Got at the library book sale.

It was water's call that summoned the dragon Earth and his human guide, the girl called Erde, on a flight through time, transporting them from the war-torn German principalities in the year 913 to the African coast in 2013. And though the land from which they came was beset by the perils of war and religious fanaticism, this future offered hem no safe haven. For the passing centuries had seen the world plunged into a downward spiral of environmental devastation from which there would soon be no possibility of recovery.

Earth's sister, the shape-shifting Water, waited to greet them in this strange new land, offering the travelers the momentary belief that they had found he answer to their quest. But Water and her guide, the streetwise boy known as N'doch, had as many questions and fears as Earth and Erde. Pursued by enemies in both eras, they soon realized their mission was only beginning and their only hope lay in finding the remaining dragons-Fire and Air-before it was too late...

This book rode to the end of the Otherworldly Book box.

This book took me a while to get into, and I actually considered putting it down and not finishing it. I appreciate the author's intent to feature characters from another culture, but, honestly, I felt there were some aspects of N'doch's characterization and settling that leaned too heavily on racial stereotypes. If the author is writing a future-fantasy story, do we really need our black hero to be an impoverished, womanizing, hustling street thief with a neglectful mother? Does the imaginary (I believe, I don't recall a name given) African country he is living in have to be a hotbed of political wars and casual violence? You could do literally anything, so making that his background feels kinda lazy. It does improve as the story goes on, and we get some more complexity and actual characterization as the book progresses, but I think it has a fair chance of alienating readers before they get there.

I did really like the culture clash aspects once Erde and N'doch meet, and the way the author handled language barriers and ways for them to communicate. Erde actually felt much more like a historical character rather than an action heroine in this book.

The plotting and pacing are kind of all over the place here. I was getting distracted way more frequently than during the first book. Some readers might be bothered by the near-future setting's overestimation of what kind of tech we'd have in 2013's, but I found it interesting. (I'd be up for lab-grown dragons and VR vacationing, if they were a thing in our timeline!)

One of the starting volumes in the Otherworldly (Shrinking) Bookbox

Removed from "Otherworldly" bookbox.