Dragon scales aren’t soft. Even the slightest shove can skin you. And Roger Rommel, a sixty-year-old security contractor fleeing a dark past, faces much more than abrasion when a flying lizard tears a hole in a courthouse just to apprehend him. John A. Pretorius’s Living in Times of Dragons crashes out of a wild imagination. It’s a shot across the bow of Christian fiction. And it’s a whirlwind of ancient conspiracies and alien worlds seen through the passionate, contemplative eyes of a Christian father haunted by sin. In Pretorius’s hands, a potentially cartoonish concept matures into something with real heft. Raw, bizarre, and in need of another copyedit, the story roars ambitiously from the veldt of South Africa to the jungles of Central America—tapping into pathos that pushes human endurance, blowing open a gateway to a vast, fantastical milieu ripe for full-fledged fandom.

Best for: Adults seeking hard-boiled high fantasy.

Discern: Strong bloody violence, harsh cursing, intense emotional and psychological distress, depictions of drug use and alcohol abuse, brief sexual innuendo, and a magic system that resembles astral projection.