STARFIRE DRAGONS

In the first installment Ross’ Dragon Spawn Chronicles, starship crew members risk starting an interstellar war after rescuing two precocious and dangerous boys from a dreaded warrior race.

It’s 3790, and spacegoing humanity hasn’t yet discovered any intelligent alien life—at least at the beginning of the new SF novel by the author of The Third Dragon (2012). But colonists from a long-destroyed Earth have evolved diverse cultures and physical appearances. A federation known as the Prontaean Cooperative seeks to unite the universe in peace, and one of its vessels, the Odyssey, is a fresh post for J.D. Hapker, as second in command to Capt. Silas Arden. Hapker, trying to put behind him a disgrace in earlier service, is again thrust into impossible dilemmas and hard ethical choices when the Odyssey rescues two wounded survivors from a small ship under seemingly unmotivated attack. The new arrivals turn out to be a pair of hunted young brothers from the tyrannical Tredon warrior race, hated and feared by many civilizations represented among the Odyssey’s polyglot crew. Hapker nonetheless tries to establish friendly rapport with the younger of them, Jori, merely 10 years old but already a formidable killer, coldly defiant of his reluctant protectors. While he wants to protect the ferocious child, Hapker senses that Joni harbors secrets that could start an interstellar war. Can any good result? In a novel that comes close to a high order of Star Trek fan fiction, a few USS Enterprise analogs (though no Spock) are present, but the Tredon have values closer to those Imperial Japanese samurai than Klingons. And it takes quite a few repetitious episodes before the narrative really kicks into warp drive. But well-drawn characters, thoroughly explored emotions, and a long-shot mission outcome are ingredients that any admirer of humanist SF can judge shipshape. Despite the violence and scattered profanities, the material works as well on a YA level as a grown-up one. 

A thoughtful novel that owes a debt to Star Trek but works on its own terms.