How About That Thing?

There was a point in my childhood where I fucking hated fantasy. I was really more of a space opera sort of guy in my younger years. Not to mention that a lot of fantasy novels I was aware of at the time were derivative of J.R.R. Tolkien. Book after book of hobbits, dwarves, elves, and the like. And yes, in my opinion, that also included dragons.

That’s why I say that Jane Yolen’s Pit Dragon Trilogy is one of the greatest fantasy series of the 1980s. Somehow, Yolen managed to get my dragon hating ass invested in a fantasy universe revolving entirely around dragons. if you could accomplish that, then you’ve managed to pull something off.

I don’t remember how exactly I got talked into giving the series a try. I DO remember it being a book on tape, and I remember spending a handful of evenings before bed listening to it on my special little tape player.

Long ago, in yee olden days of Sega Genesis and Saturday morning cartoons, before Audible.com, and the other various audiobook services out there now, there was Books on Tape. If you were blind or visually impaired, like I am, you could get a special little tape player that played special, four-sided tapes. They looked like regular everyday cassette tapes, but there were FOUR sides. You started on side 1A, then flipped the cassette over to side 2A. Then, if necessary (and it usually was), you flipped the tape, flipped the AB switch to B, and listened to side 1B. Then, if necessary (and again, it usually was), you flipped the tape over to side 2B.

I admit, I wasn’t especially fond of the idea of the four-sided tape player and Books on Tape in those days. It had less to do with any resentment about needing special equipment in order to keep up with the sighted kids, and more to do with the rather shitty selection. I’ll admit, most of my literary diet in those days consisted primarily of Goosebumps novellas, and whatever kid-friendly books mom vouched for when she saw them pop up. I can’t remember if Dragon’s Blood was one she vouched for, but thinking back on it, it definitely SOUNDS like something she would vouch for. If that’s the case, I’m glad she did.

I listened to all three books in this series from front to back. I may not have always wanted to go to bed, but the next exciting chapter in this book or that one at least made it bearable.

It all starts with Dragon’s Blood.

Dragon’s Blood introduces us to Astar IV, and the dragon pit economy. There are masters, and there are slaves. Well, technically, they’re not CALLED slaves… But they’re slave labor. Let’s just call a horse a horse here, folks.

Jakkin is one of many of the not-slaves who tends to the various dragons on Sarkkhan’s nursery. After attempting to bathe one of the dragons goes horribly askew, Jakkin is injured. When he recovers, he sees all the female dragons have already laid their eggs, and most of them have hatched. And, to his surprise, whoever was in charge of keeping track of all this miscounted. Even though the sign says there are ten hatchlings, Jakkin counts eleven. And that’s when he discovers his bond with the eleventh hatchling.

In the universe of The Pit Dragon Trilogy, certain people can forge a sort of psychic connection with dragons. There’s only a certain amount of people who’ve mastered the art, and even then, it only works with a handful of dragons, but it IS possible. and Jakkin discovers he has a connection to this dragon.

He steals the dragon, raises it into adulthood via an oasis known only to him, and hopes to use the dragon to earn enough gold to buy his freedom. Because that’s apparently how it works in this universe. Okay, so maybe it’s less slave labor, and more indentured servant labor.

I enjoyed this book a lot when I first read it. It didn’t SEEM like the kind of thing I’d be in to, what with all the dragons, and the psychic connection stuff, and what not… But there I was, eating this book chapter by chapter like nobody’s business.

I know Jakkin was the main character, an his dragon, who’d eventually get named Heart’s Blood, was the other character you were supposed to like… And I’m not saying I didn’t. However, an honorary third place had to go to the dragon known as Bloody Flag.

Bloody Flag wasn’t in the book all that much, but the two or three times he was featured made me love the big guy. Then again, regardless of genre, I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for characters who have a serious case of I don’t give a fuck. And that was Bloody Flag in a nutshell. After recovering from his wounds and the loss of Blood Brother, Jakkin walks in on Bloody Flag during feeding time, and notices how the guy is just munching his food, seemingly oblivious to the fact there used to be two of them in that stall at one point. I also vaguely remember a scene during mating season where Bloody Flag just would not cooperate. He didn’t fight, he didn’t fuss, or anything. He just took one look at all the babes ready and willing to mate, and did the dragon equivalent of saying “Nah, I’m not feeling it.” And that’s about all you hear from Bloody Flag for the rest of the series. And despite it, he ended up being one of my favorite characters. Go figure, I guess.

Book 2, Heart’s Blood, came next.

Not going to lie, I don’t remember NEARLY as much from this book as I do from the first and third. There’s a major plot about a rebellion wanting to overthrow the current system, a bunch of bureaucrats wanting to maintain the system for their benefit, and a lot of other stuff that my eleven-to-twelve-year-old brain sort of glazed over. Largely because there were significantly more pit fights in this one.

Dragon’s Blood only had one pit fight, and it was the one featuring Heart’s Blood. Of course, that was the only one you really needed. Here, there’s a pretty generous amount of pit fights, and if I’m being honest, that’s one of the few things I genuinely remember from this book. I had to reread the plot synopsis on Wikipedia just to remember all this shit with Sarkkhan and Akki and Jakkin, but I can remember the pit fights almost ver batem.

I also remembered it was the book that furthered the mysticism of dragons. This was the book that revealed that if you cut open a female dragon, and rest within their “birth sack”, then somehow, you are reborn as this sort of dragonoid human who still looks and talks like a human, but can see the world the way dragons do, and communicate with all dragons effortlessly. You don’t need to be bonded with any of the dragons anymore, you can just say “yo” to a random dragon, and get a “how’s it going?” in response as if you were bonded.

Again, it’s the kind of “because shut up” kind of thing that would’ve turned younger me off of a story entirely. And I admit, I didn’t retain a whole lot of this story like I did the first one. But I still hold it dear despite that detail.

And finally, there’s book 3: A Sending of Dragons.

Following the events of book 2, Jakkin and Akki are fugitives living in the wilderness of Astar IV. Heart’ Blood is dead, but after spending the evening in her “birthing sack” to stay warm during the night, Jakkin and Akki are reborn. Furthermore, Heart’s Blood’s children relocate Jakkin and Akki, and live alongside them.

A random copter causes Jakkin and Akki to retreat into a labyrinthian network of caves, where they find a group of individuals who, like them, communicate telepathically like dragons. Unfortunately, after beholding some rather morbid rights of passage that involve the slaughter of dragons, they have to find their way out of the tunnels while rescuing as many of the dragons as possible.

While the second book in the trillogy sort of flopped out of my memory, outside of the most necessary bits, A Sending of Dragons is another one I remember very fondly. I not only remember the story, but I remember it being one of the very first audiobooks I ordered when my family and I moved into our newest house at the time. I remember that room very well: the blue wallpaper, the blue carpet, the full-sized mattress on the floor that counted as a bed that I still had to sleep diagonally on in order to fit… But I also remember the story. I remember the vivid descriptions of how the night sky looked through Jakkin and Akki’s reborn eyes, I remember the dragons all quaking with fear when they thought Jakkin and Akki were man… Frankly, the only thing I don’t really remember off hand are the names of Heart’s Blood’s children. I think one of them was called Sargon, and the only reason I remember that is because it spoke in the third person. It was also very self-absorbed, as I remember.

And that’s basically it.

Technically, Jane Yolen would put out a fourth book in the series in 2009, but part of me kind of doesn’t want to read it. Kind of like I don’t want to read the sixth and final Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book, or the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird that came out a good sixty or seventy years later. I don’t want to be that guy who insists it’s not going to be good before I read it and find out… But I have this extremely bad feeling it’s going to taint my enjoyment of the other three books. I just know it.

So I choose to ignore Dragon Heart, and stick to the original three that mean so much to me. Does that make me a jerk? Probably. But what can I say? These three books were quite the adventure for a child who preferred his fiction futuristic, galactic, and at least SOMEWHAT logical.

If you read nothing else from Jane Yolen, read these three books for sure. These are definitely a must-read.