Dragons in Space

 

The tenth installment of Ramy Vance and Michael Anderle’s Dragon Approved series opens with a spaceship bearing Team Boundless, headed by protagonist Alex Bound, and the wizard Myrddin, heading to Earth, which Alex somewhat dreads, given recent occurrences in the world of Middang3ard. A visit to an Earth military base proves to be a fish-out-of-water experience for Alex’s nonhuman companions, with their dragons housed in makeshift stables. When Alex returns home, she finds support in her parents, who have delved into the VR version of Middang3ard themselves, although a happy homecoming sudden intense pain for Alex and the alien Vardis wrecks.

With the pain comes Alex’s visit to a cold universe, where she again finds the mysterious boy in a deer skull mask, with the pain a result of the Dark One’s interference. Back at the military base, the dragonriders’ avian steeds receive enhancements to prepare them for flying through outer space, where they head to the dark side of the moon in search of the weapon that can turn the tide in the war against the Dark One. Once they get there, they engage in a grueling battle against rocky adversaries defending the weapon from outsiders known as kin, with the last scene of the novella involving Alex having another vision with the mentioned child.

All in all, this was definitely another enjoyable entry of the Dragon Approved series, one of the strongest I’ve read thus far, given its successful mixture of fantasy and science-fiction elements, dragons among the former and outer space among the latter. The support and acceptance by her parents of Alex definitely resounded with me, who has had many unique experiences in his lifetime. As with its predecessors, both authors write anecdotes after the main text, Vance noting the theme of dragons in space and Anderle noting reader support, and aside from the derivative element of dragonriders prominent in other literary series like Pern, I’m not hesitant to recommend this short, sweet read.