The NightDragon #2: DI3 by Scott Blasingame

The NightDragon #2: DI3 by Scott Blasingame

I was quite looking forward to reading "DI3", the follow-up to "Enter the NightDragon" and conclusion to the story of the previous book. The last book ended on a cliffhanger, what with NightDragon cornered by the authorities and the three-member mercenary team "DI3" getting away with the stolen McGuffins. While it's not always a good idea to end the first story in a series on a literal cliffhanger (I've read that the first story should always be self-contained), I found myself liking the characters enough to overlook the comic book approach a prose novel.

So how did this story fare? Better than the first novel, actually. The story felt a lot more streamlined and devoid of subplots meant to show us how bad-to-the-bone our heroes were. There was also a greater sense of narrative urgency to the proceedings, as the clock was ticking from the first page for our hero to recover "the goods" before the mercenaries could hand it over to the shadowy organization that we learn a little bit more about (which organization reminded me a little of the bad guys in Marc Cerasini's GODZILLA VS. THE ROBOT MONSTERS). I also felt that Blasingame also cut back on some of the more verbose descriptions of places and the characters' appearance, my major qualm with the previous story.

I also enjoyed the two major flashback sequences, which will please any fan of old school kung fu movies and which bring elements of sheer mysticism to the sci-fi trappings suggested by the "goods" that DI3 are trying to steal and hock. If you enjoyed movies set in the Shaolin Temple and full of fantastical training sequences, you'll have a lot of fun with these chapters. These chapters also suggest things about the universe these characters inhabit which I thought was extremely rad (is that the word kids use these days?) and I hope he revisits and builds upon in later books.

While there is no shortage of action, all the fights are directly related to the main conflict and carry a greater emotional weight here, not to mention a lot of the character relationships hinted on in the last book get enough attention to make the reader feel as if there was some real pay off. In that regard, the book reminds a little of the Kill Bill movies, where the first had more action, but the second one had the emotional pay off to complement the first part (although this had way more action than Kill Bill vol. 2). As in the last book, the fights are intricately written, as if Yuen Woo-Ping and Sammo Hung got together circa the late 80s, made an action movie, and then wrote out their choreography move for move.

I will warn some viewers that there is some extreme violence in the book, especially during an especially unsettling torture sequence that will get under your skin, both because of the nature of the act and because you don't know how the scene will end. I'm glad to say that said part was resolved in a way that was too this reader's liking. I'm sure most other readers will agree.

So yeah, pick it up and read it (but pick up the first book before you do that)!