I went straight from Orconomics into Son of a Liche, the second book of J. Zachary Pike’s Dark Profit Saga. It picks up a year later, with Gorm Ingerson’s party living as outlaws while they try to make amends to the orcs they betrayed. Each of them is keeping a secret from the others, which is what splits the party up. I think it’s an excellent continuation of the first book. Each of the heroes grows in confidence as the book goes.
Gorm drives most of that growth. In Orconomics his loyalty to a goblin squire and a band of misfits was a lot of why he was so lovable. In this book he puts it to work.
“I ain’t the sort for quittin’,”
he tells the first of his old companions he goes after. “And I hang on to things once I’ve made up my mind.” He brings each member of the party back in turn. By the time they’re together again they act like a group of heroes, and a surer one than before.
The party’s two mages learn to fight together. In one brawl Jynn keeps trying out new weaves while Laruna tells him to stop experimenting and fight. One of his small spells glances off an enemy’s shield into her fireball and splits it. Half of the fire rains down on the enemy’s head. “You messed up my spell,” Laruna says, and Pike writes her as more shocked than angry. The scene plays for a laugh while the two of them work out how to help each other.
Early on, a banker tells the king that investors treat shares of the dragon’s hoard
“as good as gold.”
I read the dragon as standing, literally and figuratively, for what backs Arth’s economy. I don’t know yet where Dragonfired takes that.