Book Recommendation: The Iron Dragon Saga by Robert Kroese
Time travel and Vikings. Need I say more?
When I began reading The Dream of the Iron Dragon, the first book in Robert Kroese’s five-book series, all I knew was that it involved time travel and Vikings in space. If that alone is enough to spark your curiosity, then you don’t need to know anything else—dive right into the first book. It’s a fantastic blend of spacefaring sci-fi and alternate history set during the Viking Age, and I wholeheartedly recommend the entire series. But if you need a bit more to decide whether it’s for you, read on.
The story kicks off with a scenario reminiscent of Star Trek: a starship encounters a problem, prompting an away team to investigate. During this mission, the ship is hurled back in time and crash-lands in Norway at the dawn of the Viking Age. The stranded crew must first survive in this unfamiliar world before figuring out how to repair their ship, return to space, and make it back to their own time.
Time travel in fiction can be handled in a few satisfying ways. One approach, like in Back to the Future, treats the timeline as malleable—actions in the past alter the future. The Iron Dragon Saga, however, takes a different tack: time is fixed and unchangeable. This means the crew, armed with knowledge of medieval history, can’t do anything to alter the past because their presence there has already happened. Their mission to rebuild their spaceship and return to the future must remain hidden, leaving no trace for historians to uncover. This twist, launching a spaceship in the 800s while keeping it a secret, adds a layer of suspense that sets this fixed-timeline story apart from others. If that sounds complex, don’t worry. Kroese expertly weaves the rules of his time travel paradox into the narrative, keeping things clear and engaging as you read.
At this point, I’ll nudge you again: if this sounds like a series you’d enjoy, go pick up the first book. But if you’re the type who likes to know where a story is headed before committing, here’s a bit more.
The Dream of the Iron Dragon focuses on the crew’s struggle to survive among curious and hostile Vikings while laying the groundwork for their plan to return home. The second book, The Dawn of the Iron Dragon, follows their efforts to secretly gather resources and rebuild their ship, weaving in a creative take on the Viking siege of Paris in 845. The third book, The Voyage of the Iron Dragon, chronicles the culmination of their medieval spacefaring project. The fourth book, The Legacy of the Iron Dragon, shifts to a new crew from a different ship, also flung back in time, this time to Jerusalem, as they work to return to their era. I’ll admit, while reading this one, I missed the original characters from the first three books. But the fifth book, The War of the Iron Dragon, ties up most of the loose ends from books three and four, connecting the events in the past to the future in a satisfying conclusion.
By the time I finished the series, I found myself wanting more—a sign, in my opinion, of a truly great book series. Highly recommended.