Dragon is the 8th novel in the Vlad Taltos series. Oddly, just as Brust has really gotten going with the latter-day Vlad storyline, he shunts us back into Vlad's past in Dragon. If this is a step backward for the series, it's only a half-step. Really, seen in the scope of the larger series, it becoms clear that Dragon is also helping to set up the action of the novels to follow. We continue to see new facets of the characters and the plot elements that have been involved in the series, deepening our appreciation of each and setting the stage for things to come. 
 The story-telling continues to be very good. We're returned to Vlad's narrative voice and he carries it well. Brust also employs a variation on a technique that he used earlier in Taltos (another back-to-the-past novel, as it happens) in which each chapter actually begins toward the end of the overall story. That is, chapter 1 begins near the climax of the story but then fades back to the past, to the action that led us here. The beginning of chapter 2 picks up where the beginning of chapter 1 left off, but then returns us to the past to pick up the story where the latter part of chapter 1 left off. And so on. It's an interesting device to build tension because the climax of the story is, itself, tense enough to give us sort of mini-cliff-hangers in the midst of each chapter. Brust is a skillful story teller, though, and we're almost as eager to get back to the back-story as we are to find out what happens next in the climax. He shifts us seamlessly back and forth and it just plain works. 
 It's another good story that can stand on its own but also builds the overall arc of the series.