Dragon Dance (novel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dragon Dance ((1986) is the last novel of the Fireball Trilogy by John Christopher. At the end of the previous novel, New Found Land, Simon and Brad were in North America and captured by sailors from the Far East.
When they awakened after losing consciousness during the capture, they found themselves on a Chinese junk crossing the Pacific Ocean. The junk was a paddle steamers that sailed without human intervention. The crew apparently put themselves in hibernation mode, indicating they were accustomed to the trip and expected an uneventful journey.
They arrived in China and were brought to the Imperial Court, where the boys displayed their knowledge of modern technology. There, Brad was besotted with the Dowager Regent and became estranged from Simon.
Unlike other civilizations they had encountered which remained at pre-Dark Ages technological level, the author described the Chinese as continuing their technological innovations and coming up with new inventions, even though they stagnated at social development.
Simon was sent to the north to serve the general of the powerful Northern Army in charge of resisting the nomadic barbarians.
The arrival of the boys catalysed the ongoing court intrigues between the dowager regent and the court officials. A series of bad news arrived in the north from the capital that implied the young emperor was held incommunicando, or was secretly deposed and killed by the dowager regent.
The general publicly declared the dowager regent as a usurper, and mobilised his army, the most powerful in the empire, to rescue the emperor, whose fate was unknown. He candidly admitted to Simon that should the emperor have died, he (the general) was most likely to succeed to the throne.
Simon tried to help the general by introducing armoured tanks, but lacked detailed knowledge. Nonetheless, the Chinese engineers in the service of the general were able to build on the concept to produce some prototypes.
The Chinese themselves used flying kites to stimulate appearances of dragons aiding their military.
However, the expedition became a disaster at the gates of the capital. Simon discovered that Brad introduced airplanes to the dowager regent's forces. While the airplanes worked, Simon's tanks did not.
Having rid of all oppositions, the dowager regent callously discarded Brad and even tried to have him killed.
The two boys managed to escape again, to encounter another fireball similar to the one which brought them into this realm.
Though he had the option to go home, Simon followed Brad when the latter refused to go home and instead decided to try for better luck in another new realm.
