A Sending of Dragons (Pit Dragon Trilogy) (original 1987; edition 1989)

The world of Austar IV becomes abruptly more foreign in this volume, but in comparison to ours and to what the reader knew about it from the previous books. This story doesn't work nearly as well for me for several reasons, beginning there.

We lose all contact with the Pit Fighting and the nursery as Jakken and Akki hide in the mountains with Heart's Blood's five hatchlings and newly-gained telepathic skills. While it is a semi-interesting expansion of the world, it's hard not to read this book - which reveals that the dragons have fully-formed thoughts and can communicate them - and wince at the implications for earlier books - in which dragons are bred for food and fighting.

To Yolen's credit, she does not ignore these implications - her characters struggle with them quite a bit, and much of the thrust of the last book revolves around the tension between wanting to share this discovery with the world, and what it might mean if they do - since the only way to gain these telepathic skills appears to be to kill female dragons.

I think, though, that this shift of setting combined with the shift of story - away from coming of age and into an escape/rescue/adventure from a bizarre clan of mountain folks - makes it feel jarring, and Yolen just doesn't manage it as well as she managed the others. For me, this is the sort of book I read because I fall in love with a world, and because I'm a completionist. ( )