Dragon and Soldier

This may have been a short read, around three hundred pages or so, but it is by my favorite author, Timothy Zahn, so I loved the new story line. Once again, this is a sci-fi original with it's own little universe containing an epic story. It all starts with thirteen year old Jack Morgan, a thief who learned the trade through his uncle, Virge, or at least a virtual representation of him that contains his character and his knowledge due to that fact that he died during a mess up. Jack is just going around on his business of stealing from others in order to survive but then something big interupts his daily life: a valuable cargo has just been stolen and someone has placed all the blame on Jack. To escape from the officials hunting him down, Jack retreats to a desolate planet only to run into more trouble. He discovers a downed space craft and when he suspects that there's no one alive in it and begins raiding it, the pilot of the ship turns out to have survived. With the help of Jack, the survivor recovers and introduces himself as the K'da dragon Dracos, a warrior who have to attact to a person and become 2D on the host's skin in order to survive in a 3D world that they can only stay in for about three hours or else they shrivel up and die. Dracos reveals that his race is in a war of survival as other organizations attempt to wipe them out for the resources on their planet and when Dracos was commisioned to be part of a assault fleet when they were suddenly ambushed by an unknown organization. Now that Dracos is the onyl survivor of the fleet, Jack has made an agreement that in exchange for letting Dracos attact to him, he has to help JAck look for the ones who framed him as well as the ones who attacked Draco's fleet. Now, in the first book, they find the ones who frames Jack but Draco's case was still to be solved. The last thing he remembers during the attack as well as the occasional nightmare which repeats the scene is seeing the words "Djinn 90" on the star fighters that destroyed his ship. Taking this into event, Dracos believes that the attackers not just a band of thugs but a mercenary group with enough power and resources to obtain them. To find out, Jack has to dig a little deeper and joins the Daggers mercenary group in order to sneak into their data base and retrieve the info they need. That, however, is "easier said than done" to the max because while Jack has his goals, another one pops out of nowhere: survive a war. Is this possible for a little kid who only knows how to pick a lock?

Yeah, like I said in previous blogs, I have dumb luck when I read the second before the first book in a series. I might just go back to the first and get excited for the third. I recommend this book to, once again, sci-fi fans. I might even throw in military fans, since the book focuses on future warfare as well.