Book 12 is the epic finale to the New York Times bestselling How to Train Your Dragon series! The Doomsday of Yule has arrived, and the future of dragonkind lies in the hands of one boy with nothing to show, but everything to fight for. Hiccup's quest is clear... But can he end the rebellion? Can he prove himself to be king? Can he save the dragons? The stakes have never been higher, as the very fate of the Viking world hangs in the balance!
In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart. Once, dragons nearly drove themselves to extinction. But in the city of Drakopolis, humans domesticated them centuries ago. Now dragons haul the city’s cargo, taxi its bustling people between skyscrapers, and advertise its wares in bright, neon displays. Most famously of all, the dragons battle. Different breeds take to the skies in nighttime bouts between the infamous kins—criminal gangs who rule through violence and intimidation. Abel has always loved dragons, but after a disastrous showing in his dragon rider’s exam, he's destined never to fly one himself. All that changes the night his sister appears at his window, entrusting him with a secret...and a stolen dragon. Turns out, his big sister is a dragon thief! Too bad his older brother is a rising star in Drakopolis law enforcement... To protect his friends and his family, Abel must partner with the stolen beast, riding in kin battles and keeping more secrets than a dragon has scales. When everyone wants him fighting on their side, can Abel figure out what’s worth fighting for?
2019 Amazon.com Best Books of the Year 2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year First in the Dragons of Terra series, Brian Naslund's Blood of an Exile is a fast-paced adventure perfect for comic readers and fans of heroic fantasy Bershad stands apart from the world, the most legendary dragonslayer in history, both revered and reviled. Once, he was Lord Silas Bershad, but after a disastrous failure on the battlefield he was stripped of his titles and sentenced to one violent, perilous hunt after another. Now he lives only to stalk dragons, slaughter them, collect their precious oil, and head back into the treacherous wilds once more. For years, death was his only chance to escape. But that is about to change. The king who sentenced Bershad to his fate has just given him an unprecedented chance at redemption. Kill a foreign emperor and walk free forever. The journey will take him across dragon-infested mountains, through a seedy criminal underworld, and into a forbidden city guarded by deadly technology. But the links of fate bind us all. Dragons of Terra Series Blood of an Exile Sorcery of a Queen At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart. In the city of Drakopolis, dragons and humans have co-existed for centuries. Dragons burn the city's garbage, taxi its busy citizens from place to place, and even compete in vicious underground battles for ganglike kins. But the dragons also compete in legal sports, like the spectacular aerial races that draw in cheering crowds by the tens of thousands. Abel is at just such a race when he witnesses the unthinkable. A long-shot competitor pulls off an impossible win -- then flies into a destructive rage! Someone in the city is experimenting on dragons: hacking their DNA, rebuilding their bodies, and breaking their minds. Who could be driving the dragons berserk? Abel must find out who's behind the experiments and put a stop to them, and to do so he’ll infiltrate the kins’ underground street races on a long-shot dragon of his own. But with his sister working for a kin, his brother serving the city's secret police, and a bully at school racing for Abel's worst enemies, will Abel find any safety past the finish line?
This book bravely bridges the gap between the Spiritual and the Temporal (physical) factors of addiction and addiction recovery. It pulls the essential elements of many psychological theories and fits them into an eternal paradigm as can only be seen through the eyes of those who are inspired by God. The reader will be taken on a journey from seeing the battle from high in the heavens down to the gritty and sweaty clashing of swords a warrior must experience day to day. We live in a time when many are in bondage before they are aware that there is a war. As with many examples in world history, one cannot get out of bondage with just will power and thought control. Warriors must be trained, and then trained some more, in the classroom and on the field. They must learn, that in order to escape the bondage they find themselves in, as did warriors thousands of years before: Like Dragons Did They Fight!
What's the best way to start learning a new opening? You can either fill your head with masses of variations and then try to keep it all straight at the chessboard, or you can absorb key patterns and themes that crop up over and over again in your chosen variation. In The Fighting Dragon, NM Paul Powell takes the second approach. Using a carefully selected collection of short games from international play, Powell shows the dangers that lurk for White in one of the sharpest lines from the whole Sicilian complex, the Yugoslav Attack. In the process, the author lays out a different approach to mastering not just the opening, but both chess and even life itself. Trying out different ideas is essential to chess improvement, and so The Fighting Dragon showcases a variety of ways for Black to handle White's responses. After taking in the key concepts, aspiring Dragon players can then deepen their understanding with three dozen critical test positions. "I will not worry about winning or losing rating points," writes Powell in the Introduction, "I will embrace the spirit of a warrior." Take up The Fighting Dragon and start your journey.
What happens when a sheepish knight and a not-so-fierce dragon fight for the very first time? Well, it's no ordinary battle since the knight has to go to the castle library to learn about dragon-fighting and the dragon must dig through his ancestor's things to find out how to fight a knight! "Spontaneity of line and feeling are backed by zesty colors and a jovial, tongue-in-cheek tone to which children can relate—a top springtime choice." —Booklist "There's a swirl of good-humored life to the book." —The New York Times Book Review
Diana's poetry offers the reader a voyage into the hidden layers of life as an older woman. Feelings that often remain unspoken and isolating are given an honest voice in this gentle array of poetry about love, loss, children, illness, friendship, aging and hope.
Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower-a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, newly-appointed CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict. Applying a combination of evolutionary theory and detailed field observation, he explains what happened to the "snakes"-non-state threats including terrorists and guerrillas-and the "dragons"-state-based competitors such as Russia and China. He explores how enemies learn under conditions of conflict, and examines how Western dominance over a very particular, narrowly-defined form of warfare since the Cold War has created a fitness landscape that forces adversaries to adapt in ways that present serious new challenges to America and its allies. Within the world's contemporary conflict zones, Kilcullen argues, state and non-state threats have increasingly come to resemble each other, with states adopting non-state techniques and non-state actors now able to access levels of precision and lethal weapon systems once only available to governments. A counterintuitive look at this new, vastly more complex environment, The Dragons and the Snakes will not only reshape our understanding of the West's enemies' capabilities, but will also show how we can respond given the increasing limits on US power.
The War of the Silver Marches rages across the Forgotten Realms in this unforgettable final episode in the Companions Codex The reunited Companions of the Hall are separated once more—thrown to the far corners of a war that’s bigger than any of them realized. They fight for the safety of Mithral Hall, but it’s their own souls, and the soul of Faerûn itself, that truly hangs in the balance. In the dreaded depths of the Underdark, Regis and Wulfgar seek shelter in the fabled Silverymoon, from which they can launch a series of daring new raids. The rest of the Companions reside at the besieged Mithral Hall, where new friends arrive on a mission of mercy—if such an emotion can rest in the heart of a dragon. Meanwhile, the orc warlord Hartusk turns his savage horde on Everlund, one of the great cities of the Silver Marches. Though it stretches his forces thin, it’s a move that could help him achieve his goal of becoming the master of the North. But Hartusk’s treacherous drow allies have a different goal. They want nothing except the death of Drizzt Do’Urden—even if it comes at the cost of human, dwarf, elf, and orc lives. The world is cloaked in darkness and blood runs in rivers across the North; orc hordes rage on and cities fall under brutal siege; old friendships are tested and new alliances are forged. But in the end, it may come down to a single dark elf choosing life over death, forgiveness over vengeance, law over chaos . . . peace over war. Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf is the third book in the Companions Codex and the thirtieth book in the Legend of Drizzt series.
