The Waking Fire

Iron ship Trading Syndicate is considered a powerful force among other clans. The group controls a huge area and no one can challenge its soldiers because they possess mysterious powers. The power can only be controlled by the Blood blessed men and women who have the gift to absorb power from the blood of a special kind of drake.

These drakes are hunted by them after which an elixir is prepared from it for the Blood blessed. The Syndicate for years has been winning wars in this way but now they are facing serious trouble i.e the drakes are going extinct very fast. If it continues in the same pattern there would be no drake left to induce power in the Blood blessed. In the meantime rumors spread about more powerful creatures than the drakes.

So the men are selected that can go on an expedition for the search of this rare group of creatures. Anthony Ryan talks about three men at this point in the novel, one is a thief named Claydon who has told nobody that he too is a Blood blessed, the other two are Lizanne and Corrick. These three start their separate missions and then they intersect each other at different points in the novel. No pauses can be noticed by the narrator Steven Brand here and it is just like he narrated Blood Song and Tower Lord.

Search for the rare drakes consume most of the series and once the three characters reach their destination the story winds up very quickly from that spot. Instead of a lot of fights, we observe search and running in haste by the characters in the novel.