During a state banquet, Jelindel dek Mediesar's family was massacred. Jelindel only escaped death because she had sneaked out of the feast to look at the stars. When she realised what had happened she disguised herself as a young boy and set out to conceal her identity from the would-be assassins. Whilst working as a scribe she meets Zimak, a streetwise urchin and Daretor, a swordsman. Together they are dragged into a search for a number of lost links of a chainmail shirt. Once intact the shirt is said to imbue the wearer with supernatural abilities. Could this lost shirt bear any relationship to the murder of Jelindel's family?

Dragonlinks is a wonderful story in the classic traditions of fantasy writing. You have the murder of a ruling family, a young girl disguising herself as a boy, magic, mystery, danger and a quest. What more could you ask for? The main character, Jelindel, reassuringly has to learn to fight (makes a change from many stories where they seem to possess these abilities from birth). She also deals with some of the usually unmentionable difficulties when a girl pretends to be a boy...

The three main combatants go through a number of ordeals whilst trying to retrieve the six missing links from the magical mailshirt yet they still do not know the true nature of the shirt until the last link is fitted.

I loved this book. I found the writing style incredibly easy to read and the characters endearing. There were no "drought patches", no points where the pace faltered.

Wonderfully addictive reading!

Synopsis
Jelindel dek Mediesar led a charmed life until lindrak assassins murdered her family. Fleeing to the markets Jelindel dresses as a boy to avoid detection. Here she teams up with Zimak, a street-wise urchin, and Daretor, a warrior on a quest to destroy an alien artifact.

Murder, betrayal and deceit are just some of the hurdles they must face in order to find the missing links from a star-dwellers' mailshirt— six powerful links, whose individual powers are nothing compared with that of the complete mailshirt.

Direct quote
"This is the sort of book you wish really was a never ending story." Isobelle Carmody.

Previous quotes
"Australia is not the science fiction capital of the world; in fact we are probably not even on the map. This unfortunate fact would change if we could produce more writers like Paul Collins." Michael Hanrahan—Australian Book Review

"Edgy, strange, disconcerting, alarming, as speculative fiction is supposed to be. Collins writes the definitive well-crafted, dangerous story." Kerry Greenwood—The Age

"Collins has a penchant for the hard-boiled hero, a lineage derived from Hammett and Chandler." Colin Steele—The Canberra Times