more battle. Although primarily an adventure
story, Bunch demonstrated considerable skill creat-
ing his characters, whose motives and loyalties are
often in question.
The Empire Stone(2000) is a rather ordinary
quest story, but Bunch’s next novel, Corsair(2001),
also not part of a series, is his most consistently en-
tertaining single work. The protagonist in this case
is released from prison because he has knowledge
crucial to defeating an impending attack by a na-
tion of pirates, but even he fails to realize their true
nature until it is almost too late. Storm of Wings
(2002) launched the Dragonmaster trilogy, set
against the backdrop of a magical war. A young boy
learns rough lessons about his world, including the
fact that the kindly, gentle dragons with which he is
familiar can become terrible weapons when di-
rected to that purpose. His people learn that there
are even more fearsome creatures than dragons in
Knighthood of the Dragon(2003), and the story is
brought to a conclusion in The Last Battle(2004).
Bunch has also written occasional short sto-
ries, of which only “The Vampires of Malibu High”
(2003) is of note. He has proven himself to be a re-
liable writer of high adventure whose settings and
characters are original enough to stand out. Al-
though he has yet to produce a breakthrough
work, he has demonstrated that he has all the nec-
essary tools, and it seems likely that he will grow in
stature as his career progresses.40 Bunch, Chris