Asteroid Made of Dragons

An unlikely band of heroes—some of whom are trying to kill one another—must gather together in order to save their world from the return of an ancient menace in an excellent, irreverent mix of sword-and-sorcery fantasy and SF. Adams’s flippant tone recalls Terry Pratchett, taking the skewering of tropes down a very dark path as he establishes a fantasy world built from the ashes of a technological one. Rime, a mage with nearly unlimited power, will likely go insane and kill people. Linus, a knight who wants to stop Rime, is willing to murder innocents to do it. Only the scholar Xenon, an archaeologist with big ideas but no money, is actually free of malice. These unlikely allies are manipulated into working together when the titular draconic meteor plummets toward their planet. This strong, sarcastic combination of spaceships and spell casting builds on Adams’s previous books, Spell/Sword and The Riddle Box, while standing well on its own. (Apr.)