Done? Good. As you'll recall, a number of our heroes, specifically Clay and crew, were in arctic conditions and trying to make their way back to civilization when they encountered Last Look Jack, the meanest, hugest, most blood-thirsty blue dragon known - literally a legend and widely believed to be a myth - so named because if you ever see him, it would be with your "last look." Well, right off the bat in The Empire of Ashes, this battle takes a turn as Clay takes a different approach to fighting him, drinking unprocessed dragon heart-blood, allowing him to trance with Last Look Jack... and fight Jack in his own mind.
Meanwhile, Lizanne, a.k.a. "Miss Blood," elite Exceptional Initiatives agent and all-around bad-ass, is aboard the Profitable Venture, along with the ragtag fleet of survivors fleeing the White Dragon's attack on Corvus.
If they have any hope of stopping the White's onslaught against humans, where they kill the young, the elderly and the feeble and turn the rest into additional mentally enslaved fighters known as "the Spoiled," Lizanne's father (a brilliant inventor) and her friend and fellow ex-con known as "The Tinkerer" (another brilliant inventor) will have to put their skills to use in an arms race to save human civilization as they know it. Meanwhile, Makario, another ex-con, but a brilliant musician and composer, will have to work feverishly to unlock the musical riddle that protects the secrets inside an ancient device... secrets that can hold the key to defeating the White.
Mind you, that won't be enough, either. They'll need the help of anyone and everyone, which leads to strange bedfellows, indeed; rival factions will have to work together and pirates will have to work with pirate-hunters to save humanity. And that might not even be the strangest allies they seek...
In my review of The Legion of Flame: Book Two of the Draconis Memoria, I recommended the series, but warned not to expect a nice tidy ending to that, the second book of the series, as so much was up in the air. Well, The Empire of Ashes, the third book in the series, ties it up very nicely and leaves the reader in a satisfying place. I don't know if this is going to be a trilogy or if the series is intended to be continued, but it could easily go either way: the world has changed by the end of this book, so further stories would have intriguing developments to play out and investigate, but things are resolved enough that, should this be the last book in the series, it wouldn't feel unfinished.
If you've already started the series, picking up The Legion of Flame is a must. If you haven't, start at the first book, The Waking Fire, but by all means, read this series if it sounds remotely interesting to you; I found it a delightful read and highly recommend it.
