Warning: contains spoilers for books 1 and 2.
Of all the mythical animals, dragons must surely be amongst the most popular to include in stories. Unlike other creatures, such as unicorns, that only tend to appear in books for a younger audience, they seem to hold a universal appeal – as evidenced by adult fantasy such as Game of Thrones, where they are an integral part of both the plot and the appeal of the books and adaptation. I guess that this is at least in part historic, with many myths and legends telling of brave heroes defeating fearsome beasts, but also it seems to me that dragons are just so much more exciting than their competition.
Certainly in this continuing series, the dragons are everything that they should be: powerful, fierce and highly intelligent, but with the twist that they are not all evil. In fact, together with their human partners, the four dragons whose adventures we have been following have been battling against the terrible Dragon of Death for the good of human and dragonkind. Until now, because towards the end of Book 2, one of our heroic dragons, Spark, changed sides with the result that her companions have all been catapulted forward in time to the Dragon City of the title – a terrifying place where enslaved humans live in total dread of their dragon masters under the rule of the Dragon of Death.
Billy and his human friends Dylan, Charlotte and Ling-Fei have been separated from their dragons and are scraping a living by providing a dragon-grooming service to feed themselves while trying to come up with a plan to not only rescue their dragons, but also defeat the Dragon of Death and her dreaded nox-wings (her evil dragon followers), and find their way back to their own time.
After finding a train hidden underground which provides them with a safe place to rest and sleep, the four children continue to work and plan and become aware of a special celebration to commemorate the five thousandth anniversary of Dragon City coming to be and decide to attend. Billy finds himself taking a more active part in the celebrations than he had intended, but manages to escape and find his way back to his friends.
With things looking more and more desperate for not only them, but also the other humans within the city, Billy and the others find themselves taking bigger and bigger chances in the hopes of finding their dragons. Will they be successful? Will they be able to defeat the Dragon of Death? And even if they can, how will they ever find their way back home again?
This is such a thrilling series and now that we are onto the third title, we are thrown straight into the action from the off. After Spark’s betrayal, the balance of power between good and bad has overwhelmingly been tipped in favour of the Dragon of Death and her minions and it is hard to see how Billy and the others will ever manage to overcome all of the obstacles put in their way to put things right again.
Fans of the series will be thrilled to know that the adventure continues beyond this title (Book 4 is expected March 2022) but I do think that in this case you need to be a fan of the series to pick up this read. Although the events of the first two books are recapped, which I found useful as it’s a while since I read them, I think anyone trying to start here will have missed too much of the action to fully appreciate this for the great read that it is. Suitable for confident readers in Year 4 upwards, this is a great action-packed fantasy adventure – one full of twists and turns which left me on the edge of my seat and unable to guess what was coming next right until the very end.
Enormous thanks go to publisher Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for my advance read ahead of publication on 2nd September. 5 out of 5 stars.
Mrs Sydney's Famous World's Smallest Library 