The Dragon Never Sleeps ★★★☆ ½

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Title: The Dragon Never Sleeps

Series: ----------

Author: Glen Cook

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SF

Pages: 449

Format: Digital edition

Synopsis:

Humanity rules their part of space, The Canon. With the unstoppable force of the Guardships behind them, Canon forces enforce peace, their peace, whereever they go.

One House wants to stop that. One alien wants to stop that. One other branch of Humanity wants to stop that. But that House is ruled by a megolomaniac who wants to live forever through his forbidden clones. But that alien lives by a code of honor that is unbreakable. But that branch of humanity is enslaved to psychic mind leeches.

On the Guardship side of things, you have insane Guardships. You have nascent sentient Guardships. You have humans who live their lives over and over through cloning without ever remembering their past. You have a Humanity that is stagnating and possibling beginning the long road to its twilight.

And the stories take place with all of those characters and characteristics. Greed, War, Peace and Survival.

My Thoughts:

I had no idea of the background for 99/100ths of the time. I really enjoyed my time, but if you try to figure out the backstory or the history, you're sunk. It doesn't exist except in Cook's mind and he doesn't let slip hardly anything. This is a very “here and now” kind of story, even while taking years in story time.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this. I didn't feel like I had to understand anything. I just sat back, let the story unfold and let it roll over me. It was extremely complicated but since I wasn't trying to disentangle anything, it was actually rather simple. I was along for the ride. If I had been in an investigative mood I'm sure this would have driven me bonkers. But I wasn't, so it didn't.

I don't know that I could have told you that this was the same Glen Cooke who wrote the Black Company novels. It was a standalone book and even its style seemed standalone. I will say that it was dense and while it claims to be only 449 pages, it felt like the longest 449 pages I've ever read. Not a bad thing, but it was a long read.

★★★☆½