Green Dragon Codex by R. D. Henham

When a green dragon flees from those who are trying to kill it, it takes with it a chest containing its last egg. But its flight is for naught. Half-killed, it slams into the forest below, where Scamp Weaver an orphan, finds the chest containing the egg, but he cannot open it.

When the Dragonslayers land to search for the chest, he hides, along with the chest. But they cannot find it, and leave off searching until the next day. Scamp manages to drag the chest back to the village on a sledge, where he encounters his older brother, Mather. Scamp looks up to Mather, but he's also disappointed that his brother never wants to protect him from the results of his own scrapes.

With Mather is Dannika, who is a friend to both himself and Mather. Back in the forest, the fire that threatened to consume the chest is now burning the forest, and Mather is sure that somehow, Scamp is involved. When he sees Scamp with the chest, Mather wants him to take it back, but Scamp says he doesn't know who it belongs to, and anyway, the place where he found it is in the midst of the fire.

So Dannika says she knows where they can take it, to her teacher, a half-Elven monk and hermit named Peda. He is able to open the chest, and reveals inside a great stone globe of slowly-shifting colors, and a ceramic tile incised with strange markings. Peda is startled to see them and asks Scamp where he got it, and insists that all three of them not reveal to anyone where he got it.

The next morning, Peda is dead, but the three find the chest hidden under the floor of his home, and a magical message from Peda telling them they must take the contents to the Thaen Thaumaturgical College, far away on the coast. Dannika would go on her own, but neither Mather nor Scamp wil be dissuaded from accompanying her.

Scamp, for his own part, can't keep his eyes, or his hands, off the strange globe. But partway into the journey, the globe hatches, and is revealed to have been a green dragon egg. Scamp defends the newborn baby dragon, but with a pack of Solamnic Knights on their tail, accompanied by a bronze Dragon who harbors a murderous hatred of evil dragonkind, can Scamp keep his new charge safe, and redeem himself in the eyes of both Mather and Dannika?

I read the first Dragonlance books when they originally came out, and I was enthralled. But lots of things happened with Dragonlance. I read some of the other books- the twins books, and some of the races book, like the Irda and the Minotaurs books, but it wasn't a setting I got into very deeply. However, thankfully, this isn't a book you need to know a great deal about the setting to enjoy.

It could be set pretty much anywhere, and the story would be pretty much unchanged, which is why it is good that the story itself is a great adventure. Scamp is the kind of main character that most boys would probably admit they would enjoy being. Yeah, he's the main target of bullies, but he's been forced to develop his wits and ability to squeeze into tight places to get away from them.

So he's pretty well prepared to care for a baby green dragon. It also helps that Scamp has been picked on and bullied a lot- he ends up feeling like the same is happening to the dragon. and so defends it- from everyone. But in the end, Scamp is unable to raise a dragon forever- it will live many years longer than he, and it will remain little more than a child when he is an old man. So what can be done by this creature that is, at its nature, evil?

Is evil in a Dragon nature or nurture? This book answers squarely in the former, but readers may feel differently, especially in a creature as intelligent as a Dragon. Especially one raised to trust people from the time it is a baby. While that may be the single greatest stumbling block to enjoying the book, it remains a good adventure story that is most enjoyable to read. Recommended.