Life could be good. You’ve helped to drive the dragons lording over the people of your land out, settled down with the woman you’ve come to love, and are able to return to the life you’ve known as a farmer. Could. Unfortunately, there are more dragons than those you’ve defeated and the woman you’ve come to love doesn’t see life that way. Welcome to False Idols, book two in Jon Hollins’s entertaining, fantasy-heist series, The Dragon Lords.
The Dragons who once ruled over the land are dead.
The motley crew that stumbled through that revolution are rich and praised as saviors.
Everyone gets to live happily ever after, right?
Right?
Well, it might have worked out that way if the dragons in Kondorra had been the only ones. If they hadn’t been just the tip of the spear about to fall upon the whole world…
Hollins immediately addresses the question of “What happens once our hero saves the day?” The answer is complicated, of course. About a novel’s length of complications, as a matter of fact. Will Fallows is back to farming, but Lette, the mercenary with whom he fell in love and helped to take down the dragons, is less than content. She finds it a little boring, especially compared to the life she had before: killing, looting, and adventuring. The proverbial band, including Firkin (Will’s long-time family friend and current shouting prophet); Quirk (killer slave turned scholar struggling to reconcile those two halves); and lizard man Balur (the big brute and Lette’s partner), reunites when it turns out there are dragons beyond the borders of the land they know and just saved. When things seem to be at an impossible to survive point, something swoops in to help save Will and his friends thanks to a literal Deus ex Machina.
Much of what made The Dragon Lords: Fools Gold such an enjoyable novel works so well here in False Idols, Hollins humor, witty dialogue, characters, and narrative magnetism come together and maybe even more strongly. If anything, because the characters don’t necessarily need to go through introductions the way they did in book one, Hollins can focus more on their interactions. He also reveals some things from a couple of the character’s pasts that are shocking, unsettling, and completely game-changing for some of the other characters. Bold moves and smart developments that don’t invalidate what we already knew about these characters. In other words, he does not retcon anything.
The ending and lead up to the ending were quite surprising. Even given that I knew a third book was on the way (there is after all a page indicating as such at the end), some of the developments had me impressed with how far Hollins was willing to allow events to play out logically regardless of the safety of certain characters.
There were some laugh-out-loud moments throughout the novel and the banter between the characters, especially when bookended by some of their inner dialogue had me smiling throughout. One wonderful example of Hollins’ daft humor is my favorite chapter title in this book (and maybe ever): “Buckling Under the Pressure of Thinking up Funny Chapter Names.”
I tend to allow some time pass between reading books in a series. Usually a few weeks to a few months if the series is complete, if the next book is published, or even if I already own the next book. The publisher, Orbit, sent me both books and I wound up only reading one short science fiction novel (largely to break up a string of fantasy reads) between reading the two Dragon Lords books. However, because I enjoy Hollins’s writing (characters, humor, plotting) so much I just couldn’t wait that long and had to dive right back into Hollins’s world. As I was telling a friend whilst in the middle of this book. I didn’t mind that I was taking a little longer to read False Idols, I was having so much fun being immersed in Hollins world I felt no rush to get out of it and I just didn’t want to leave these characters.
In the end, these two books have been a blast and I really hope they find the wide audience they deserve.
Highly Recommended
© 2017 Rob H. Bedford
Orbit, August 2017
Trade Paperback, 591 Pages
The Dragon Lords #2
Excerpt: https://www.orbitbooks.net/2017/03/07/dragon-lords-false-idols/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Orbit Books
