Red Dragon (Part 5 - Spotlight on Geopolitics)
Hello, all. Welcome back to the final week of our analysis of Red Dragon, the second book of the Fire and Fang series.
The geopolitical situation that exists within this book - or, rather, how key characters react to that geopolitical situation - is something that nagged be throughout this book. I don’t think it’s a massive issue that disrupts the story in and of itself. However, it affects the plot, chracterization simultaneously, as well as being fundamental to understanding the existential stakes of the story.
Not going to sugarcoat it: in light of the geopolitical situation, the behavior of the leaders for both the Garden Kingdom and the stormer tribes makes no sense.
In fairness to Buroker, I don't think this ruins the novel. Syla and Vorik’s story wouldn’t be significantly changed if the leaders of their respective factions were behaving in the logical way for this situation. The events of the plot would play out the same way. I also think there’s something to be said for at least the stormer tribes being characterized in such a way that poor decisions could be justified.
All the same, I think this is worth discussing. I think dissecting this would be a good lesson in how minor details in worldbuilding can have ripple effects that undermine a narrative. Buroker wrote a story where this mistake didn't matter, but there doesn't mean the rest of us can count on that that.
If you haven’t read the review thus far, I encourage you to at least look over Part 2 and Part 3, as that’s where I discuss the elements that are most strongly linked to the geopolitical situation. Once you’re caught up (or if you 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
Rating: 6/10
SPOILER WARNING
Heavy, unmarked spoilers for Red Dragon will be included throughout this portion of the analysis, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy, unmarked spoilers for Sky Shielder will also be provided. 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.
By the time this is released, Game of Captives will already be out, and I’ve started reading it. However, I won’t be providing any spoilers for that book. If anything in Game of Captives impacts this analysis, I will call attention to that fact in the review series for that book.
SKY SHIELDER & THE STATUS QUO
The geopolitical situation established in Sky Shielder was fairly straightforward. I wouldn't say it was particularly deep, but it was at least deep enough to provide nuance to the story. Buroker established a scenario wherein Vorik could oppose Syla’s efforts to protect her kingdom without being an unambiguous villain.
The Past
Before the gods departed the world, the storm god chose to spite humanity by creating the dragons, wyverns, gargoyles, and all the other magical superpredators. It’s also implied that he ruined the climate, thereby creating conditions in which human civilization would struggle even without the superpredators.
The sun, moon, and earth godsintervened to save humanity. They created the shielders, magical relics capable of protecting whole islands, and bestowed the moon marks on a royal bloodline so that this heirs of this bloodline could protect and maintain the shielders. This royal bloodline became the ruler of the Garden Kingdom, comprised of all the shielded islands.
The shielders provide the following benefits:
The storm god’s magical super predators cannot physical pass through the barrier (though they can fly over the islands and drop things through the shield, and in the case of dragons with marked riders, their riders will remain connected to them and still draw magic from them while inside the shield).
The area inside the barrier remains arable despite the rest of the world becoming unsuitable for agriculture. How and why isn't clear. Since the shielders were designed to oppose the storm god, I think we can assume the shielders stabilized temperatures and blunt the impacts of storm events, but it’s also possible they have some magical effect on soil fertility.
The Present
Over the centuries, people exiled from the Garden Kingdom for various reasons joined together to form the stormer tribes. Aided by dragons (for reasons that have not yet been explained), these tribes scratch a meager living out of world beyond the shielders. However, the land is not condusive to agriculture, the non-dragon superpredators are a constant threat, and the foul weather makes life difficult. The stormer tribes have resorted to a nomadic life in which they hide in caves and raid the Garden Kingdom’s shipping (since the islands are too far apart for the shielders to create overlapping areas of protection).
Not all of the stormers want to raid. The Freeborn Faction, as they are called, want peaceful relations (and potential reintegration) with the Garden Kingdom. It’s also implied that some of the tribes trade with merchants from the Garden Kingdom, even do the activity is not official recognized by the Kingdom.
Inciting Incident and Fallout
Under the direction of General Jhiton of the Sixteen Talons (which, if I understand correctly, are the military of the stormer tribes), dragon rider executed a daring raid on Castle Island, with the following objectives:
Destroy the Castle Island shielder
Assassinate as many moon-marked individuals as possible, to prevent the shielder from being restored
Gather information on the shielders of the other islands.
This was meant as the opening stage of an operation to expose all of the Garden Kingdom islands to conquest, thereby allowing the stormer tribes to feed themselves off the crops and their dragons to hunt livestock and game animals that are extinct elsewhere.
As a consequence of this action, Syla retrieved the shielder from Harvest Island and moved it to Castle Island. This protected the capital of the Garden Kingdom at the cost of exposing one of (if not the primary) breadbasket of the kingdom to the stormers.
RED DRAGON
The status quo going into the sequel was nearly identical to what existed prior to Sky Shielder.
The stormers have access to one island that they did not have before. That's it. At least when they had access to Castle Island, they could decapitate the government and leave the remaining islands in disarray, which would allow them to better prey on shipping. Instead, they got Harvest Island, an island which provides food but little else.
Now, I know what you are thinking: “Well, they have control of the kingdom’s food! Surely, they will extort concessions with the threat of starvation, or even just take the food themselves to strengthen their people and dragons while weakening the gardeners?”
That’s not what happens though. I can’t recall a single time this was even mentioned. The stormers having access to the island is described purely in the terms of them violating the Garden Kingdom’s territorial sovereignty and stealing the work of others’ hands. This, coupled with the farms shown in Castle Island, imply that the status of Harvest Island is not akin to, say, an Imperium Agri-World. Prices of certain goods may go up as the supply is compromised, but the other islands aren't about to be swallowed by food riots. The only victims are the farmers of Harvest Island who are being robbed. All the stormers have gained is a repreive from inevitable starvation.
Which makes things very weird when the stormers leadership shows up at Syla’s diplomatic meeting and act like they gave any leverage - and no one in the Garden Kingdom points out that they don't.
The Diplomatic Meeting
To preface this next part, I do think the stormer chieftains coming to the meeting and making unreasonable demands makes a measure of sense. General Jhiton used this as a pretense for a second attempt to destroy a shielder (the repurposed Harvest Island shielder). Had he succeeded, two islands would be exposed. The issue is that, as demonstrated by Vorik, the stormers are not dumb brutes. They understand tact. They understand deception. That's before we get to the fact Jhiton did not tell Vorik the plan, which calls into question whether he told the stormer chieftains. We therefore need to evaluate the behavior of the chieftains as them either being sincere or trying to sound sincere.
So … despite having no leverage … the stormer chieftains just march in and demand the Garden Kingdom’s total surrender. The only threat they raise is that they will raid the kingdom’s shipping, something they have done for so long that the gardeners have not only adapted but also developed shipboard weapons to repulse such raids.
Neither Syla nor General Dolor, who serve as (competing) voices of the Garden Kingdom, point out how laughable this is. I can respect this for Syla, as she is trying to make peace, but Dolor is ready to get red-faced and hostile as the slightest provocation. He has every reason to call the stormers’ bluff and point out that, even if they could destroy the Castle Island shielder again, they still couldn’t crack the other islands, which all have their own hidden shielders. Instead, the only thing Dolor does is get outraged about the one thing the Garden Kingdom is worst-equipped to address: the fact that, without a new shielder, there is no way to take Harvest Island back.
If this diplomatic misstep were the extent of the issue, I would not be writing this analysis. After all, the ultimate objective of the meeting, which at least Jhiton and riders under his direct command were aware of, was to destroy the repurposed shielder. The stormers also have nothing lose by demanding total surrender and a pressing need to not back down until they’ve stripped Harvest Island of the resources needed to feed their people. The irregularities make a matter of sense in terms of their short-term goals.
The issue is that, as the novel goes on, the stormers’ long term plans get brought up.
Sustainability
Pillaging the Garden Kingdom is obviously not a long-term strategy. The stormers are just stealing crops grown by other people. Best-case scenario, they get one year of good harvests and then need to farm the land themselves, despite having lot that expertise over generations, all but guaranteeing hard years after this one good one. Worst-case scenario, they render Harvest Island unusable for agriculture and are completely back to square one. Then there are the dragons to consider. With both stormer dragons and wild dragons flocking to the island, it is only a matter of time before these lands are overhunted.
This fact wasn’t necessarily an issue within the narrative … until that fact was called out.
Wreylith’s entire motivation for proposing a bond with Syla is to get access to exclusive hunting grounds that other dragons could not strip bare. Focus is also put on the fact that the only reason the dragons can’t find the prey animals of the Garden Kingdom elsewhere is because the shielders were the only thing protecting these animals from extinction.
There is still room for the narrative to work with this, though. Yes, the stormers are not pursuing a sustainable strategy, but they are desperate, and desperation can make people short-sighted. Maybe they really do think that pillaging the Garden Kingdom will solve all their problems and have no thoughts about the future.
Except … no, they do.
During the treasure hunt, Vorik learns that Jhiton and the tribal chieftains are fully aware that they can’t simply strip the islands bare. Agriculture needs to continue. Their plan is to enslave the gardeners to work the land on the stormers’ behalf.
This almost works. Yes, it makes sense for the stormers to do this. They do not have the technical expertise to optimally farm the land, they have a definite might-makes-right philosophy and despite their disgust with the gardeners for being soft, they aren’t interested in genocide. Enslaving the gardeners does seem like a practical move for them, were it not for the fact that the shielders were not built to keep the stormers from invading.
The shielders keep out superpredators. This means that the riders wouldn’t just need to enslave the garderners - they would need to take over as the protectors of the islands. Yes, I’m sure they could do this effectively, but the point stands that the Garden Kingdom’s productivity is going to take a hit if it is constantly being harried by monsters. Overhunting is almost guaranteed, as while the riders may be able to protect farms and livestock, the other superpredators will likely join the dragons in driving wild game to extinction.
We have already been told that the stormers can’t farm the lands outside of the Garden Kingdom. How long are these lands going to remain protective once they are exposed to the violent weather that the shielders once kept out and/or denied whatever other magical benefits the shielders may have offered?
By the rules established for this world, any island without a shielder is going to face a significant crash in agricultural productivity. As people who have scratched a living out out in the wider world, the stormers should know this. Why would they plan for the long-term by planning to do the one thing that they know will doom them in the long term? Is their plan to drive all of humanity extinct out of sheer spite?
RECOVERY
At this point, we know Buroker is planning at least one more book beyond Game of Captives. There’s also the small matter that this is a Romantasy involving a princess (now queen) and an important military officer within the barbarian horde. Thanks to the events of Red Dragon, the stormers now possess the critical ingredients to built a shielder, and they are aware that a bonded dragon can operate within a shielder’s aura if bonded to a moon-marked individual.
So, the solution I would propose here - and, quite possible, the long-term plan that Buroker is already building towards - is for Syla and Vorik to broker a treaty (likely with the Freeborn Faction acting as intermediaries) that would hit the following objectives:
A political marriage between a moon-marked individual and a stormer. For both Watsonian and Doylist reasons, this marriage should be between Syla and Vorik, but it would realistically work for any member of Syla’s family and any stormer who can be trusted to prioritize the peace.
Harvest Island will be ceded to the stormers (more precisely the Freeborn Faction, who would then act as the go-between for the other stormer tribes). The stormers would then be responsible for protecting the island.
A shielder would be prepared for Harvest Island, but not activated until there is at least one moon-marked rider who can be trusted to remain on the island with a stormer-allied dragon. This could be accomplished in a few ways. The moon-marked individual from the political marriage could bond with a dragon and relocate there, one or more of Syla’s relatives could volunteer to relocate there to help the stormers manage agriculture on the island (I imagine this would be a good task for Aunt Tibby), or the children of the political marriage could be bonded to stormer-allied dragons at birth and then raised on the island.
The end result is a compromise where everyone but the wider dragon population gets something they want. The stormers get access to a protected breadbasket, one that benefits from the full protection of the shielders while being controlled by stormers and protected by one or more dragons. The Garden Kingdom purchases political ties to the stormers that can be used to prevent future wars, and stormers will no longer need to raid gardener shipping to survive. The dragons who volunteer to defend this island (despite potentially being bonded to someone who does not meet the usual rider standard) get a private hunting reserve.
Obviously, there would be massive risks with this potential solution. I imagine the wild dragons (and quite a few stormer dragons) would be pretty angry about simply being locked out of an island that it supposed to be controlled by allies. Still, at least the human characters would be trying to cover all of their bases, rather than bulldozing forward while ignoring problems that they should be more than capable of figuring out on their own.
HOSTAGE SITUATION
Red Dragon is not without its flaws, yet I still feel it’s a decent story. I will be reviewing Game of Captives, though I don’t yet know when; most likely, that review series will release on Sundays and Wednesdays during the last two weeks of March.
Thank you all as always for being here. If you want to read about more of Buroker’s work, the reviews for her Magnetic Magic series wrapped up Sunday, and we’ll be doing a Retrospective series for that starting next Wednesday. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoy what you read here today. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
Volume I of my first serialized Romantasy novel, A Chime for These Hallowed Bones, is now premiering over in Tales of the Five Worlds!
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?
Chapter 3, Parts 1 and 2, is now available! I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.
