Day of the Dragonking

Fans of Robert Anton Wilson’s fast and loose approach to political conspiracy and Douglas Adams’s bumbling unwilling heroes will eat up Irving’s first batch of giddy, clumsy world-saving adventures, which launches the Last American Wizard series. A “mystical terrorist group” sacrifices an airplane full of innocents to a dragon and uses the deaths to power an event that wreaks magical havoc on Washington, D.C. All the wizards in the U.S. government’s employ abruptly lose access to magic, and the world’s computers and gadgets become sentient. Second-string journalist Steven Rowan embodies the tarot’s Fool and is forced to figure out the card’s magic on the fly. Bombshell soldier Ace Morningstar, who used her magic to disguise herself as a man so she could become a SEAL, drafts Steve and his cell phone, which contains the ghost of a Chinese factory worker who now communicates through screen animations and bad autotranslations, to help fix the mess. Gathering allies, including NSA supercomputer Barnaby and Ace’s BMW, Hans, the team fights off newly transformed demons, dog monsters, and ogres while trying to find out who is controlling the Illuminati before the villains embark on the next step of their world-domination strategy. Irving’s smart parody of Beltway life and his high-energy storytelling carry through to the end and promise to maintain momentum well into the next installment. (BookLife)