THE DRAGON SOCIETY

Sequel to Dragon Weather (1999), to be followed by Dragon Venom, completing The Obsidian Chronicles in 2003. After Obsidian, his village, is destroyed by dragons, who have been asleep in caves under the Lands of Man for centuries, Arlian is sold by Lord Dragon to slave in the amethyst mines. He escapes seven years later and, now a man, is taught the arts of war and trading by new companion Black. Because he has absorbed dragon venom and human blood, Arlian is admitted into Lord Dragon’s Dragon Society, a group set on learning all it can about dragons and magic. With many of Arlian’s enemies belonging to the Dragon Society, did Lord Dragon know that dragons were bent on destroying Obsidian? As a dragonheart immune to aging and no longer entirely human, Arlian, now known as the wealthy and superhumanly charismatic Lord Obsidian and still obsessed with destroying the three dragons who destroyed his village, returns to Manfort with Black and, having slain Lord Dragon, finds himself inheritor of Lord Dragon’s secrets. Arlian is set on justice, not just vengeance, but subthemes point to a more complex message: Dragonhearts tend toward coldness even to each other, and Arlian has already killed three of the five dragonhearts he vowed to dispatch for their crimes. Actually, he must kill them all, friends or enemies, since Lord Dragon’s great secret is that dragons reproduce after a thousand years of incubation in envenomed humans—and Arlian himself may well become a dragon in Dragon Venom. The Dragon Society summons Arlian and accuses him of conspiring to keep information from it about dragons. War with the dragons looms, however, and will the society, itself dragons in embryo, side with the humans against itself?

A strong advance, envenomed with plotibilities.