245 pages
Published 1982
Read September 18
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
This is middle-grade science-fantasy from Jane Yolen, whom I mostly know from her poetry and original fairy tales for adults. I’d never heard of Dragon’s Blood before I happened upon it in a used book store. A near-contemporary of Alanna: The First Adventure and The Blue Sword, it seems to have had less cultural impact than either of them — though, according to Wikipedia, Yolen herself says the Dragon Pit series is among her best-known and most widely translated work. Either way, I picked it up for two reasons: Yolen’s name, and the scrungkly dragon friend on the cover.
In the deserts of Space Australia — sorry, Austar IV — descendants of convicts live in a caste system beneath the descendants of guards, laboring until they have enough gold to buy out their bond. The place names are all along the lines of The Rokk and Left Forkk; people drink takk and hunt drakks and have names like Balakk and Slakk and Frankkalin. (It gets kind of obnoxious.) The planet’s main claim to fame is its fighting pits, where trained dragons battle and vast sums are bet on the outcome. Young Jakkin, a poor “bonder” laboring as a stallboy at a dragon nursery, wants to get rich and break free of the labors and restrictions of his class. His plan: steal a hatchling dragon and raise it to fight.
Yolen creates a thoroughly unpleasant culture for her Space Australia, whose entire economy consists of dragon-keeping for the men and prostitution in the “Baggeries” for the women. Jakkin's crush Akki is a mysterious girl who works in the dragon nursery instead of a Baggery, much to the disdain of Jakkin's friends. Which isn’t even touching on the system of bondage servitude Jakkin and his fellow bonders are subject to. The bonders all wear bags that they must fill with gold before they can pay off their bond; their overseers can empty their bags for even the slightest infraction. It is heavily implied (in the words of a “master,” but still) that those in bondage somehow lack the drive, discipline, and talent to actually break free of servitude.
It’s 95% Pern, 5% Misty of Chincoteague, all of it slimed up in class and gender hierarchies from a Westerosi fever dream.
I get that it was the 1980s and it was fashionable to write grimy fantasy allegories of real world atrocities, but come on, it’s a chapter book about a boy and his psychically bonded dragon in another galaxy. This level of ’80s grittiness doesn’t feel artistic and meaningful here, it feels cheap and exploitative. Maybe even a bit tacky. (Or would that be takky?)
The story itself is rote. Jakkin gets injured by a shitty overseer, then unexpectedly gets himself a “snatchling” dragon despite the delay. The book gets padded out with a drakk hunt before the training can even begin. When it does, Akki gets involved, they take the yearling to its first fight, etc. Honestly, I would have DNF’d this one if the dragon on the cover hadn’t been so damn cute. Perhaps all of this would have hit different if I’d read it as a kid. Who knows?
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