The Dragon Never Sleeps [Mass Market Paperback]

Glen Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1988

For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo. But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule. This precipitates an avalanche of unexpected outcomes, including the emergence of Kez Maefele, one of the few remaining generals of the Ku Warrior race-the only race to ever seriously threaten Guardship hegemony. Kez Maefele and a motley group of aliens, biological constructs, an scheming aristocrats find themselves at the center of the conflict. Maefele must chose which side he will support: the Guardships, who defeated and destroyed his race, or the unknown forces outside Canon Space that promise more death and destruction.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 422 pages
• Publisher: Popular Library (August 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0445203498
• ISBN-13: 978-0445203495
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I read in 2000, February 12, 2001

By 

"drice3" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dragon Never Sleeps (Mass Market Paperback)

I ordered this title sight unseen, with no prior knowledge of its storyline or quality. With "Dragon" in the title, I figured I was getting another good gritty dark fantasy novel. Even a weak Glen Cook paperback is worth paying out of print bookseller prices, so I went for it.

I was pleasantly suprised to get this particular book in the mail! Space opera is the best way to describe the genre, showing all sides of a declining, far flung insterstellar empire maintained by a remote administration. Policy is made and enacted by a fleet of dreadnaughts that are few and far between the stars. They protect their empire against remote hostile alien forces, and against the enemy within, nascent kingdoms of merchant princes scheming to master not only their own solar systems but the big catch -- capturing a stellar warship! All sides have their idealists, their practical realists, and their outright fools, and all put forward extraordinary effort to advance their agendas.

Many of Glen Cook's books have an epic scale, but this one is amazing, with hundreds of combat ships duking it out across whole solar systems, dead soldiers resurrected in their own cloned bodies, star fleets dispatched by computer, dead tactical officers' minds manifested as vertual beings that gradually lose touch with humanity, intelligent starships generating animatrons who can be seduced by a nymphomaniac spoiled heiress, manhunts over a whole arm of the galaxy, and a breathtaking chase sequence that made me think of the opening credits from the original "Star Wars". As always Cook shows us these events from the point of view of those who do the work.

Oh, the title is a metaphor. The empire of humanity is a pile of jewels sought by avariscious beings within and without. The "Dragon" who guards it is the interstellar fleet that must be constantly vigilant, and not always nice. Thus, their fleet directive ... "The Dragon Never Sleeps". Some of the characters are aware of where they stand in relation to this metaphor, some are not. There's a great sequence where the tragic hero of the piece, recruited by petty empire grabbing employers, puts them in their place by saying "I've dealt with thieves before."

Did I mention this was the best book I read in the year 2000?

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have ever read., September 14, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Seattle, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dragon Never Sleeps (Mass Market Paperback)

Glen Cook does his very best work in this incredible book that begs for a sequel.

Plot, characterization and just plain imagination are Cook at the top of his game. I have read this book at least half a dozen times and find more hidden in it's depths at every reading.

What a pity this is not a series like the wonderful Black Company.

Glen Cook is the most under-appreciated writer of modern day. How lucky I am to have found him.

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The second time i've wanted to give six stars., August 4, 2000

By 

Michael Weber "fairportfan" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dragon Never Sleeps (Mass Market Paperback)

Glen Cook is a helluva writer. He never seems to get the respect he deserves; his stuff sells well but he never seems to "break out" the way others (who may or may not be better writers) have and continue to do.

And this may well have been Glen's best book so far.

Sad it's been out of print since its single first edition, more than ten years ago.

I recall buying it, because i buy every Glen Cook novel that comes out, and reading it in basically one sitting (and even though i read nearly 1000 words/minute, that was a longish read, because this is a *big* book). Not too long after that, as we were setting out on a seven-hour drive (to an SF convention, as it happens) my wife asked me if i had anything interesting she could read on the trip. I handed her "Dragon". She protested that she didn't like Cook's stuff. I persuaded her to try it.

As we were arriving in Louisville, she looked up and said "Okay -- when can I read the sequel?"

But there isn't a sequel. It's wide-open for a sequel. The last line almost *demands* a sequel.

But Glen won't write one. And i've bugged him about it on and off at SF conventions for years -- he just grins and says "Don't feel like it" or words to that effect.

But, even given the fact that this book really *needs* a sequel and there isn't one and there apparently ain't gonna *be* one, i cannot recommend it too highly as a classic example of how to do space-opera *right*.

Would be well-worth the effort of finding a copy if you like well-written, well-thought-out extremely wide-screen Space Opera; particularly, anyone who likes either David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series or "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books needs to read this.