Dragon's Heart, by Jane Yolen

[rachelmanija]

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.

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

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know there'd been a third book, let alone a fourth, but then I found the ending of the second one sufficiently WTF to dissuade me from looking. The first one is wonderful, though.

(And I want to read your vomit rant!)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I remember much the same reaction to the end of the second book, and my increasing bafflement as I read through the third, as the plot and setting got more and more strange, and further from what I cared about.

I mean, the first book was pretty much Pokemon: raise and care for an adoring creature who could probably kick your ass if it didn't love you so much, then go make it fight other people's equally lethal creatures. Plus, trying to escape slavery! Nifty! But at least as a kid, I found all the digressions into telepathy and revolution and social upheaval...well, boring. I didn't care about revolutionaries, unless they were also raising adorable dragons to fight each other.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I have much the same attitude toward the Temeraire books. I want to read about dragons as a military operation, not about vaguely anachronistic struggles for species/class equality. It's rather put me off reading books 4 & 5.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, but do! The struggles for equality continue-- and are clearly, at this point, the heart of the series-- but as we see even more of the world, and more of the barriers that Temeraire's idealism comes up against, they become less anachronistic and much more compelling. And I don't want to spoil how, but Laurence's involvement with Temeraire's agenda changes, in a way that changes everything.

(And if you're reading for the military strategy, the battle scenes in book 5 are epic, and there's a lot of them.)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I reread Dragon's Blood within the last year or so and while I still totally loved what I loved about it, I found the slavery politics (like the one guy who was apparently "meant to be" a slave...) uncomfy enough to put me off rereading the rest. Blissful ignorance!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it seems very clear in this volume that it's not that he was meant to be a slave, it's that being a slave screwed him up psychologically so that he finds it impossible to conceive of being anything else. That being said, I wouldn't recommend reading this just for that.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

My main problem with the series is that the characters in book 1 feel like totally different people than the characters in later books. What happened? I will probably have to read this one for completion's sake, but I'm not terribly motivated to do so, especially if there's a notable gross-out factor.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

It's not really gross. It's just the cumulative effect of other grossness.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Agreed, the first book is good, the rest are disappointing. I didn't like the sequel for the same reason I didn't like Wicked- girl in terrorist cell needs saving is just BORING.