Red Dragon (Part 1 - Overview)

Hello, all. I hope your week is going well.

Today we’re going to begin a multi-part review on Red Dragon, the sequel to Sky Shielder. This is a book that was very mixed for me. I think it’s slightly better than the original, yet I also found it a lot harder to get through; the issues with the story stand out more, but there are also equally standout elements to compensate for this. As I’m sure you can imagine, I have a lot to say about it.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out my review series on Sky Shielder first. You can also read more about the works of the author, Lindsay Buroker, in the ongoing Magnetic Magic review series. If you’re all caught up (or don’t care to), let’s fly.

STATS

Title: Red Dragon

Series: Fire and Fang (Book 2)

Author(s): Lindsay Buroker

Genre: Fantasy (Romantasy)

First Printing: November 2025

Publisher: Self-published to Amazon

SPOILER WARNING

Mild spoilers for Red Dragon will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.

Heavy, unmarked spoilers for Sky Shielder will be provided throughout this review. I’m also going to assume that you’ve already read that review series, though it isn’t necessary to do so to understand this review.

STRUCTURE

This review is going to have five parts, which will be releasing on Wednesdays.

• Part 1 (Today)

  • Premise

  • Rating

  • Content Warning

  • Genre

  • Series

• Part 2 (January 21st)

  • Plot

• Part 3 (January 28th)

  • Character

  • Worldbuilding

  • Romance

• Part 4 (February 4th)

  • Prose

  • Tone

• Part 5 (February 11th)

  • Spotlight on the Geopolitics

PREMISE

From the Amazon product page, we get:

Scarcely two weeks have passed since Princess Syla bested Captain Vorik and returned home with a magical sky shielder to protect her kingdom. Is the powerful dragon rider holding a grudge? Will his people come after her and try to steal or destroy the shielder?

Syla may find out sooner than expected when Vorik shows up in her harbor with his general and chiefs. They claim to be on a diplomatic mission, but she suspects they have treachery in mind.

As much as she would like to trust the handsome and charismatic Captain Vorik, especially when he smiles at her instead of scowling, she has to be wary. Her feelings for him might make him her most dangerous enemy.

Reaction

This premise only describes the first act of the book - specifically, the buildup to the inciting incident. I suppose the last paragraph could describe the wider conflict of the Romance plotline, but taken all together, this is really just the opening.

I don’t think this is misleading, though. Both the Fantasy and Romance plotlines of this book are only able to progress because of this inciting incident. I don’t just mean in the usual sense of the inciting incident cooking things off, either. Certain events within this story might have happened regardless, but it is things to how things play out in the inciting incident that there’s meaningful conflict as the narrative progresses, rather than merely a series of events that could have happened in the background.

RATING: 6/10

As with the previous book, I really went back and forth on this rating.

Buroker really dials things up in this book. While I wouldn’t call is a massive improvement over the original, it does feel like she’s more comfortable with the world and story she’s set up here. The stakes of the Fantasy plotline are higher. The Romance plotline, despite still being just about sex, does evolve. Elements that were set up as important in the last book, but which Buroker decides not to continue with, are phased into the background, while the elements she does decide to carry forward get deeper exploration.

There are, however, three factors that I feel hold this story back from reaching its full potential.

• The plot is another straightforward fetch quest, which is fine. Buroker ups the ante by having the fetch quest be for multiple items, which is also fine. What isn't fine is that two of the three fetch quest items are narratively irrelevant and are collected without any meaningful difficulty, making a good third of the story feel pointless.

• The tone of the story clashes with the stakes Buroker is working with.

• The geopolitical situation makes very little sense, which muddles the character motivations, which calls into question why anything in this story is happening the way that it is.

The second and third points will get dedicated parts for them (Parts 4 and 5, respectively). We’ll go over the first point during the analysis of the plot in Part 2.

CONTENT WARNING

This book dials certain elements back while cranking others up.

The violence is no worse than in the previous book. There are no attempted rapes or sexual assaults (though I will have a note on that in a second). The torture scene from the previous book is referenced, and the possibility of torturing Syla again is raised, but nothing is shown.

Which brings us to …

Pornography

There are two scenes of pornography in this book. One is in Chapter 14, while the other is in Chapter 25.

There’s also a lot more discussion about sex, to the point that I honestly think this would be awkward even if there wasn’t any pornography in the text. It’s really weird, because much like the nudity in the last book, we’re getting some very mixed messages about how this society feels about sex. It’s make clear that many people overheard the sex between Syla and Vorik in Chapter 14, but this is treated within the narrative as only being awkward for a few seconds. Likewise, for the Chapter 25 sex scene, multiple characters are drugged into have sex at the same time (something we are explicitly told later that only Syla and Vorik were anywhere close to consenting to), and the fact that multiple characters were both offender and victim is brushed off as casually as the fact that these people were all having sex in front of one another.

Not helping things is the fact that, unlike in the last book, the sex has zero narrative relevance. The sexual tension is very relevant, and I’ll dive into that more when we discuss the Romance, but the sex scenes themselves force the book to come to a screeching halt. Once these scenes end, the story rolls onwards as if nothing happened.

Taken all together … Red Dragon gives off a strong vibe of just being window dressing for the pornography. It’s as if Buroker set out to write a couple pieces of erotic, only the narrative buildup got more and more complex, and suddenly, she had a whole novel wrapped around it. (I’m assuming this isn’t actually what happened. It’s just a vibe that’s hard to ignore.)

Nudity

Much like in the last book, Syla ends up naked in a scene, and it feels like it’s only in there just for the sake of her being naked. The way this is treated within the text is much the same as in the last book. Syla clothes are burned off this time, there’s a whole, “Oops, I’m naked,” moment, and then she finds new clothes. Much like with the sex, it’s both treated very casually and yet clearly not the norm for this world, so it’s very hard to grasp how we’re supposed to read this moment.

GENRE

Again, this is very solidly a Romantasy. We have a core Fantasy plotline with a Romance that plays a vital role in how events play out.

Curiously - not an issue, just something worth noting - Syla does not actually play much of a role in the Romance. She still has conflicted feelings about Vorik, but I can’t recall a single moment where this actually influences the plot. Syla knows her priorities. As much as she is developing feelings for Vorik (because the sex is just that good - not even joking, that’s what we’re given to work with), she will always put her kingdom first.

Vorik, however, is a hot mess. At multiple points in this book, he bends over backwards to help Syla, either twisting his orders to justify protecting her or jumping through logical hoops to make direct action against her dishonorable. This struggle is what ensures that this book remains a Romance. If Vorik was not struggling with these feelings, Syla would be dead at least three times over. The Fantasy plot would come to an abrupt end without the Romance.

SERIES

In the Afterword of Red Dragon, Buroker promises the third book of Fire and Fang, Game of Captives, sometime “in early 2026”. (Given how I’ve not been particularly good at staying on top of her release schedule, it might well come out before this review series wraps.) The most recent update on this was a Tweet from Buroker just 18 hours prior to this post’s publication:

I'm working on the blurb for Fire and Fang Book 3 this morning. A few more weeks, and I'll have that novel ready to go! :)

We also got this Tweet on January 11th that indicates that the series will be at least a quartet:

I've opened up Fire and Fang Book 4 to pluck away at while my editor has Book 3. I think that will be the last one in the series, but we shall see. :)

For some reason, I thought this series was going to be a trilogy. I was clearly quite wrong.

In any case, I think Red Dragon works fine as a second installment in a series. Everything that happens is a natural progression of the events set up in the previous book. While the fetch quest itself isn’t super important, the consequences of that quest have ripple effects that will undoubtedly carry forward into future books. I’m optimistic about where this series will go from here (especially if Buroker gives us more out of the Romance).

RPG QUESTS

Next Wednesday, January 21st, we’ll start the deep-dive analysis of the book by looking at the plot.

Like its predecessor, Red Dragon is a plot-driven narrative. While I like Buroker’s effort to attempt to up the stakes and feel she wrote both a great inciting incident and a satisfying ending, the middle felt a bit like filler. Syla’s efforts to protect the Garden Kingdom are going to take her on a fetch quest that goes a little too well to feel strictly necessary to the story. The story also suffers from action that feels weightless, which feels a bit odd, given that this problem wasn’t evident in Magnetic Magic. I will explain these issues in more detail next week.

Thank you all for being here. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoy what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.