Finally, five volumes in, we find out what really happened to Jack’s parents, and who they really were. I’ve been waiting a long time for this revelation, and it is just as good as I expected.

It wasn’t hard to suspect that Virgil Morgan wasn’t telling the complete truth about Jack’s parents, but on the other hand he did pretty well by Jack, even as he used him in his cons and trained him in an ethos of radical self-sufficiency. On the gripping hand, we also start to see that Jack and Draycos’ meeting on Iota Klestis was not mere happenstance, but rather a providential act that would ensure that justice can be done for everyone.

Justice is a key theme of the Dragonback series. Draycos needs justice for his harried and beleaguered people, fleeing from genocidal war. Jack wants justice for himself, to start anew after being conscripted into a life of crime by his benefactor. Jack needs justice because the unscrupulous are only too willing to try to take advantage of his checkered past to enlist him in dubious schemes. Justice is clearly in short supply in the Orion Arm.

Another key theme is birthright. Draycos and Jack are each special because of who they are. The key dramatic element in Dragon and Judge is, who is Jack? Where did he come from? Who are his parents, really? We don’t have to wonder much about Draycos, who is after all a dragon and a warrior, although some surprises are yet in store. Jack is an orphan, an archetype of import, and together they have a destiny to fulfill.

In Dragon and Judge, we also have a storyline involving Alison Kayna, Jack’s compatriot from book 2, and Taneem, a phooka turned K’da by bonding with Alison. With the mystery of Jack’s parents cleared up, we have a new mystery to ponder in Alison. We don’t truly know who she is or who she is working for. While we consider this, we also get to see Zahn explore her character. Everything Alison does is of necessity duplicitous, since she is observing Jack at the behest of an unknown party, but her charade is eased by what appears to be genuine agreement with Jack and Draycos’ mission to save the K’da refugee fleet.

Earnest and naive Taneem serves as a foil for Alison, as Zahn gently probes the moral dilemma of doing what is right versus maintaining your cover. Since this is a juvenile, we aren’t going to see Alison faced with an atrocity. That would have been an interesting setup with Draycos’ unyielding sense of right and wrong, but this isn’t that kind of a book. While the stakes are dramatically high, this is the PG version.

All of the pieces are now in place for the dramatic conclusion. Let us see how Zahn wraps it all up. ( )

Jack goes to the planet where his parents died. Finds out that they were Judge-Paladins and that someone from Braxton Universi engineered it. Drayco and Jack are discovering even more abilities, telepathy. Alison and Taneem go off to another planet and are kidnapped by Neverlin to work on cracking the safes that tell where the rendezvous point for the incoming K'da fleet is. She succeeds. Jack also rescues a Starforce pilot who then begins to infiltrate Neverlin right at the end of the book. Enjoyable. ( )

Again, very good, but again, not quite as good as the first three installments of the series. ( )

Jack stops off at the planet of Semaline to pick up some papers that Uncle Virgil had left in a safe deposit box, but before he can get to the bank, he's kidnapped by a group of Golvins who take him back to their remote village in a desert canyon to act as a judge-paladin for them. He discovers that his parents were not miners as his uncle always claimed but judge-paladins who were murdered eleven years ago in that very village. Jack stops trying to escape back to Allison and his spaceship and sets out to solve his parents' murder with the help of Draycos.
Meanwhile, Allison is also kidnapped from Semaline and taken to the Choockook estate and forced to open a K'da safe that contains the location of the rendevous between the refugee fleet and the advanced scouting party. If she fails to open it, Arthur Neverlin and Colonet Frost will have her shot. If she does open it, Neverlin and Frost will be able to carry out their massacre of all the K'da and Shontine refugees. ( )