animal, escapes rotten life - and tells it with clarity, conciseness, and grace, so that it seems classic rather than clichéd.
In this particular version of the story, bonded slaves on a desert planet may buy their way out of slavery, though this is so ridiculously difficult that very few ever manage it. But Jakkin, a boy at a ranch which trains dragons for gladiatorial combat, plots to steal an egg, raise the dragon, train it to fight, and PROFIT - sorry - escape slavery. (I should note that slavery in this context is nowhere near as horrific as it was in, say, the US, but is more like being an indentured servant, that is, it sucks but no one’s getting beaten to death.) Unsurprisingly, complications ensue. I loved the realistic details of life at a dragon ranch, and the lovely way that the dragons communicate, in bursts of telepathic color.
I was not thrilled with the sequels. I don’t think it’s horribly spoilery to say that Jakkin discovers more sophisticated dragon communication… but the talking dragons were so much less interesting than the color-communicating ones. And though I see why Yolen wanted to tackle the looming revolution, I was less interested in that than in the dragons. Also, honestly, Yolen is better at dragons than she is at revolutionaries.
Dragon Heart has problems with pace and editing. While a fair amount happens, the length and pace make it feel as if not much is - it’s significantly longer than the other books in the series, but there’s about the same amount of plot. A number of potentially interesting situations are set up and then never delved into, like the dragon pregnancies and Slakk’s encounter with the drakk, while pages and pages are spent on nothing in particular.
Apart from artistic problems, this book was largely not telling the story I wanted to read. I was interested in the dragons, and Yolen was interested in social change, and while her portrait of a slave/owner society struggling to cope with legal equality was quite believable, I wanted to read about dragon hatchings and dragon communication and so forth.
Oh, and there was a lot of pus and puking. Too much for my taste, in my opinion. (In fact, though it isn't nowhere near the worst offender on the vomit front, it happened to be about the tenth novel I've read in a row which had vivid vomiting descriptions, causing me to write and then cut from this review a lengthy rant on vomit in literature. If you are unlucky lucky, maybe I will post the rant by itself later.)
This sounds like I hated the book. I didn’t hate it. But Dragon’s Blood is still the only one I’ll ever re-read.
ETA: Ack, sorry for the lost spoiler cut! Here it is.
With Akki finally getting her own point of view and being quite a feminist, I was baffled that her action consists of ditching Jakkin to save the world without even telling him she’s going (still not sure why she didn’t tell him), getting kidnapped, and getting rescued by Jakkin. She does save the world… in an epilogue. Huh? Meanwhile, Jakkin gets to be bad-ass and fight a trog invasion. I am positive this was not meant to come across the way it did, but there it is.
Dragon's Blood: The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volume One
Dragon's Heart: The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volume Four