The Sky on Fire

“entertaining and fast-paced. . . . Readers who like plot-driven stories with heroic characters, dragons, and happy endings will find much to enjoy.”

The Sky on Fire is both smaller in scope and more mature than the author’s blockbuster fantasy epic series, A Chorus of Dragons, that began with The Ruin of Kings. It is smaller not just in terms of number of pages, but also in the intimacy of the tale. Where A Chorus of Dragons served up epic battles that swept across nations and cultures, The Sky on Fire deals with a single culture, a smaller cast of characters, and a more straightforward narrative.

Like her previous series, this novel takes place in a world dominated by dragons. Humans live either on mountaintop cities, where they have wealth and relative safety but live under dragon rule, or in the Deep between the mountains where they are free, but it is stiflingly hot and jungle predators and other dangers abound. None of the characters seem aware of any part of the planet beyond this small region, and they speak as if neither humans nor dragons exist anywhere else.

Despite this narrower focus, or perhaps because of it, this novel demonstrates a narrative strength that Lyons’s more sprawling series lacks. A Chorus of Dragons suffered from adult characters who acted like children, whiny and petulant and rash. The Sky on Fire’s characters are more self-reflective, willing to sacrifice for others, and bound by commitments to family and friendship. The impetuous adventures of a group of self-centered teenagers (or characters who act like teenagers) can make for an exciting romp, but solid relationships and difficult choices give this story more emotional weight.

The novel begins with Anahrod, also known as Anahrod the Wicked, who was accused of the crime of stealing from a dragon’s hoard and dropped into the Deep from 50,000 feet up as punishment. She only survives this death sentence because she has the rare ability of being able to telepathically communicate with and control animals, allowing her to summon a flock of birds to break her fall. She merely fractures every bone in her body on impact instead of dying.

While she makes a life in the Deep, riding an enormous titan drake (something like a dinosaur) in green body paint and “wearing nothing but a few scraps of leather,” her legend in the Skylands grows, with plays and novels written about her villainy. Most think she is dead, but when a crew of would-be dragon hoard thieves learn that she is alive and well, they show up to kidnap her and recruit her to their cause.

As it turns out, the thieves are not solely in it for the money, although they are not above acquiring sacks full of diamonds along the way. Each of the crew has their own reason to want revenge on Neveranimus, the dragon in question, and none of them is telling the full truth to the others. They are among the few in Skylander society willing to challenge the tyrannical rule of dragons at all. Their personal journeys are reminiscent of religious deconstruction, as they each come to realize that the standard articles of faith about the dragons’ right to rule have no basis in fact. As Anahrod thinks, “There was no mandate from heaven keeping humans in chains. No hubris. They weren’t thrown out of heaven to teach them humility. It had made for a good story, though, hadn’t it?”

Their planned heist takes them first to the school for dragon-riders. Dragon-riding is a highly sought after honor for humans, but turns out to be little better than slavery, as the riders can be telepathically controlled by their dragons much as Anahrod can do to birds or rats or giant titan drakes. In the heist itself, everything goes wrong, as heists usually do, and the crew finds themselves on the front lines of a centuries-long conflict for power between humans and dragons and among the dragons themselves.

The Sky on Fire is entertaining and fast-paced. Though it brings little to the vast field of dragon-related fantasy that is truly new, it makes an appealing addition to the canon. Readers who like plot-driven stories with heroic characters, dragons, and happy endings will find much to enjoy.