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Hal Kailas is a recovering war hero, his exploits in previous battles atop the beasts that are known as dragons have earned him quite a reputation.

Now he is back to full health, he wants back into the war! His love would rather he stayed out of it but there is no dissuading the Dragonmaster.

Kailas steps into more awesome battles and disputes now not between him and his commanding officers but with THE commanding officer, Asir the King. Worst of all, he has to attend his most frightening scene yet...his own wedding! The wedding is quite gregarious and very amusing in places, the bridge of dragons outside the church particularly tickled my laughing taste buds!

In this the second part of the Trilogy, Hal is thrown into new and challenging situations. He becomes a captive to the enemy and in a war camp that could be straight out of the Robert Redford movie ‘The Last Castle’. Only this one has magical chains! He fights using more advanced weaponry and more advanced emotions. Taking the battle to the heart of the Roche and reducing their capital to rubble.

This story includes a mammoth battle that involves an unknown assailant in the form of a towering demon-like entity and it's ruined dwelling. A fantastical method of turning pebbles into huge boulders and what appears to the inquiring reader as a plot against the armies of Deraine and Sagene.

I have to admit that I read the first one and found it a fulfilling read. This second one sadly lost some of that appeal. I'm not sure if it is mid-trilogy stagnation or whether the plot just seemed to be filling in between its beginning and end but it seemed to lose some of the flow that the first had managed so well.

The characters in this one are mainly the ones that we meet in the first book, perhaps the development of these could have been better. There is an element of doubt in your mind that Lady Khiri, Kailas' love interest, has other motives but I don't want to unleash a story line that may be taken up in the final instalment.

There are times when the characters have to question their motives in this war. Taking it to the people of Roche and killing innocents acts as a sort of unhinging of the morals behind war itself.

I found the part about Hal's capture and subsequent escape a great diversion from all the battle scenes and tactical discussions. While I really found these great in the first book, they took on a festered smell in this one.

The wedding that takes place is quite humorous and actually the introduction to this book had me laughing out loud. Teasing us with sexual encounters, Bunch does an excellent job of grabbing the reader from word go.

While this book isn't as good, I still enjoyed it enough to wait with baited breath for the next and last book. The hints that Hal will find the island of the dragons and ergo whatever is attacking them in the second book is a carrot I would like to grasp.

I would say that all through there has been undertones that this will eventually not be about war, but actually be about the race of dragons. I can live in hope for that!

Overall a very good read, just not a great one. Perhaps the best is yet to come? The third book in the Dragonmaster series, ‘The Last Battle’ is out early next year.

Donna Jones