Red Dragon (Part 2 - Plot)
Hello, all. Welcome back to Part 2 of the review series for Red Dragon, the sequel to Sky Shielder and the second book of the Fire and Fang series.
This part begins the deep-dive analysis. We’ll just be going over the plot today. The characters, worldbuilding, and romance will be covered next week in Part 3, while the discussion of the prose and tone will take place in Part 4.
Please check out Part 1 if you’d like to see the high-level overview of the book first. Otherwise, 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
Rating: 6/10
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.
PLOT
Inciting Incident (Heavy Spoilers)
As promised in the Premise, the book opens with a diplomatic meeting. Stormer tribes come to Castle Island to meet with Syla and other political entities. We then get a clash of personalities among the various leaders on each side, as well as Syla and Vorik finally getting to speak privately for the first time since the second sex scene of Sky Shielder.
I was initially very skeptical about this opening. It wasn’t a bad idea. Buroker was exploring the fallout of the first book from multiple angles: the boldness of the stormer tribes, the political infighting among the gardener peoples as power player vie to snatch the throne out from under Syla, and the tension over the protection of the repurposed Harvest Island shielder and potential repair of the damaged Castle Island shielder. However, it was undermined by the geopolitics. I’ll save most of my thoughts on this for Part 5, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s really strange that people are acting like the stormers have any leverage when things have more or less returned to the status quo from before Sky Shielder.
Where things get interesting, though, is that Buroker doesn’t leave things at that. She has Vorik’s brother, General Jhiton, use the meeting as a pretense to smuggle a rider strike team onto the island. They then abduct one of Syla’s cousins (who has the moon-mark needed to access the shielder chamber) and attempt to destroy the repurposed shielder. While this doesn’t succeed, they do manage to steal all of the research Syla’s aunt has done into how the damaged shielder might be repaired. This then kicks off the fetch quest.
I really like this because it’s a natural progression of events. All characters are acting in a manner that is true to their established motivations. What’s more, the fallout from this event ripples through the story. It kicks the fetch quest into gear. It also worsens the political situation for Syla, as her rivals blame her for making this second raid possible (which, from their perspective, is 100% true) and try to stage a coup.
All this is to say that this was a really great way to open a sequel. Buroker didn’t have to retcon anything, nor did she throw a flashy action sequence at us just to have something exciting. She made this meaningful to the story.
The Irrelevant Fetch Quest
Unfortunately, the fetch quest itself, which fills the remainder of the book, is less engaging.
In order to repair the damaged shielder (and, possibly, build new shielders), Syla’s aunt has determined that the following components are needed, all of which can only be found in wilderness that even the stormer tribes steer clear of:
Powder made from a certain bulb that naturally petrifies and then accumulates magic if kept in dry conditions. This bulb only grows in a rainforest where no one’s lived for a long time, and the petrification process takes years even if done correctly, so Syla needs to somehow scavenge a petrified bulb or powder from ancient ruins.
A teal ore with magical properties, found in them mountains adjacent to the rainforest.
A crystal globe that can only be found in the storm god’s laboratory. The machinery that spawns these orbs will only make one every ten years, and it won’t make a new one until the current one is harvested (so, despite the laboratory being untouched for centuries, there is only one of these things.
Syla was making vague plans to collect these components from the start of the story. After the inciting incident, though, she realizes that she has to act quickly, otherwise the stormers will try to steal or destroy the components first. Sure enough, Vorik is soon tasked with doing that very thing.
Here’s the problem: only one of these components is (A) actually important and (B) actually earned.
Supply
The petrified bulb / powder is rare, sure, but if it exists at all, it’s improbable that there is only one. Even if Syla has to manually dry out and preserve a bulb to get it to petrify and accumulate magic, it’s implied that this takes far less time than the production of the orb. As for the ore, it’s common sense that this stuff is going to be in the ground. At worst, it will need to be mined.
That means that the orb is the only component that is truly finite. This is the only one that, if one side gets it, the other side will be effectively powerless to change things.
What truly baffles me is that neither side figures this out. They both know this is the reality of their situation. Sure, maybe Syla assumes that the stormers can’t get to the orb, as the other gods supposedly locked the storm god’s laboratory with magic that only a moon-mark can unlock, but that doesn’t excuse Vorik. He realizes that this is the score pretty early on. Yes, he refuses to kidnap Syla (or the cousin she brought along for the fetch quest), but to fulfill his objective, all he needs to do is camp out in front of the laboratory so that Syla can’t get in.
Despite this, the story progresses through the ingredient sequentially. Even before the matter of the petrified bulb is resolved, it just feels pointless. It’s pretty clear that any conflict over the first two components will be made negated by just sending more people in later to find more of that component. Only the orb actually matters.
Running on Autopilot
I have no issues with how the orb is retrieved. Getting into the storm god’s laboratory requires some effort to find the entrance, and then there’s a running battle within the laboratory against the defenses left by the storm god. It’s honestly a pretty fun sequence.
The ore is one I’m on the fence about. Both Syla’s group and Vorik’s group just stumble upon it. It is out in the open. There’s no meaningful conflict to stop them from getting it, as all they need is a dragon to melt the ore out of the wall. That said, them just happening upon it is understandable. Dragons are drawn to the ore, and both groups are traveling with dragons.
The bulb, though …
The first (and only) night that Syla's group is in the rainforest, they just happen to camp near a ruin. That ruin that happens to contain (exactly one) amphora of the petrified bulb powder. This amphora is in a sealed chamber - but the ruins just happen to be inhabited by gargoyles, thereby triggering a fight scene that just happens to crack open that chamber.
And then, when Vorik is the one to steal the amphora first, Syla immediately gives up on finding another one in a different ruin and decides she must still that specific amphora back from Vorik.
The layers of contrivance here are very frustrating. We could argue that this particular stage of the fetch quest is more about the Romance, focusing on Vorik’s internal conflict about interfering with Syal’a efforts to save her kingdom, and that’s all well and good, yet that doesn't necessitate that the Fantasy plot on autopilot. The fact the bulb was this easy also poisoned the well a bit. When the very first component is delivered via contrivance, and then the second component is also easy, if doesn’t matter that the second component being easy makes sense - it still feels contrived. Likewise, getting into the storm gods laboratory is very easy, and while that’s forgiveable, it feels like yet another contrivance.
What is Vorik’s objective?
This last is a minor point, but it's worth pointing out. Vorik’s objective is not to destroy the shielder components. It is to steal them.
Why?
This makes sense for the ore. Again, it can reliably assumed that there is a lot of it, and however hot dragon fire may be, it can't outright annihilate matter. Maybe Vorik could destroy access to the ore, but that would be a big if.
The orb, though? A rider’s gargoyle bone sword should be able to destroy that. It’s how the Castle Island shielder was destroyed in the first place. And the amphora? It's a jar of powder. Toss it in the sea. Scatter it while hundreds of feet up on dragonback. Bury it in any convient patch of ground.
Again, this comes down to contrivance. The best way to stop Syla is to just destroy the components, but if that was Vorik’s mission, the story would end far too quickly. So he has to safeguard the components instead and give her the chance to steal them.
Weightless Action
Something I hadn’t noticed in this book, yet really stands out here, is how weightless the action feels. People are having full conversations in combat. People can move through tight spaces blocked by combatants without getting struck by a weapon, even accidentally. We get references to injuries and exhaustion, but these only seem to surface what they are needed to drive up tension. I’m also pretty sure that everyone who isn’t a marked dragon rider (i.e. Vorik, Jhiton, etc) should be dead a few times over from being thrown into walls or from the overpressure of a bomb detonating in an enclosed space. I’m not saying there aren’t small moments that gave weight to them. The problem is that, on the whole, these scenes fall into, “And then they fight,” territory.
What I find a bit odd about this is that, much like with the substance in the Romance, Buroker has shown that she can write action that has weight to it. The action in Magnetic Magic usually felt like the hits mattered and like the positioning of characters really mattered. Granted, none of the werewolf characters could speak while in wolf (or hybrid) form, but there was still dialogue during some of these fights, and it never felt detached from the action taking place. This was also while Buroker had to account for semi-automatic firearms while her protagonists were almost exclusively limited to melee, which is a much tricker dynamic to work with than a world that it mostly melee weapons with the occasional crossbow or hand cannon.
Hopefully this is something that gets corrected in the next book. Buroker’s settled into a lot of the other elements in this book, so maybe she’s still adjusting to this world’s rules.
The Reason for the Title (Heavy Spoilers)
The titular red dragon, Wreylith, plays a larger role in this story than in the previous. While the influence she has on the end of the story is telegraphed pretty early on, I feel like the execution of these ideas is done well enough to balance out the weaknesses of the fetch quest.
After the inciting incident, Wreylith telepathically contacts Syla with a proposition. There is a loophole in the protective wards of the shielders that allows a dragon to fly through the protective barrier. Wreylith simply needs to bond with a moon-marked individual. While Wreylith doesn’t feel that Syla has proven herself worthy of this bond, the dragon is willing to give Syla that chance. Syla is then able to leverage this into getting Wreylith’s help with the fetch quest, promising the dragon livestock in exchange for transportation.
This request comes right as Syla’s political rivals are maneuvering for a coup. My immediate thought was: why does Syla not think to bond with Wreylith as a means to intimidate her rivals into submission? Wreylith may not be an overgrown attack dog, but once she is inside the shield, the dragon would have a vested interest in keeping Syla safe and in power to preserve this exclusive hunting ground. So why is Syla not working towards that goal, instead contenting herself with bribing Wreylith with livestock that she herself isn’t sure she’ll be able to deliver in the event of a coup?
This finally comes around after the climax. Syla saves Wreylith’s life, and Wreylith this is proof enough that Syla is worthy of the bond. Even then, it isn’t until Syla is nearly back to Castle Island that someone else suggests she use Wreylith to strong-arm her way to the throne. They then arrive, and Syla intimidates her rivals into capitulating and coronating her as queen.
This development, which really seems like it should have been the plan from the beginning, feels incredibly rushed. I’m also a bit iffy on Syla earning Wreylith’s respect, as her saving the dragon was because of a magical item locked to moon-marked individuals, not because Syla demonstrated any courage or prowess that she didn’t have at the end of Sky Shielder. Still, in terms of Syla’s characterization, this is a very satisfying ending. Throughout the book, she cared less for sitting on the throne than she did for saving the kingdom by restoring the shielders. When she earns an extremely powerful ally (one whom she can best keep if she is sitting on the throne), she switches gears, in the interest of being best able to help her kingdom. It also recontextualizes the fetch quest as a string of opportunities for Syla to prove her worth to this ally, even if it was only really the last opportunity that mattered.
PLENTY TO WORK WITH
Buroker got more comfortable with the characters and world of Fire and Fang as she wrote this book. The existing characters remain true to who they were in Sky Shielder, while the new ones fit within the setting she’s created. The expansions to the lore likewise fit. That said, there re a few small elements that feed into the tonal issues we’ll get into down the line. It’s coming your way next Wednesday, January 28th, in Part 3.
Thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoy what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
On Tuesday, February 3rd, Volume I of my first serialized Romantasy novel, A Chime for These Hallowed Bones, premieres!
Kabarāhira is a city of necromancers, and among these necromancers, none are more honorable or respected than Master Japjot Baig. Yadleen has worked under him since she was a girl, learning how commune with bhūtas and how to bind these ancient spirits into wights. Her orderly world is disrupted, however, when a stranger appears with the skeleton of a dishonored woman, demanding that her master fabricate a wight for him.
To protect her master from scandal, Yadleen must take it upon herself to meet this stranger’s demands. Manipulating the dead is within her power, but can honor survive in the face of a man who has none?
You can see the full schedule for Volume I here! I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.
