Dragon and Thief

We love Zahn's other books so when a young adult series came out we had to read it. It is a simple read, good for young readers, yet it has a great story with some surprise turns. I would recommend this series to a young reader that likes fantasy and wants another good read.

This is a book that will grab and hold your child sci fi fan's attention. It has the added bonus of an alien protagonist who is a poet and philosopher as well as a fighter, who makes decisions based on a moral code rather than on his personal feelings or a desire for revenge. Refreshing.

Dragon and Thief (2003) is the first novel in the Dragonback Adventure series. The Shontine and K'da have been fleeing the Valahgua for years. A probeship has made contact with a native of a far region and the Havenseeker and three other freighters have brought the advance party to prepare their refuge. As they approached Iota Kletis, four other ships appear sending the correct recognition codes. Suddenly, those ships fire missiles at the freighters and then bath them in the Death beam. In this novel, Jack Morgan is awakened by Uncle Virge, a virtual personality, at 4:57AM shiptime to watch four freighters come overhead. Then four Djinn-90 fighters show up. As Jack observes the skirmish from the surface of Iota Kletis, three freighters cease fighting and the last ship leaves orbit and crashes nearby. After the fighters depart, Jack goes to checkout the wreckage. He finds only dead humanoids on the crashed ship until he discovers Draycos. He describes the body to Uncle Virge as a little dragon about the size of a tiger and covered with gold scales. As he leans over the body, Draycos leaps at him and then vanishes. Draycos has lost Polphir, his Shontine host, during the crash. Once he has decided that Jack is not one of the attackers, he uses Jack as his new host. At the point of contact, his leap has turned into a merger with Jack's skin. Now Jack has a removable tattoo over much of his body. Jack is very startled at first (actually he totally panics), but he gradually gets used to Draycos. The Shontine/K'da relationship is a true symbiosis, but the K'da can only remain separate from the host for less than six hours. They have to revert to the collapsed state for a time before resuming their normal bodies. In exchange for this service, the K'da provide companionship and protection. After learning about the Shontine/K'da symbiosis, Jack shares his past life with Draycos. Before his uncle died, Jack had roamed the galaxy as a thief. Uncle Virgil was an accomplished safe cracker and con artist, while Jack specialized in burglaries. Now that Uncle Virgil is dead, Jack is trying to stay away from the authorities who would put him in a group home. After all, fourteen year old boys are not capable of flying a spaceship around the galaxy. Of course, he has been doing just that for the past year. Jack has been trying to go straight for some time now and had contracted with Braxton Universis to transport ten crates from Vagran to Cordolane. When they arrived, one of the boxes was empty. Since then he has been hiding out to avoid arrest, most recently on Iota Kletis. Draycos persuades Jack to help look for the source of the Djinn-90 fighters. Someone has apparently learned the destination for the Shontine/K'da migration. Moreover, they have obtained at least four Valahgua Death weapons. Whoever ambushed the advance party must be located and stopped or else more people, including humans, will die. This novel includes direc

This was originally pitched as a young adult series to the publisher, who apparently decided to market it as an adult series anyway. The result - a squinky little undersized 250-page hardcover, right on the heels of two 400+ page Zahn tomes in a row. I admit I was a little reluctant to shell out the cash for it, but I did anyway, because it's Zahn, and he's never let me down before.I am SO glad I did. The effect of the original concept being a young-adult series seems to be that he takes all of his usual strengths and just condenses them, packing the same amount of awesomeness into a tighter space. His writing style doesn't seem to have been affected at all - I never felt like what I was reading was "dumbed down" or anything like that. All of the Zahn hallmarks are here - the complex and surprising plot, the human and sympathetic characters, and the taut and concise action scenes - just in a smaller space. As opposed to a cast of 20 characters, there is a cast of 2, but they're both GREAT.Also, needless to say, the usual Zahn creativity with aliens and worlds remains - one of the main characters is a dragon thing that lives in 4 dimensions, and can either show as a three dimensional creature or two dimensional in our world. He lives wrapped around the other main character like a tattoo, and can jump off and fight at will. It's an interesting concept, and makes for an interesting character.Overall, if you've ever read anything by Zahn and liked it, you won't want to miss this, despite it being overpriced and short. If you're new to Zahn, I'd reccomend a longer one like Icarus Hunt to get you hooked, but for anyone that's liked his earlier work, this will please you more than you expect.

His parents died years ago and his only living relative Uncle Virgo recently passed away, leaving fourteen year old Jack Morgan by himself except for the virtual essence of his deceased guardian. Jack has been set up to take the fall for stolen valuable cargo. He is an easy frame, as he is guilty by association or in this case blood, as his late uncle was a known con man.Jack flees to a remote planet, but in the skies observes a fight with one of the combatant ships crashing near him. The only survivor of the wreck is the K'da dragon Draycos. Jack might have felt he had plenty of troubles, but he soon learns what it's like to have the weight of the world on your back. Draycos exists either as a two-dimensional "tattoo" on his host's skin or as a three-dimensional dragon. His current host died during the attack and with no one else around, he persuades Jack to become his new host. This unlikely pairing of a warrior poet with a bungling teenage thief leads to adventures neither anticipated when they joined at the hip.Clearly targeting the young adult audience, though the older Norton readers will enjoy the novel, DRAGON AND THIEF is an exciting science fiction adventure story. Readers will appreciate the relationship between the intelligent experience dragon and the exuberant youth, which makes for a fine time for the audience. The worlds seem real and the joining seems strangely plausible requiring author Timothy Zahn to bare his back so his fans can see his tattoo.Harriet Klausner