Jaiden, a 15-year-old farm boy, lives near Hilltop, a Medieval-type village and has never been more than a few miles beyond his home. He lives with his widower father who works the boy hard and treats Jaiden rather abusively. In this world, people have enslaved dragons as beasts of burden and as something like guard dogs and soldiers.
There are three kinds of dragons characterized by their various colors: gold (dog-sized) dragons trained to hunt and serve as guards; silver (about the size of a cow) trained to carry gold dragons on their backs and to serve as soldiers and hunters; and blue dragons (somewhat larger than an elephant) who are trained to tow Dragon Trains (powered by a low-flying dragon rather than a steam engine). The gold and silver dragons aren''t very intelligent, but obedient to humans and easily trained. The blues however, are very intelligent and can communicate with each other telepathically although most humans are not aware of their abili
