Talker 25 by Joshua McCune (review)

In this grim novel, dragons appeared in the world fifteen years ago, and now people have finally cobbled together enough attack strategies to do away with them. Melissa knows all too well how dangerous dragons are, as her own mother was killed by one, but there’s much about dragons she doesn’t understand. This becomes clear after she is kidnapped (or rescued, depending on who you ask), first by resistance forces who want her to help save the dragons, and then by a military operation that threatens her family unless she uses her telepathic connection to help them locate the creatures. The book treats the situation with satisfying complexity—it is obvious why there is so much fear in this society, and how people’s safety strategies might wear on them nearly as much as the risk of becoming dragon fodder. There’s some startling viciousness here, and readers expecting noble dragons (or noble humanity) will be quickly disabused of those notions as the dragons snap up children for a snack and people retaliate by utilizing extended torture tactics, only loosely under the guise of trying to get information. A slightly too sharp social comment about reality television and how it is used to exploit individuals wears thin, but this is a minor concern in what is overall an edgy, dark glimpse into a world that decides the best way to handle terrorists is terrorism.