Just finished this book yesterday, and although it wasn't as good as Planet Hate, it was still a pretty solid OL. Hey, at least I was able to read the whole thing! Only about the 3rd time in the last 17 books.

Dragon City really covers a lot of what Mark Ellis developed way back in his new story development novel - Children of the Serpent. I wonder how he feels about how his created new bad guys, these Annunnaki overlords, have been treated?

As an avid fan from the get-go of this series, I'd say this could have been handled both better...and far, far worse. This is what we're stuck with, so I have to give my personal take on how this once-hardcore OL fan feels about where these two writers have taken this series.

 

Rik Hoskin has proven to be the far superior writer of the two here. I really didn't like his early couple of OL I tried, but it seems with these latter ones I decided to try out, he has markedly improved. Much more so, it seems, than the other writer. Maybe that's why Rik seems to be the central main writer of this series, I dunno.

 

But I am slowly warming back up to this series because of this new plotline, and with Hoskin's pretty solid writing. I liked some of the concepts in this book, with Tiamat being found again, in the form of a now dead city of partial bone, flesh, and machine. The water naiad foes were pretty cool, but after a while, they got old, and I found myself wishing for more flesh-and-bone bad guys for the crew to be battling. I missed this new evil Brigid. She wasn't in this book at all, and Kane had a very small role as well. Seems in the last couple of books, Grant and Domi and this new and cool character, Rosalia, take center stage.

Enlil, one of the main evil Annunaki overlords, is changing humans into serpent peeps, building an arsenal of them for a takeover of the planet. As Domi is captured and beginning to be turned into one, Grant and Rosalia, along with her mysterious dog and a samurai warrior from New Edo, come to the rescue. It was handled pretty good, although I found myself wondering: why after all of this time hasn't Enlil armed himself with some type of high-tech weaponry? He knows by now that these humans are no push-overs, so how can he not be better prepared?

The dragon city made of Tiamat's dying corpse was at first hard to picture, as if the writer himself was having a hard time of penning it. But it got better as the book went along. The action scenes were handled pretty good, from a one-on-one between Shizuka and ex-Mag Edwards, to living water beings and Serpent lords battling it out with the Cerberus team. (I don't see how Grant could miss with his Sin Eater at such close range, though, nor never to have to change a magazine. The last two books have Grant blasting away with limitless ammo, and never once changing a mag out.)

But, overall, this was a good read, loads better than ones like Infestation Cubed or Serpent's Tooth, where the dialogue was cheesy, the storyline was kinda dragging, and the serpent people acted and talked like modern-day street thugs, but with a sound of an old-style film from the 40's. Hoskin does a little of this, but is far more refined in sticking more with the Ellis-type approach and overall feel of an Outlanders book.

As far back as 2008's 'Death Cry', the wheels were set in motion for a sweeping four-year story line in the pages of Outlanders. That story kicked into high gear with the arrival of the stone god Ullikummis in 2010's 'Oblivion Stone', bringing Cerberus to its lowest ebb while our lead characters have been damaged and scattered across the globe. Of the heroic triumvirate, Brigid Baptiste has been co-opted and turned to the evil Brigid Haight; Kane has been half blinded and invaded by the alien presence of Ullikummis; and Grant has been left to carry the standard for his fallen comrades.

The bulk of the action takes place in the titular 'Dragon City', literally a city that has grown on the banks of the Euphrates river in the form of the dragon ship Tiamat. The combat scenes are uniquely interesting, as the heroes are forced to face off against watery Niads who seem impossible to injure. As the action builds to a rousing climax against the dragon lord Enlil, a long-running plot thread regarding the nameless dog and the Igigi is fully paid off.

A secondary plot line results in the unusual pairing of the half-blind Kane with the enigmatic Balam, last of the Archons. By the end of the book the stage is set for the final battle between Ullikummis, Enlil, and the Cerberus heroes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as a matter of fact I liked it much more than the previous installment. While the story was juggling at least three major plot lines, it always remained very focused on propelling the characters forward. The action was plentiful and varied, and the eventual revelation of the true nature of the Niads was both surprising and satisfying. The book left me somehow both fully satisfied while also in great anticipation of the following title, 'God War'.