One of the delights and challenges of Last Dragon is its jigsaw-puzzle-like structure, its elliptical style ... of which more below. But in essence the novel tells the story of Zhan, a young girl from a warlike northern tribe that inhabits a land called Alameda and hones its battle skills in an endless cycle of war with neighboring cannibals. When Zhan is away from her village training to become a warrior, a terrible crime is committed: Most of the villagers are butchered in cold blood. The murderer is Zhan's grandfather. One of the dead is the village shaman, and now Zhan's uncle, Seth, formerly the shaman's apprentice, becomes the new shaman, and Zhan is pulled away from her training to become her uncle's apprentice. The two of them immediately depart in pursuit of Zhan's grandfather, who is also Seth's father. They track him far to the south, to a great city called Proliux.

Proliux was once the stronghold of a dragon—the last of its kind. In McDermott's richly detailed if obliquely explicated backstory, the last dragon, which lived deep under the city, was protected by paladins sworn to its defense. But an invading army of mercenaries bearing firearms defeated the paladins and killed the dragon. Now the invaders rule in the dragon's stead, still protected by their fierce mercenary warriors, black men with steel fangs or claws. One of the surviving paladins is a woman named Adel, who later married one of the conquerors, Tycho, though the two subsequently split up for reasons never entirely made clear.

When Seth and Zhan reach Proliux, they become separated, and Zhan, on her own, anxiously searches for Seth, knowing that without him she cannot find her grandfather and exact revenge. Whether by accident or design, Zhan encounters Adel, who offers to help her find Seth. Seth, meanwhile, has hooked up with a gypsy girl named Korinyes. These four characters soon come together and are joined by a fifth, an over-the-hill mercenary named Fest. Led by Adel, who possesses great authority due to her marriage to Tycho, they find the missing murderer ... whom Zhan promptly kills. But even as he dies, Seth uses his shamanic magic to return him to pseudo-life as a golem.

But revenge—or, if you prefer, justice—has its price, for now the dragonslayers are aware of lands and peoples to the north that they did not know about before. When the dragonslayers dispatch their mercenary armies to conquer Alameda, the five companions, plus the golem, embark on a desperate race to beat the armies north and alert the unsuspecting tribespeople of the impending invasion.

An artfully fragmented epic

Imagine a jigsaw puzzle with all its pieces connected. This puzzle is placed into a box. The box is then thoroughly shaken, after which, at random, certain pieces of the puzzle are removed; the rest of the puzzle is then dumped out on the floor. Whole sections of it remain intact, though out of their proper order; other sections are more or less completely fragmented into their constituent parts; and a number of key pieces are missing all together, making it difficult if not impossible to reassemble the puzzle correctly. This is the effect that McDermott achieves with his fragmented structure and elliptical, oblique style.

Many of Zhan's specific memories are lost or uncertain; her letters, or the portions of them that constitute the narrative, jump around in time and place, so that readers must situate themselves simultaneously in multiple narratives. For example, one page might relate the trek of Zhan and Seth to Proliux; on the next page, Zhan, Seth, Adel, Fest, Korinyes and the golem are making their way back to the north. Important events have occurred between these two snapshots, but they are not explained—or, rather, they are explained later or perhaps earlier in the narrative, or they are never explained at all and readers must deduce the missing information for themselves based on whatever clues McDermott supplies. To complicate matters, there is another narrative going on besides the story of how Zhan became empress. This is a story that is told almost entirely by implication, when Zhan addresses Esumi directly in her letters. Here we learn tangentially what occurred after the events that foreground the narrative. In a sense, this is the more important of the two stories, even though much of it remains explicitly untold, because it provides the stimulus for Zhan's letters. Layers of irony, shadings of emotion, revelatory moments peel away page by page, sometimes paragraph by paragraph, in an extraordinary display of authorial control.

Making sense of this impressionistic storytelling style may sound like a lot of work, but McDermott's vibrant prose and conceptual intelligence make it a pleasure. His characters are all distinct individuals, drawn with precision, understanding and love. Relationships are sharp and believable, limned with trenchant dialogue. Adel's relationship with Zhan is central here. Perhaps even more important, though also more obscure, is her relationship with the dragon killed beneath Proliux; one's interpretation of this matter colors everything that occurs in the novel—including its title. Zhan herself puzzles over this without reaching a definite conclusion.

The details of McDermott's fantasy world are rendered with equal skill. The technique of golem-making and its grisly result are especially well handled, as is the invention of a kind of plague of altered consciousness carried by ants who infest their hosts in a bizarre symbiosis. Even for an experienced writer, a richly multifaceted novel like this would be a considerable accomplishment. For a first-time novelist, it's a wonder.