The Last Dragon on Mars
by Scott Reintgen
read by Landon Woodson
Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written October 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
The Last Dragon on Mars is the first in a trilogy about spaceships powered by dragons, featuring a crew made up of thirteen-year-old humans.
As the book opens, we meet Lunar Jones, an orphan who lives on a relocation center in Mars and takes care of the other kids there by working as a scrapper – when a storm goes through, he goes out into the wastes to dig up scrap metal to sell.
That first mission doesn’t go well (though we get to experience all the drama of the attempt), and Lunar takes refuge in a military zone, because the likelihood of being killed there is still less than the certainty of being killed by the other scrappers who are stealing the prize he found.
But in the military zone, Lunar follows some tunnels and discovers a massive underground habitat – and a dragon nobody on Mars knew about.
When the military folks in charge of the hidden base try to kill him (because of course they do), the dragon stops them – he’s chosen Lunar as his dragoon.
But not everyone wants there to be another dragon. The dragon is young, and the kids who were selected and brought up to train with him are about Lunar’s age, all young teens. The man in charge who arranged all this (except the part about Lunar joining them) has reason to believe dragons on other planets may not be happy to hear about another dragon on Mars.
It’s not giving anything away to say that Lunar and his new friends end up flying on a dragonship with their lives at stake.
I won’t even try to explain the whole world-building with a dragon for each planet and each moon and star. But it’s all built smoothly, with no lull in the action – we learn details because lives are at stake. And it adds up to battles in space with spaceships powered by dragons. What could be better?
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/last_dragon_on_mars.html
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