Head of the Dragon (Frontiers Saga, #6)

by Ryk Brown

[clq]

This series has now moved into the list of series I would recommend to people. It probably wouldn't be entirely fair to say that the books so far have been building up to this one, there's a bit more to them than that, but even if this book had represented the point of the first five books existing it would still have been worth it.

I wasn't planning on reading this book right after the previous one until I finished book five, but at that point it felt wrong not to dive straight into Head of the Dragon. I'm very glad I did. Head of the Dragon is very much a direct continuation of Rise of the Corinari, and the events which are prepared for in that book take place in this one.

The book describes the final preparations for a battle, and the battle itself. A battle which is presented very, very, well. The "focus on what is important" style of these books, while it doesn't always seem to work that well for world and character-building, lends itself extremely well to a battle like the one in this book. The battle does go on for quite a long time, but doesn't get old at all. It remains frantic and exciting, but is still very easy to follow. It's hard to know what more to say about it - it's just simply a really well written story of relatively complicated battle.

This book also proves that the characters actually have some depth. The main characters have gone from being a bit caricatured in the early books to feeling rather real in this one, and the number of different characters, and the fact that they all seemed to have a proper personality by now, actually took me a little by surprise. The battle becomes a symphony of events, tactics, surprises, heat-of-the-battle-twists, and different characters facing different problems, and it all just works very well together.

No one needs me to recommend this book in particular, but for anyone starting The Frontiers Saga books I'd highly recommend reading at least this far before potentially giving up on it. And I would recommend that anyone who liked sci-fi starts this series. It still has a more casual feel to it than a series like The Expanse does, but in a way that at this point feels different rather than inferior. Head of the Dragon has cemented this as a series that, while I might not get around to reading all the books in a hurry, is definitely one I want to continue reading.