The Erth Dragons 3 – The New Age

Chris d'Lacey's The New Age is the third Erth Dragons book, a big, stormy fantasy for 9 year olds where dragons, humans and forest folk are all running out of patience with each other.

What happens

It starts somewhere unexpected. High up in the Great Librarium, a young firebird called Aurielle chases a page that has blown loose from a book. The page is a record from the dragon world, and it tells her grumpy boss that Graven's heart has been found. Then he hands her the job of fixing it (and asks her to try not to mess it up).

Back on Erth, the dragons have burned a great stretch of forest. Leif, a treegirl who can talk to trees, sets off down the river to ask the Kaal for help. She's carrying poison mushrooms and a dead dragon's skull. Instead she runs into a raiding band of Gibbus, and among their prisoners is Mell, whose son Ren is missing.

Meanwhile, up in his mountain eyrie, Prime Grynt wants Ren caught at any cost. Ren has taken some of Graven's power, and the dragons are scared of what that means. Gabrial, a young blue dragon, is ordered to use a Kaal girl called Pine as bait.

Reading it feels like being dropped into the middle of a very big story, because you are. There's a lot to hold on to, from names like Grystina, Givnay and Gossana to a whole dragon vocabulary of wearlings and eyries. Kids who've followed the earlier books will love seeing the pieces start to move. A newcomer might feel a bit lost at first.

There's real warmth in it too. Leif calms the trees with her hand. Pine weaves a flower chain for a baby dragon. Grendel, a purple dragon, flatly refuses to let a girl be dropped off a cliff. Those moments pull against all the anger around them.

It doesn't shy away from violence, though. Leif finds a row of dead men in a hut, one with his chest opened. Mell kills two Gibbus with a sickle to save her, and the captives are told they'll be fed to a baby dragon. It's darker than a lot of dragon books on this shelf, so it suits a reader who likes their fantasy with some bite.

What to read next

Coming to the series fresh? Try Dark Wyng first, the book before this one. It opens on the dragon world with a young Gabrial begging his father for the story of the black dragon.