Dragon and Slave (Timothy Zahn)

Dragon and Slave
(The Dragonback Adventures, Book 3)
Timothy Zahn
Starscape
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Fourteen-year-old Jack Morgan was raised by master thief Uncle Virgil, one of the best con artists in the Orion's Arm section of the galaxy. Alone and on the run for a crime he didn't commit, with only his ship's AI computer "Uncle Virge" (programmed by the late man himself before his untimely demise), Jack got used to being on his own... until a chance meeting gave him a very unusual companion.
Draycos is a K'da poet-warrior, a dragonlike alien who requires a symbiotic host, after six hours as a three-dimensional independent being, the K'da must "rest" against another living creature as a two-dimensional living tattoo. His people and the Shontine have been allies and companions as symbiotes for centuries, but a dark enemy with an unstoppable weapon has been decimating them. The last surviving refugees are on their way to Orion's Arm. Draycos was with the advance scout party - a party which was attacked by traitors the moment they dropped out of hyperspace. Lone survivor of the space battle and shipwreck, he made a desperate gamble for life by taking Jack Morgan as his new host. Draycos offered the reluctant boy a deal: in return for helping clear his name, the poet-warrior wants to find out who tipped off his race's enemies to their plans... and stop them before the rest of the K'da/Shontine ships arrive.
It has been a few months now since that fateful meeting. Draycos paid off his end of the debt early on. Jack and he infiltrated a group of interstellar mercenaries searching for information on the traitors, but got out with little more than their own skins. Now, with the K'da/Shontine arrival looming, Jack has come up with a desperate plan. They know the traitors were using Brummga mercenaries and slaves, so the only place he can think to search next is the source. He'll sell himself into slavery for a day, hack into the computer system of the Brummga slavemasters, and break himself out. Easy as apple pie for a boy raised as Uncle Virgil's apprentice. But the plan falls apart almost from the beginning. Soon, Jack and Draycos find themselves in much deeper than they expected, learning firsthand the hopelessness and horrors of slavery. The question now isn't whether Jack will unearth any information on the traitors. It's whether he and Draycos can escape a lifetime in shackles.

REVIEW: I read the first two Dragonback Adventure books (reviewed on my book review website here), and found the third installment at a decent price. Like the first books, Jack's adventure moves at a steady clip, not bogging down in too much technobabble or setup. Still, there's time for some character growth and reflection. Under Draycos's honorable influence, Jack's own conscience - something the late Uncle Virgil and the virtual Uncle Virge have done their best to stymie - shows signs of life. Seeing slavery up close and personal suddenly makes it seem less like a cultural quirk (as he'd justified its existence previously) and more like a travesty that should be beneath even the brutish Brummga. Draycos, too, finds himself changed by the outlook and attitude of his host, learning the value of trickery and even developing a taste for vengeance. He undergoes a few other, less predictable changes as well, after being with a human host for several weeks, changes that indicate that a K'da's relationship with its host species isn't just skin deep as he'd always been taught. The other characters Jack encounters aren't especially original or deep, but they carry the action along decently; since it's mostly an action series, that's all I could really ask. The story wraps up with a fireworks-riddled climax (as I've come to expect from the series), and with sufficient plot advancement to carry Jack and company into the fourth book. I expect I'll track down that fourth book, and the two after it, when I open up a little room in my reading backlog.