In the past few years, the folks who make the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game have made a big effort to be more family friendly, trying to expose kids who have a natural love of fantasy and imagination to the rich tapestry of story that makes up the various parts of the Dungeon and Dragons mythos. Not immune to the lure of the very hot realm of preteen fiction, they have put together their own publishing line entitled Mirrorstone books. Two of the main series are the Practical Guide Series and the Dragon Codex Series. The Practical Guides are almost coffee table books for kids with rich, colorful illustrations and entertaining text on the topic of dragons, fairies, monsters and the like. The Dragon Codex series takes a more traditional route and is a series of young adult novels all tied to a particular color of dragon (in the D&D universe basic colored dragons like red or blue tend to be bad while metallic colored dragons like copper or gold tend to be good). All the codex books are fairly good reads, age-appropriate with a couple minor exceptions. They take advantage of the rich history of the D&D Dragonlance universe to provide stories about young teens having adventures in a world with a rich, diverse history. Each book is independent of the others, although if they are read in series there are occasional nods to occurrences to things that happened in previous books. Here are my thoughts on the books in the series so far.

Red Dragon Codex
In this story, a large red dragon is terrorizing a town, causing several of its young inhabitants to set off on a journey to rescue one of the townspeople. It is a great start to the series and introduces much of the background of the world in a natural way. My only concern with the book is the initial dragon attack on the village at the start of the book. While not described in any gruesome way, it is still a fairly violent event. It fits with the book so is not gratuitous, and it is also far less violent than other so-called young adult fiction. Nonetheless, I’d caution parents of particularly young or sensitive kids that the first chapter or two is a bit rough.

Bronze Dragon Codex
This book is one of my favorites in the series as it has two main characters, a bronze dragon who hates people (unusual in bronze dragons) and a young girl who hates dragons. They obviously get paired up and much maturity ensues. Not too much for even wary parents to worry about here, although I do enjoy how the book demonstrates the consequences of one’s actions when action is taken without forethought.

Black Dragon Codex
This is perhaps the most traditional story in the series with a particularly evil, young black dragon must make a bargain with a young human and they then learn to work together in order to save themselves from their imprisonment. A nice message here about you are as evil as you choose to be, although big fans of the Dragonlance setting may feel the young black dragon becomes just a bit “too” good near the end, it at least allows for a happy ending.

Brass Dragon Codex
This is my favorite of the series as it includes a chatty bronze dragon as well as a gnome (who are known for making crazy fantasy inventions that typically don’t work). Some may object to the slight “steam-punk” feel of injecting a little science (electricity to be precise) into the mix. It is the most “campy” or goofy book of the series, and that’s probably why I like it. Less grand life-or-death themes and more about individual characters’ discoveries of who they are and what they want to be. If you only read one in the series, make it this one.

Green Dragon Codex
Green dragons are evil, people are supposed to be the heroes, but what if a young boy gets a baby green dragon, can he train it up to be good? It remains unanswered in this book but it forms most of the plot. A young boy finds a baby green dragon and wants to raise it to be a “good” dragon. Meanwhile, rather nasty dragon-haters are chasing the boy (and his friends) down to capture the dragon and its treasure. Always staying a step or two ahead of dire trouble the young boy and his friends learn mostly about themselves and grow from adventurer-wannabes up into full fledged adventurers. A word of warning about this book, there is a scene (integral to one characters development) where as a child one character met some brigands with the character’s grandfather. The two are robbed and the grandfather is then hung right in front of the child. Again, it isn’t described in a gruesome way, but it is a very powerful scene and parents of very sensitive kids should be aware of it. (It comes around the last third of the book.) Of course, many kids will have already seen worse in one form or another, but at least know it is there.

Silver Dragon Codex
Coming out this month (September) the newest installment of the series focuses on a silver dragon (or someone who might be a silver dragon in disguise). Only the dragon (if she is one) doesn’t even know it. As I haven’t read it yet, that’s about all I can say.

The Bottom Line:
I’m not saying the Dragon Codex series is the best young adult fiction ever (I’m quite partial to Terry Pratchett’s young adult series), but they are all pretty solid titles that should appeal to their target audience. They’re a nice step up from fire-and-forget titles that are commonly mass produced for the young adult shelves at the local bookstore. They have an added bonus for any parents who are fans of the Dragonlance D&D setting, as they can serve as fine stepping stones into further books or adventures set in that world.

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