Dragonstorm

Dragonstorm by Graham Edwards opens in a time of chaos. The world is shedding the charm by which it was once ruled. Fortune and his friends mount a desperate rescue mission to rescue the dragons trapped at Aether’s Cross while around them what remains of the charm is gathered together by the basilisks. These immortal creatures are planning one last great wielding of charm, and it is not certain that the turned world will survive it.

But neither Fortune nor the basilisks have reckoned on the mysterious dragon Archan. She wants the basilisks’ immortality for herself and she will stop at nothing to ensure that she lives forever. The world has turned, but it has not yet come to rest. The storm is coming.

Fortune’s story continues in Dragonflame.

• Dragonstorm was nominated for Best Novel in the 1996 British Fantasy Society Awards.

Read an extract from Dragonstorm (PDF)

The story behind Dragonstorm

I wrote Dragoncharm as a one-off – I’d never planned on a follow-up. But the publishing deal I struck with Voyager was for two books. I pitched in six chapters of a manuscript called The Wall, which never got off the ground (although elements from it eventually made their way into Stone & Sky). Instead we agreed I would write a direct sequel to Dragoncharm.

In planning the sequel, I discovered I’d got more story to tell than would fit in a single book, so Dragonstorm and Dragonflame were conceived together. At the same time, I was adamant the three dragon books should stand alone as far as possible (I wanted to avoid that second-book-of-a-trilogy-that-leaves-you-on-a-cliffhanger thing).

Starting my first sequel felt harder than starting my first novel. I knew where I wanted to journey, but I couldn’t get the door open. Only when I wrote a prologue featuring the immortal basilisk Ocher did I manage to unlock it. After that, it was the easiest thing in the world to pick up Fortune’s story and, well, move mountains. And then, when a blind, white dragon called Archan muscled unexpectedly into the story, all the careful planning went to pieces and the thing developed a life of its own. That’s when I knew things were really getting interesting.