Living in Times of Dragons was a surprisingly good high fantasy novel set on Earth, in our world. At the end of the day, Roger Rommel had to thwart the enemy by leaving our world, back to where the dragons came from.
But the threat that drove the dragons to our world is still there, and are threatening to come to ours.
The Story
Three years after fleeing Earth to go to the home of the dragons, the Endless Lands, Roger Rommel has been preparing for a mission to extract his best friend—who is also an immortal being, wanted by the dragons as a monster. But he is the key to defeating the Morqua, monstrous hordes that drove the dragons to our world in the first place. Only one person understands them, and he’s being held by the Morqua.
Now, with the aid of the local kingdom, several dragons, and his son Ian, Roger is going to pull his old friend out of Hell, in order to learn how to stop the demons at the door.
What follows is a high fantasy thriller, as Roger and his team infiltrates Morqua territory, initiates a jail break from a prison whose warden are the trees from Evil Dead, and then they need to exfiltrate from enemy territory, pursued by an army of demons, enemy dragons, and the dark lord himself.
And that’s not even counting the new threats they discover along the way.
Take a high-fantasy Ice Station Zebra with a little bit of the Anabasis, and you have an idea of how this book feels.
The Tangles of Old Sins is a solid sequel to Living in a Time of Dragons. We push forward through the timeline, and even, to some degree, explaining some of the issues that happened in the previous novel. With plenty of blowback along the way. There is a surprising amount of developments that happen just as echoes of what happened in book one. I’m still fond of “the Dragon Council, whose role in the hidden culture has gone from secretive to being well documented by National Geographic.”
Pretorius even manages to make his data dumps to be highly entertaining, whether it be catching up the audience by what’s happened on Earth between the events of book one and two, or whether it’s a neigh-immortal being explaining what actually happened eons ago, rather than the myths around the events.
There are also cute touches along the way, such as trying to give a dragon coffee, or that even in this world, there are Glock knockoffs. Also, it’s implied that someone’s death may have been sinister … and it just turned out they choked on something they ate. Sometimes, the humor is a little dark.
Like book one, the novel wraps up all of the main plot points, and still leave enough left over for another novel.
The Characters
Despite a plot-heavy novel, this is also very character heavy. There are so many characters. But they are also surprisingly easy to track. At no point in the novel did I get confused about who was who. Much of the progress here is made almost exclusively by delving into personal histories here, of both Roger Rommel and the person he’s out to save. Though Rommel spends so much dwelling on his part character defects that even enemies will look at him sideways to ask him what’s wrong in his head (again, to some degree, Mr Pretorius’ work is a high fantasy mirror to that of Patrick Abbott, Sci-Fi Author and his Fallen novel.) His worst character trait is a tendency to channel his self-loathing and turn it on other people.
Mercifully, however, there is no naval gazing here. Everything works together to further the events. We may spend more time considering logistics, just because there is a focus on “how do we get the hell out of here?”
It’s even more interesting since even some of the antagonists from the first book have evolved.
Christopher Nuttall, Pretorius, and even Blake Carpenter have just made me realize just how much George RR Martin is a poser; that yes, an author can have multiple factions of multiple characters with a variety of motivating factors, without the book being nihilistic sludge.
Yes, I said that in the review of the previous novel, but it’s a point that needs to be hammered home more often.
The World
Pretorius has done a fantastic job here, juggling the creation of two worlds. In Living in a Time of Dragons, it was our world and a secret world. This time, not only is he developing an Earth where National Geographic is doing a special on dragons, but also the Endless lands, a world under siege by a shadow threat in the East. And no, there is no actual similarity to Lord of the Rings—there is no magic MacGuffin device for the villain, no one dark lord.
On top of that, like last time, there are multiple governing bodies within the Endless Lands, as well as powerful forces, each of them with their own conflicting agendas. Two kingdoms are allies against the Morqua, but one hates Roger for reasons we don’t even know yet. The land itself is even a character, complete with an avatar. One is an almost pre-modern society, the other one is almost on par with current technology—with guns and submarines and robots— with some magic thrown in as well. So he’s made at least three different worlds along the way.
And each location has its own distinct feel. It’s all very nicely done.
Politics
If you can find something political in this novel, seek help.
Content Warning
Nothing as bad as Lord of the Rings.
Who is it for?
This is if you like your fantasy to be epic. There is a lot of action here. Tons of mythology within the world. I’d compare it to Terry Goodkind, but there are no speeches. It’s very tightly written, so it’s not a Robert Jordan.
While I hate to trod out old reliable, Pretorius really is on par with Tolkien, only with more action thrown in.
Why buy it
I loved it, and it’s not even my genre.