The Last Battle (Dragonmaster) [Paperback]

The first book, Storm of Wings, began with a typical boy-runs-away-from-home-turned-adventurer, except that the boy did not get apprenticed to powerful wizards nor warriors but learned to ride a dragon before getting conscripted into the war. He had enough sense and survived the war to become a veteran. After his unit got wiped out, the second part of the book began with heavy resemblance to WE Johns Biggles stories in the World War One when (military) aviation was in its infancy.

In fact, the whole development of the war and the stalemates were lifted almost directly from the events of World War One with disastrous results in attempts of breakthrough. Those familiar with the Great War could identify Somme as well as Gallipoli.

The second book Knighthood of the Dragon continued the war between Dermaine (Britain) and Sagene (France) on one side, and Roche (Germany) on the other. Here, the author adapted an episode from World War Two - The Great Escape. Eventually, Hal Kailas's side managed to break through and take the war into the lands of the Roche, despite it being slow going. The change of the nature of warfare in real world history to include destruction of civilian properties in order to starve the enemy into submission was also reflected. Hal Kailas ended the war as a hero and a lord.

The final book - The Last Battle, began with the end of the war. Veteran Hal Kailas who found himself enriched and ennobled found frustrations as he could not find a new meaning in his life - leading to the estrangement with his wife. He finally sought to do something - to repay the dragons for their contributions to the war, by finding out what caused the dragons to flee from their original unknown homelands across the Great Sea.

In this series, dragons were depicted as little more than aerial steeds adapted for war, with hardly more than animal intelligence. The dragons did not speak, breath fire nor cast magic. In fact, mankind had little fear of them, finding them nuisance to animal husbandry and even bully their youngs. The dragons did not have sufficient intelligence to recognise their innate advantages.

Hal put together an expedition to sail to find the mysterious original homeland of the dragons.

SPOILERS follows!

After some adventures, Hal discovered the dragons were fleeing demons. This could be taken directly from the movie Evolution, whereby an alien entity (the demon) entered the world, and began multiplying itself, taking the forms of the mightiest creature it encountered, through a series of speedy evolution.

While there was nothing really original in the series, the author's attention to details and ability to answer questions in the readers' mind through his narration was to be commended.

The author indeed convinced us that the "heroes" in the book knew what they were doing instead of being small-minded characters.

I liked the first two books much more than this one. Up to the point he sails off in search of the dragons he deals with the aftermath of a war that changed everyone. What was exciting about people has ceased to be exciting, and relationships start collapsing. Then it does get lame as he heads off in search of the land of the dragons. It feels like the first part of the book was a novella that lacked a satisfactory ending and he desperately grabbed for anything to come up with a rock-em sock-em ending (which it wasn't).

The first 2 books in the trilogy were interesting and fun to read. This third one is a sorry attempt to carry on a series that in reality ended after the second book.