Look, you guys. If you’ve read any of Lee & Miller’s previous Liaden Universe books, most likely you already know whether or not you want to read this one.* Me, I’m a confirmed fan of the series, and Dragon Ship is definitely a series book. Direct sequel to 2011’s Ghost Ship, Dragon Ship continues the adventures of Theo Waitley, child of Clan Korval, and now First Pilot of the old, mysterious, self-willed and self-aware ship Bechimo.
*Let me go out on a limb here and bet on a yes. No? Oh, well. Tastes differ.
Theo has a ship to shake down and a trade route to prove while under contract to Clan Korval. But as the events of Ghost Ship showed, Korval’s old enemies, the Department of the Interior, are not incapable of regrouping—and in addition to their vendetta against Korval, they want Bechimo. With her sometime lover Win Ton yo’Vala buried in a medical compartment in Bechimo‘s heart to recover from a nano-virus that no other technology has a hope of curing, and with an ex-underworld boss for a Second Pilot, Theo has a lot of learning to do and not that much time in which to do it.
Dragon Ship is a meandering sort of book, a loosely linked series of incidents connected by Theo’s growth into a leader, Korval, and the threat posed by the Department of the Interior. The lack of especial focus and urgency may detract from the novel’s high points for some readers, but speaking personally, I found Theo, her ship, and her crew a delight to spend time with. And pace and urgency picks up noticeably from the halfway mark, beginning with an incident at Codrescu Station, the space station above the planet Eylot, where Theo did her pilot training—and where she was identified as a nexus of violence. Theo is first on scene to respond to a crisis, and in doing her bit to help its resolution, acquires both honour and notoriety. And another crewmember, her old friend and former schoolmate Kara ven’Arith.** But Codrescu has raised Theo’s profile—and Bechimo‘s—and the Department of the Interior has taken notice. To keep her ship and crew safe, Theo will need a good helping of Korval’s famous luck.
Which she seems to have in full measure.
**Another lover. Bisexual protagonists, they are good things. I approve.
Theo’s story is not the only strand to Dragon Ship. We don’t lose touch with Kamele Waitley, Theo’s mother, who’s taken leave from her professorship to find her missing lover, Theo’s father, whom she does not know is Daav yos’Phelium, part of Clan Korval. The Uncle, mysterious and ancient figure that he is, also makes an appearance, as do our old friends Val Con yos’Phelium and Miri Robertson.
Dragon Ship is a novel which gathers its strands together, and sets the stage for the next act of the play that is the Liaden universe. It feels very much a novel of transitions, as sometimes occur in the middle acts of series. Normally that can be relied upon to annoy me, but not here.
If you ask me to put my finger on what, exactly, it is that I enjoyed so much about Dragon Ship, I find it hard to express specifics. There’s some peculiar alchemy about Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden novels, a gift of characterisation and mood and tone that makes reading each new installment feel like coming home. There’s something to be said for a certain degree of comfortable familiarity alongside one’s Cool Shit™ and sensawunda, in my opinion. Not always, but sometimes. And that’s what we have here: a comfortably entertaining installment in a solidly engaging series.
In conclusion, Dragon Ship: Not a good place to enter the series, but if you enjoyed its predecessors, I’ll lay good odds that you’ll like this one, too.
Liz Bourke spent the month of August running around Greece telling lies to undergraduates. Now that she’s home, she and her books have a lot of catching up to do…
As they say, the golden age of SF was fourteen, and this is pretty much what I read at the time. It’s so long ago now, but I think that Chronicles was my gateway series to fantasy… probably alongside Eddings as well I think.
And gods was Rose of the Prophet something…to me, that was certainly their best series. Death Gate just went weird at the end, and Darksword was angst-y to the extreme. Rose of the Prophet however had some interesting world-building, and actually had diverse protagonists. As a teenager in Malaysia, there was only so much reading about various eurocentric characters (even in a world with dragons!) that I could take.
I find it oddly fitting that the killing of characters is what made their books good.
For those who don’t know, GEN CON every year. the Hickmans host the Killer breakfast. The ultimate goal is to have fun, and kill everyone who apears on stage over the course of 2 hours (easily 100 people). They play GM’s gone wild, and everyone elses goal is to survive a round or two with all the hilarious events happeneing around them. The event has becoe a staple at Gen Con and i hope it remains so for years to come.
As a kid in small town america, finding the Dragonlance novels for sale at my local library was a great moment, I read the first copies I had till the pages fell out
There’s a bittersweetness to knowing that my experience of discovering the Dragonlance Chronicles as a young kid, and it helping to launch me into reading, gaming, then fiction writing and game writing professionally. So yeah, I’m with you. I was fond of Sturm from the start, but I will agree that his arch was exactly as long as it needed to be.
Essentially, Dragonlance was my Harry Potter.
This was also my gateway series to fantasy. Sturm’s death was definitely a great one, but it didn’t affect me nearly as much as Flint’s death, which made me cry.
@@.-@,
Essentially, Dragonlance was my Harry Potter.
Hear hear.
I enjoyed the Death Gate cycle for Zifnab alone. If ever a character deserved to NOT be confined to a single trilogy.
And Sturm’s death, while I wasn’t a fan of his character(on a recent reread he REALLY bugged me), really hit me profoundly. At this point in my reading, never had a major character DIED like that. At the hands of another major character, no less. It really raised the stakes of the story.
A couple of interesting tidbits, from a behind the scenes book the friend who introduced me to these books had.
-Sturm was slated for death from the start.
-The effort to conceal the identity of the Blue Dragonlord was so in depth, they put a man’s figure on the cover of the first edition.
I loved loved loved Star of the Guardians. So what if it was a Star Wars ripoff? It was a better Star Wars ripoff that any Star Wars book I tried. And it became something more in the end, with two of the most memorable characters I’d ever read. And yeah, they died, most magnificently.
I reread the original trilogy recently (first time in many years) and the nostalgia, it runs strong although I certainly can see the imperfections. I’ll have to dive into Legends in the not-too-distant future.
I did like the first four Death Gate books, at least — after that it started to get a bit weird. And I actually like Starshield — the idea, if not the execution.
It’s amazing how fast it took off — I remember in the early 1990s going into bookstores and seeing an entire rack of nothing but Dragonlance.
Gah! Double post! OK, so I’ll change it to say: I remember when it all first began — there was Gary Gygax’ Saga of Old City, Douglas Niles’ Darkwalker on Moonshae and Weis & Hickman’s Dragons of Autumn Twilight (not necessarily in that order). Three surprisingly different takes on RPG tie-in fiction.
It’s great to see a post giving some love to Weis and Hickman. I often see their names associated with hack-fantasy. I think they deserve much more credit than that.
I wish someone would give some similiar love to R. A. Salvatore. I think his fantasy writing is really good, especially his description of battle scenes.