Tears of a Dragon, the final book in Bryan Davis' Dragons in Our Midst series, pits Billy Bannister, Bonnie Silver, and their friends, against an ancient and powerful evil unleashed from the depths of hell. From the beginning, this book is packed with danger. It drew me in right away and promised me a wild ride.

These Dragon books are big books with large casts and I think that Mr. Davis does a good job of keeping characters straight and giving them all unique voices. Billy and Bonnie are my old friends by now, but I think Walter, the supporting actor, may be my favorite character. And then there is Larry, the computer. He's not quite as active in this book, as he was in Circles of Seven but he's still a funny fellow. Throughout the book, Davis does a good job with characterization.

I also think the author does a great job with sustaining battle scenes for pages and keeping it all interesting. I hope someone makes movies out of these books, because the fire fights will be awesome on the big screen, I have no doubt.

The plot for this book was understandable and the characters had direct and compelling goals. I was a little lost in book three, not fully understanding what the circles were or why Billy had gone into them, but in Tears of a Dragon each character was well-motivated, not only in the main plot, but in the subplots as well. The pacing on this book was good. It continued the fast-action pattern set by the preceding books, but took the time needed to allow me to know the characters and to understand their actions.

My only complaint has to do with with things being too convenient. Walter's sister acts a certain way because she needs to act that way for the plot to work. It may be that she would really act this way, but since it wasn't set up ahead of time it feels contrived. Minor characters need to be fleshed out some before they are thrown into larger roles. Tied into this is that the adults make stupid mistakes sometimes. It feels too convenient. The adults trust too easily and are too easily duped. These characters are in the fight of their lives with the future of mankind depending on them and they should be more careful. They needed to be tricked, so their circumstances could get darker, I just wanted them to be a little harder to trick.

Still, the book was enjoyable. And it had depth. I think my favorite part of this book, in fact, was the depth of the message. Men are braver when fighting for their women and women are the helpmeets that truly complete their men. Because the characters are who they are, the message came out without preachiness. There were deeper spiritual pictures, Billy is a Christ figure, for instance, but that's been playing out through the whole series. I have a feeling that there are many more pictures buried in these books than I got on my read through, but the ones I did get added to my enjoyment and made this final book a satisfying end to a rip-roaring series.

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Copyright © 2005 Sally Apokedak