WARNING: Late Arrival Spoilers abound for previous books in The Heartstrikers.
"For too long, we have acted like barbarians, fighting and brawling over land. That savagery has taken its toll. There are fewer dragons alive now than there have ever been, and that is our fault. No human hunter or vengeful spirit, even Algonquin, has hurt dragons more than we've hurt ourselves through our greed and shortsightedness. That is why, if we wish to live long enough to enjoy the new life expectancy my oldest sister's work has bought us, we dragons have to change."
— Julius the Peacemaker
The world is ending. The seal at the Heart of the World has broken, and a thousand years of pent-up magic is crashing back all at once. The Mortal Spirits, the forgotten gods of humanity, are returning to full strength, but they are confused and violent. And the Lady of the Lakes has finally given up her power to the Leviathan, the Nameless End, and it is working to devour the plane from the inside.
But not all hope is lost. Amelia, as the new Spirit of Dragons, calls every single dragon in the world together to help fight the Leviathan. General Jackson brings in every piece of military hardware she can. And Marci works in the roiling Sea of Magic to craft the ultimate spell to expel the Leviathan for good.
It will have to be enough.
This book provides examples of:
- All of Them: Marci decides to use a hammer banish to banish Algonquin and therefore the Leviathan. Since it requires exponentially more magic than the spirit being banished, it takes a minute for Myron to calculate the exact amount required: All of it. All the magic in the entire world, "plus or minus a couple percent."
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The ultimate spell of the Daughters of the Three Sisters. It can grab any dragon from anywhere in the world, even from behind wards, and teleport them to a place of the caster's choosing anywhere else in the world, so long as the casters know where the dragon is. The problem is, it takes months of preparation unless there's an incredible overflow of magic to lean on, it requires a minimum of two of the Daughters to cast (and Svena has to be one of them), and if they ever did use it as a weapon, every other dragon in the world would immediately unite against them.
- Amelia shows up at the peace talks wearing a gown, crown, and shoes that are all made of fire. Julius notes that clothing choice all but ensures they won't get the deposit for the room back.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Svena's reaction to finding out Amelia is alive involves fury that Amelia could do something like that to her and actual crying.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: Bob had a revelation centuries ago and realized he couldn't beat the Black Reach at its own game. No seer can ever out-seer the anti-seer precognitive dragon construct supercomputer. Instead, he found a way to create a future that the Black Reach would not want destroyed, and which all relied on Julius. And since Julius refuses to let Bob die, that means Bob has to live for this good future to come to pass.
- Blatant Lies: Svena claims she has no qualms going through Julius to get to Bob. She's convincing enough that Julius fully believes her warning is not a bluff, but Amelia later calls her out on being no more capable of killing Julius than anyone else in the room.
- Continuity Nod: Amelia brings up the time Svena got drunk and saved the capital of Slovenia. In the first book, Svena refers to a moment of youthful indiscretion in which she earned the name the Savage Protector of Ljubljana.
- Dying Race: Due to constant infighting (made worse by the fact that the plane can't support the oldest dragons, rendering them easy prey for younger dragons), the dragons have been dying out for millennia. There are a little more than five hundred dragons in existence, and over a quarter of them are Heartstriker.
- Godzilla Threshold:
- When faced with the end of the world, the dragons, the UN, and the spirits all unite to push out the Nameless End.
- Bob's initial plan is to sell every future except for one where they all survive. They'd be locked into a single timeline for a minimum of ten thousand years, with absolutely no choice at all, and humans wouldn't survive, but it's better than literally everyone dying. Bob hates the plan almost as much as everyone else does, but it was the only thing he could come up with.
- The Black Reach's counter to Bob's plan isn't that great either: Take Julius and his closest dragon allies to a carefully selected plane and begin anew, again. The spirits (including Amelia) wouldn't be able to come, and the Merlins would die when the plane their bound spirits are from died, but the dragon species would have a chance to flourish under the wise leadership of Julius and his friends. Of course, this option is dismissed faster than Bob's, since it means abandoning everyone else. Bob lampshades the irony that the Black Reach picked them all for being good dragons, meaning they're too moral to just cut and run.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Amelia uses her status as the Spirit of Dragons to call out to every single dragon in the world at once, demanding they come to the DFZ to help or be snuffed out. Svena is able to teleport them all, one by one. The Empty Wind does the same, under threat of true death for all immortal spirits.
- Go Through Me: Julius when Svena is about to kill Bob and no one else will help him... and then Katya when Svena is willing to kill both of them. After Svena backs down, Amelia mocks her for her bluff, because obviously Svena couldn't kill Julius. Svena doesn't even bother denying it, and just says that she would have just gone around him.
- Hypocritical Humor: As the Spirit of Dragons, Amelia can read any dragon's soul, and quickly discovers that Svena has invented an incredible spell that lets her teleport any dragon in the world to her position. Svena is horrified and insulted at the breach of her privacy... and immediately demands that Amelia tell her everyone else's secrets.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Julius delivers an incredible one to the Black Reach, pointing out that they shouldn't be wasting time fighting each other when the world is ending and that the Black Reach is doing the exact same thing as the other dragons.
- Trust Password: Svena doesn't believe it's really Amelia at first, so Amelia mentions the time Svena got really drunk and saved the capital of Slovenia.Amelia: Or if that story's too well-known, I could tell everyone about the time you got a crush on a human fisherman and asked me to cover for you to your sisters while you two ran off behind his boat to—
Svena: Okay, shut up, I believe you.
