Daughter of Dragons

The Legacy of Dragons #1

by Jack Campbell, MacLeod Andrews (Narrator)

Listening time 11 hours 27 minutes

The legacy of Mari and Alain blazes ahead in this brand-new sequel to the hit Audible original series The Pillars of Reality.

The world of Dematr had been locked unchanging for centuries by the Great Guilds, most people living in a world of oil lamps, crossbows, and horse cavalry, the Mechanics reserving to themselves the technology for steam locomotives, rifles, and far-talkers while the Mages treated all others as if they were nothing - until Master Mechanic Mari, dragon slayer and pirate queen, and Master of Mages Alain raised the army of the new day to free their world.

Kira of Pacta Servanda, the daughter of the two greatest heroes of her world, was six years old the day she stood on a battlement in Dorcastle, staring up at a statue of her mother while surrounded by bodyguards who fenced Kira off from the nearby crowds. As the morning sun cast the shadow of Mari's statue over Kira, she realized that she would spend the rest of her life in that shade. Then the world of Dematr learned that a new kind of ship had left the far-distant world of Urth. The ship would take only 10 years to cover the immense distances between stars. Of all the colony worlds, the ship was coming to Dematr. But for what purpose? Kira was 16 when the ship from Urth arrived, and she discovered that her world still needed heroes.

©2017 John G. Hemry (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Genres: Fantasy, Audiobook, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Steampunk, Fiction, Romance

12 pages, Audible Audio

First published February 14, 2017

About the author

Jack Campbell is a pseudonym for American science fiction author John G. Hemry.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

John G. Hemry is an American author of military science fiction novels. Drawing on his experience as a retired United States Navy officer, he has written the Stark's War and Paul Sinclair series. Under the name Jack Campbell, he has written four volumes of the Lost Fleet series, and on his website names two more forthcoming volumes. He has also written over a dozen short stories, many published in Analog magazine, and a number of non-fiction works.

John G Hemry is a retired United States Navy officer. His father, Jack M. Hemry, also served in the navy and as John points out was a mustang. John grew up living in several places including Pensacola, San Diego, and Midway Island.

John graduated from Lyons High School in Lyons in 1974 then attended the US Naval Academy (Class of '78) where he was labeled 'the un-midshipman' by his roommates.

He lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids. His two eldest children are diagnosed as autistic and suffer from Neuro immune dysfunction syndrome (NIDS), an auto-immune ailment which causes their illness, but are progressing under treatment.

John is a member of the SFWA Musketeers whose motto reads: 'The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, but the Wise Person Carries Both'.

Reviews

[Jennopenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate this book.
No okay that's not true. I find all the books I've listen to by Jack Campbell, narrated by McCloud Andrews, are just too addictive. And they all end on a kind of cliffhanger. I need book two straight away.

[Shawna Canon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series so much. This book is the first in a trilogy that is a direct sequel to the Pillars of Reality series. If you liked that series, you'll probably like this one. It touches on a lot of the same themes and has a lot of the same wonderful types of moments and dynamics. Kira is a lot like her mother, Mari, and though she struggles with some of the same issues, some of her issues are entirely her own. Jason, the male love interest, is just as respectful and as much a good guy as Alain, but he's also his own guy. As a love interest goes, he's great. A total sweetheart. If you like nice guy romances, you should definitely read all of these books. The worldbuilding continues and is very compelling. I'm very excited to see where the author continues to take the story in that regard, as well as with the characters. I liked that although Kira and Jason were the main characters of the story, we got a fairly good amount of Mari and Alain, as well as brief appearances by some of the other characters from the first series. (No General Flynn, though. I don't know why, but I really like him, and he's never in it as much as I wish he was.) This is just a fantastic book/series, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The future rarely happens as people expect, and even those people with the firmest belief in what their future will hold can be very mistaken. Especially when that person is the daughter of the two greatest heroes of her world.”

A pleasant science fiction series opener set in a world Campbell established in his earlier, Pillars of Reality, series. Humans cut off from Earth become mechanics, mages, and common folks. Though published in 2017, Campbell’s storytelling harks back to the heyday of science fiction for young adults several decades ago. That’s a compliment.

"Why weren't you staring at my butt?" Jason shrugged. "I didn't think you wanted me staring at your butt." "I don't." "Then I don't know why we're having this conversation." "Um…yeah."

The protagonist and friend are less-than-legal-age teens and act like it. Plot, language, and situations reflect their self-awareness of relationships with parents, society, and the opposite sex.

"It figures that some person back on Earth would claim credit for the idea. 'Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes!' he said, singing the words.”

Pleasant juxtaposition between a surly earth-raised teen and one from a culture emerging from its industrial revolution. Lots of pop cultural references, which the Dematrians don’t understand, but readers will. Nice cover art.

“How can you find yourself when you're part of an infinite crowd and everybody is yelling?"

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in a new series!

Do read the Pillars of Reality series first, there are spoilers ahead for it.

This starts off a little slower than that one, with the problems 16-year-old Kira faces being the daughter of two of the most famous people on the planet. But a ship from Urth is arriving, and her parents finally reveal to her that her father Alain had foreseen her being integral to events. And he and many other Mages foresee danger about this ship.

And when the ship arrives, there's a boy her age on it among the crew members. He warns Kira that the ship's crew does not mean them well.

The rest of the story involves different types of sails, flying on a roc, a storm at sea, jumping off a train (ah, tradition), picking locks, questions of Urth law, and more.

[Ronie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gave this first book in The Legacy of Dragons a chance because I love Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet. I'm still a bit new to his writing, but I was not disappointed with Daughter of Dragons. So enjoyed this story.

[Donna Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like it a lot.

[Gillian Murrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be way too preachy and repetitive for my liking. If the author was to take out all the moral high ground chatter there would be very little left to the book. The book deals with the vast difference in two worlds. Urth is very modern and way ahead in terms of technology while Dematr feels like it was put in a capsule and berried for a five hundred years only to be opened up and struggling to catch up. The whole time I was reading this book it felt like I was missing something and it turns out I was, as it appears this is a follow on from another series. So thank you Audible for recommending this book for me, it would have been handy if you had recommended the first book in the original series rather than this one :(

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book.
Kira was always a physically powerful character, so I was worried there would fail to be any growth for her, and Jason was such a whiner I feared I would never bring myself to like him. Kira learnt to step out of her mother's shadow and become herself, and Jason learnt who he could be and embraced it. The dragons and spaceships were pretty cool too 😉
A cool combo of sci-fi and fantasy YA

[Archiegitdog · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book and will be buying the follow on immediately. My only criticism is its a bit 'mushy' in places and I could have done with less 'mush'. I had a teenager daughter once and relate to all the self negativity and hostility but next to none of the mushiness!

[Yestin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are similar issues in this book, to those I had with the original series. That aside, it was a good start to this follow-up series, I look forward to reading the next one.

[Reanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful book, continuing the same greatness of the first series. More of the same, and that's a good thing.

[D.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this world but Daughter of Dragons was just too similar to several of the books in the prior series for me to rate it higher than 3 stars. Again, we have two teenagers on the run, the girl more aware of her world while the boy is clueless. Again, they jump from trains, travel on ships, fight mages, dragons, bla, bla, bla, all in an effort to prove that yes, Kira is as kickass as her parents.

Kira was too much like Mari - this made sense characterization wise as they are mother and daughter - but this created very similar dynamics as the first series, which made the story very repetitive. I think the author could have had the same conflict - how does a person live up to the shadow of extraordinary parents - but he should have switched the genders around (Kira should have been a boy and the Earthling a girl) so at least the story had a different flavor.

I really liked how Alain and Mari weren't relegated to a corner but that they were very active participants in the plot. The sadness that I felt permeating their lives in The Wrath of the Great Guilds continued, proving that with all the good they did for their world, Alain & Mari haven't lived easy lives. Being a living hero is no easy task, specially when you have to contend with the aftermath of war and such great responsibilities.

Even though I wasn't crazy about this first book, I'll definitely continue reading the series. I just hope we see more of Alain.

[Marjo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I literally spent the whole day listening to this, and it was so worth it. loved every character, and the story was a great continuation of the original series and a good introduction to new people and to the new status quo. AND: it manages to set up the next book (or should I say two books because this will be a trilogy) without ending on a cliffhanger. I repeat: No. Cliffhangers.

[Cozen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another book I got from audible that I wished I didn’t spend any credits on. Even though this book was suggested to me, it’s now brought to my attention that this is a following after another series. Don’t care for whiny and brat-ish female characters.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a big fan of scifi/fantasy books. I picked this up as a...you guessed it...audible deal of the day and was pleasantly surprised when I started reading it. If you ask me—which literally no one does—a good science fiction book includes:

a. Not too much world building. There is nothing so soul-sapping and boring as some meticulously constructed fake world with a bunch of weird stuff that no one really cares about.

b. Isn't three million pages long

[I'm talking to YOU Brandon Sanderson!]

But I digress...

This book qualified on both accounts. It is blessedly short and is set in a scifi world, but with just the right amount of world building.

I think what makes a good scifi book—again which literally no one cares about—is a book that draws you in as a human being, like Ready Player One for instance, which was an awesome book. This book does a really good job of illuminating the human condition, and even includes some good social commentary in the process. This is no mean feat.

Some examples:

"He's a teenage boy, Keira said, he doesn't seem to like himself, so how could I like him."

"We had such hopes, but earth turns out to be not that much different from our world."

"I know that love is hard." "Yes, Alain said, real love is hard. Forgetting yourself for another. Love is like fighting uphill against all of your worst instincts."

"Do you know what I'm doing right now? I'm going nuts because I'm completely off line. I had to leave everything behind because the ship could have tracked it. I can't listen to music or chat or trade vids with people on the other side of the planet or anything. That's what we do. We spend all of our time doing that stuff instead of talking to the people right next to us. The people who know us. I don't know them and they don't know me. How can you find yourself when you're part of an infinite crowd and everybody's yelling?"

So the reader is drawn into the book because the alien world has all of the difficulties, sins, concerns and desires as our world which makes it interesting.

Good book. Well done, Mr. Campbell.

[Kaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The growth of the world of Demeter is good but quite honestly the relationship interplay between the two main characters is simply too identical to that of Pillars of Reality, I mean really, it should be part of some reincarnation bit it's so similar. Also some, but not all, of the "Urth/earth culture is so bad" arguments are at least moderately weak, the arguments only hold up if you leave it where the characters drop it. And most of those conversations are pretty one sided with the Demeter girl always forcefully "right" and earth boy "getting his preconceptions blown away" with very little push back, often after almost immediately running into an angry brick wall when trying to explain technologies or science to someone who is supposed to be smart and mechanically gifted. If you think for yourself it starts to come apart.

At the end of the book, I feel the protagonist comes off as someone who "should" be a Mary Sue quite frankly. But I can't bring myself to really like her all that much.

Muuuuuch more minor but I also just want to say the main protagonist of this book thought she had life growing up in the shadow of her mother, I truly pity her own potential daughter now that we've laid down the start of legitimate traditions.

I did not hate the book, I know they are YA so maybe I'm just too old for them but I love Campbells other work and Pillars was pretty good, but these things stood out and did consistently bug me through the reading so a 3 it is.

[Dave Lum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this novel. I'm curious to read the backstory leading up to this novel, as well as the sequel(s), and anything else by Mr. Campbell.

It's basically a coming of age novel for a young lady living on a "backward" planet. She is the main protagonist, but there is a similarly aged male character who does his own maturing. I like how family, honor, and respect are key values which differentiate the heroes and villains.

This setup reminds me so much of the Darkover novels. The planet has been frozen in time technologically, but is slowly coming out of it. Their mages have their own brand of "magic" comparable to the psychic powers of the Comyn on Darkover. The Urth people in this novel, similar to the imperialists in the Darkover series, have higher technology than the natives, and are trying to figure out how the "magic" works to use to their advantage.

This is more of a YA adventure novel than the Darkover novels which I considered more like sci-fi romances. There is less political and interpersonal intrigue, although that does exist here. It is less nuanced.

I liked the characters and cared about them. I want to see how things turn out, and I want to the what happened to their progenitors.

[Aaron Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teenage romance is the only thing that makes coming of age stories more annoying.

Main characters who have legitimate reasons to be annoying and whiny still aren't that much fun to read, even if they have reasons. Oh no, my mommy saved the world, how will I ever be my own person and live up to expectations. Argh...

Also, how hard could it be for the evil Earthlings to make drones that can scan a mage's body when he's casting a spell? Or if it was so hard, couldn't that have been better explained?

Also, after the standoff with Mari and Alain, where he shows the Earthlings that his magic can get through their defenses, all the evil Earthling mother had to do was repeat the confrontation (when she wasn't there, she sends lackeys) and have them ready to record when Alain has to save the day again. So many "easy" ways they don't have to track down her son. Though obviously that screws up the plot, so basically I wanted better reasons given why she couldn't just do that.

[Arne · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a good straight up and down fantasy novel. Colony world is kept in the dark by the colonizers to control the populace. All caught up.

There are two main branches, magic or engineering, pretty vanilla stuff. I found the foresight thing to be a bit of a cop-out so that the story can keep going, and to be honest there was nothing surprising in the whole tale. There's a Daughter of the Daughter who looks like she can do both magic and engineering, she's a rebellious youth who thinks her mom doesn't understand her, she happens to also be a martial arts expert, lots of "Oh Ok, that doesn't entirely make sense but is very fortunate". She ends up in love with a boy from Earth who hates his parents. Hold on, there was the Doctor lady who was abandoned right at the end, that was fresh.

While I'm typing this I realize I enjoyed the book less than I thought I did, characters were either All Good or All Bad with very little development happening outside of the well trodden path of teenage love and respect for your parents.

Narrator was good though.

[Vickie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am already a fan of Jack Campbell's series, The Lost Fleet. I saw this one on Audible and knew I had to listen to it. And I was right. It was superb. It's a smooth mixture of fantasy with science fiction.
A person looking at the description and some of the reviews might think it's a YA romance set in the future and turn away if not into YA romance set in the future. Let me tell you that it's definitely more than YA romance set in the future.
And it's more than a fantasy/science fiction blend, it's about family and how to live up to others' expectations. It's magic and science, it's moving on from the past and learning to live in the present and ready for the future.
I am off to upload the next in the trilogy, BLOOD OF DRAGONS, to listen to immediately upon finishing the current listen.
I can absolutely recommend the author, this book and trilogy and anything written by Jack Campbell. He's a favorite of mine.

[Damana Madden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 41 of 2017 is Daughter of Dragons from The Legacy of Dragons series by Jack Campbell.

Consumed this as an audio book, read by the always enjoyable MacLeod Andrews. Yes, I'm now following him on Instagram. Must be something to do with being read to bed each night.

Didn't realise that this was about the daughter of the protagonist from The Dragons of Dorcastle which I read in mid-2015 and didn't love. This is about her whiny daughter who I can compliment on growing up faster than her mother did.

The one reason I like this more is the Earth connection. It's like reading a meta version of the previous series.

Don't go out of your way for this but if you like Young Adult novels, you may enjoy it.

3.5 stamp collections out of 5.

Should I read this? Maybe if you like young adult lit and dragons.
What did I learn? Writers have a voice and accent.

[Jimbo · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have read the previous story line, then there is nothing new here. More of the same. Maybe I'm the wrong target audience. I really liked the other series but as it came to a close in the last two books, not so much. I was hoping this would be better, but it isn't. The world building is superb and the characters are ones you want to root for, but there is little need because everything will end the way you want with a tidy little bow on top. The good guys wear white hats and the bad guys where black ones. The good guys all have very pure intentions whereas the bad guys are all selfish. It's very simplistic, which is not a bad thing, but I know people to be more complicated than that.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly was worried going into this book. To the point that I put off reading this continuation in the world of Dematr. From the description, I was very concerned that our main character was either going to whiny; uptight; or full of nonstop angst. Thankfully, Kira was none of these.

This series continues with the same tone and adventure as the first. Inhabiting the same world without rehashing the same paths of the Pillars of Reality. I really like how the world has progressed and how Campbell incorporates our old friends with new faces. Glad I picked these books back up.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an entertaining YA novel set in an anachronistic nightmare. The novel bridges science fiction and fantasy. The setting is mostly based on medieval Europe, but there are some advanced machines and quite a bit of magic. The author actually does a good job of defining the rules of this world. The story has the stereotypical strong young female who under-estimates herself, and the sensitive male who under-estimates himself. The odd setting does not change this typical young adult dynamic. The story is entertaining so it was well worth my time.

[HardLight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic from beginning to end, a lovely little story with characters that are not in any way seen as terrible people who you can't like or get along with.

I'm not going to spoil it, but if you want a semi-steampunk western sci-fi drama and romance with a "on the run" story as the foundation, this is a perfect one to get into.

Such an amazing pallet cleanser after the terrible thing I've read previously.

the one small annoyance is Kira's mood swings, but even that gets to be resolved by the end of the book, it's nearly perfect in virtually every way.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book you will enjoy and read more than once

I have read all the books about the Daughter and her mage witch I enjoy, and now this ebook about the Daughter's Daughter please keep writing because I want to know who or what is chasing the two of them by the mountain, soon please from,reading your books I'm trying to write my own book. Don't worry I won't give up my day job.
Thank you
Clarence Travis Hays

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got about half-way through, but only because I decided I'm too old for Young Adult. It seemed like it would be a great book for teens. The two main characters come from wildly different backgrounds: the girl is the daughter of hero parents who are wonderful parents but so wonderful, the daughter feels like she'll never be as great as they are. The boy has terrible, uncaring parents and zero self-esteem, but he has somehow managed to develop moral values. The two end up on an adventure.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a interesting coming of age story with two teenage main characters. There is a girl whose mother is very famous (She is the main character in a previous series). A mother she thinks she cannot live up to. The other is a boy whose parents have told him he is worthless and he has not self confidence. When they have to go on the run both have life changing experiences. A very nicely put together story with danger, tension and the beginning of romance.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had previously read the author's first 6 book series set in this world and loved them very much! I was planning on reading this follow-up series but hadn't started it for some months because the main character of these books is a child of the former protagonists. I shouldn't have worried, as you can tell by the reading start and end dates. A very similar style of writing with new characters and challenges- I can't wait to continue with this trilogy!

[Gladia Dellmarre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book greatly in part because I really enjoyed the previous series: 'The pillars of reality'. In this book I liked encountering the main characters from the other series. One issue was that sometimes the voice of the main female character was very similar to the voice of the female character from the previous series.