I liked it; it was good
Book 5 is the last book in the series that I got to as a child, so even though I own books 6 and 7, I never read them. I’m very excited to get to them.
Read: December 4 – December 8, 2023
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction
Audience: Children
Book contains: character death, bird attacks, death by pee, mild claustrophobia
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David has returned to Earth, but he’s not the only one. The dragons are coming back, too, but with them comes a single tear of dark fire, a spark of pure evil. The destruction of this fire could mean the sacrifice of a beloved dragon, but the preservation means the destruction of the world.
David is back from death, but not all’s well that ends well. He still abandoned his family for five years, and Zanna’s not ready to forgive him for that. Beyond that, he’s not quite David anymore, though he’s not fully G’lant either. He’s something in between. One thing I didn’t like is how many times Liz is sidelined. In the second book, she needed to kindle Grockle’s egg, and was left unconscious on the bed in Gwilanna’s guest room bed for most of the book. In The Fire Eternal, she was sliced by the poisoned obsidian dagger, and took a few weeks to recover. Now, again, she’s been struck by a malady and is left to recuperate in bed. It’s a pattern that is getting a bit old at this point for me.
The books in this series keep getting longer, but I don’t mind. I like reading them the traditional way. The only issue is that my brain gets too excited, making me skip over words and paragraphs. Sometimes I miss things and sometimes I’m stuck rereading a sentence three times.
Again, it is written in third person, and once again we’re back on David, but he’s one of many main characters now. The book follows David, Lucy, Zanna, and a few of the dragons. It also includes a few other scenes from characters who play minor roles. This book is given a prologue following book 3’s character, an Inuit man named Apak, then the main story is split into two parts.
We see much less of some characters and more of others. Gadzooks, G’reth, and Gollygosh take a backseat in this book, giving more page time to dragons like Gwendolyn, Groyne, and minor characters not before mentioned. Lucy, as a sixteen-year-old, gets more freedom to investigate and manoeuvre; she’s an independent piece that can make a really big difference.
The relationship between David and Zanna is strained, though he has returned to living with them on Wayward Crescent. He and Liz have a close relationship again, and while Lucy still sees him as a brother, she’s unsure how to act around him. However, there is a barrier between him and the rest of the Pennykettle household, as he is working on the orders of the returning dragons in the north, and thus cannot share certain pieces of information with the others.
As always, the visualization invented by D’Lacey’s descriptions are beautiful and vivid. And while I’d prefer some scenes to be less easy to picture, the scenery and battle sequences are top notch for children’s literature.
Things are getting wild in this series, but I still highly recommend it. Some scenes may be a bit too intense for sensitive readers, but the adventure is fun, and the message is important.
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 1: The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 2: Icefire by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 3: Fire Star by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 4: The Fire Eternal by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 5: Dark Fire by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 6: Fire World by Chris D’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles Book 7: The Fire Ascending by Chris D’Lacey
*The Dragonia Empire Book 1: Rise of the Wyverns by Craig A. Price Jr.*
How to Train your Dragon Book 1: How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
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