For those of you who follow me on social media, you should know that despite the library I work at being closed, I have still been hard at work behind the scenes. We’ve done inventory, cleaned, re-shelved books, and deleted books.
That last one if one of the hardest, but it’s also necessary. This week I took on weeding and deleting from the Young Adult section.
It was HARD.
I don’t like picking books for the chopping block, but I desperately needed the space. There was one particular cut I made that was the hardest, a book that is personally close to my heart, but just doesn’t circulate at my library, despite my best efforts.
It’s the Dragonback books by Timothy Zahn. I absolutely love these books.
You may be familiar with Timothy Zahn, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. He’s the author of the first major Star Wars Expanded Univers (now Legends) novel trilogy, often called the Thrawn Trilogy. Best known for introducing the character Grand Admiral Thrawn. Yes, that Grand Admiral Thrawn, from Rebels. Zahn recently finished a second Thrawn book series around the Rebels version of the character.
But this series, Dragonback, was wholly different and original.
It starts when a dragon-like alien, appropriately named Draycos, crash lands on a planet after being attacked by a government army that was supposed to be helping his people, who are refugees from another part of the galaxy. The K’da (dragon alien) is the only survivor of the crash. Also, they are symbionts and need a humanoid host to live. In stumbles 14-year-old Jack Morgan, a street-smart orphan who’s on the run for a crime he didn’t commit. Framed by the same government whose army just tried to kill the K’da. Now Jack and Draycos must work together to clear Jack’s name and save Draycos’s people before the government destroys them all.
It’s a great story with some really neat twists. The K’da were fun because as a warrior Draycos was a huge dragon alien, but then he could go in symbiote form, and appear as a mere tattoo on Jack’s skin. The two have a difficult relationship at first, obviously, but they develop a rapport, and even learn to help each other, and discover that there’s a lot more to the symbiote connection between a K’da and their host than even Draycos was aware of.
I feel like I really can’t oversell this series and it breaks my heart to let it go. But such is the life of a librarian. Still, if you are looking for something fun to read with a unique twist on fantasy and space adventure, there you go. And from a master author who created one of Star Wars most popular non movie villains! How much better can you get?