Written by Timothy Zahn
In the third Dragonback adventure, the quest continues and the ideas get crazier. Jack couldn’t unlock the secrets he was after by becoming a mercenary. Now he tries to do it by becoming a slave. And the “I’ll sneak in, hack their computers, and be gone before something bad happens” plan works no better this time.
The tension between what Jack was taught to be and what Draycos was taught to be remains. Jack’s attitude toward the moral code Draycos lives by – and wants Jack to live by – is half-yielding, half-resisting. But in an interesting and realistic touch, it begins to work the other way, too. The dragon starts to feel, ever so slightly, Jack’s influence over him.
The largest moral issue of this book is, of course, slavery. This is one moral question our society answers right unanimously, but all truths bear repeating, and Zahn goes deeper into the evil of slavery than many. He shows that it enslaves people’s spirits as well as their bodies, crushing not only the hope for freedom but sometimes even the desire.
The story takes some sharp twists, and early elements come back with surprising relevance at the end. I found Dragon and Slave ingenuous in many places. Threads of the first book come weaving in again; the story speeds onward.
Zahn makes two references worth noting. He mentions a group called the “Daughters of Harriet Tubman”. Draycos wondered what that was and Jack didn’t know, but we do: Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who became an abolitionist and a leader in the Underground Railroad. Later on Zahn quotes – though he doesn’t credit – Jesus Christ: “Unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven …”
One of the trademarks of these books is an often-unique set of similes and metaphors. Uncle Virgil is as slippery as greased ice, and Jack worries about the mustard hitting the wiener, and the slavemaster wants to turn someone’s ship into Christmas tinsel, and the room lit up like a Sirian moon. Draycos, K’da warrior, tends to a more formal style, but he has been hearing the language mainly from Jack. Thus he solemnly warns, “Then we shall be burned cinnamon bagels.” (Jack corrects – and then modifies – the assessment: Burned cinnamon toast, butter side down.)
Dragon and Slave brings us halfway through the Dragonback series, and the quality is still running high.