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Time is running out…
An ally has all but fallen…
Resources are running low…
The time for attack has come...

The Alliance must strike deep into the heart of the empire.
This time, the Aurora will be going home, or going to her grave.

“Head of the Dragon” is a 133,000 word novel, and is the 6th episode in The Frontiers Saga.

378 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 4, 2013

304 people are currently reading
371 people want to read

About the author

Ryk Brown

61 books855 followers
Born in 1960 and raised on an overdose of television, NASA, and science fiction, Ryk Brown has worked as a cook, rock guitarist, stage lighting technician, and paramedic. He currently resides in Northern California with his wife, daughter, and cat. By day he fixes computers, and by night he creates stories.
Having spent his entire life "thinking stuff up", the advent of digital publishing has finally given him an excuse to write it all down and share it with others. ("Others" meaning someone other than his poor wife and daughter.)
A long-time fan of all things science and space, his goal is to write and publish an on-going series of sci-fi adventures. To be set in his own version of humanity's future, his characters will explore the vast reaches of the galaxy, and perhaps even the universe. He invites you all to join him on this journey through his vivid imagination.

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5 stars
2,173 (48%)
4 stars
1,706 (38%)
3 stars
521 (11%)
2 stars
69 (1%)
1 star
17 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
Profile Image for Jean.
1,816 reviews802 followers
August 9, 2016
This is book six of the series and it is best to read the books in order. As the story ended in book five with Aurora chasing a Ta’Akar warship into Ta’Akar space, book six has Aurora fighting deep into Ta’Akar space taking the war to the Ta’Akar. The Aurora is fully manned and equipped for the first time in the series.

The story moves at a lighting pace with lots and lots of action, suspense, great land battles and fantastic space battles. Brown continues to build his characters. Cameron, the XO, is now back on duty after spending book five in the hospital recovering from a serious battle injury. Cameron is great in command of the battle command and communication center during the battle of the Ta’Akar home planet. We learn more about Tag in this book as more is revealed about who he is.

Brown’s writing seems to improve with each book. He appears to be a promising new military sci-fi author. Brown kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the book. This series is a great get away from it all book; it is a quick, fun, entertaining read. I had the feeling that the series was ending with this book but apparently there are more books available to read in this series; cannot wait to start the next book.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Jeffrey Kafer does an excellent job narrating the book. Kafer is an award winning audiobook narrator.
Profile Image for Kathleen.
1,375 reviews28 followers
March 16, 2017
3.5 better than average stars. Series comes to a semi-finish with this book, but then continues on with the Aurora finally heading home. Still enjoying it.
Profile Image for Mike Nemeth.
674 reviews14 followers
June 30, 2013
In the sixth outing in "The Frontiers Saga," author Ryk Brown answers questions and brings to conclusion a number of the threads he started in the inaugural "Aurora." This book, "Head of the Dragon," takes the crew of the Earth's first jump-drive powered space ship into interstellar war with the dreaded Takaran Empire. The young captain embraces the odd legend amongst the lost tribes of Earth's past that have long since surpassed it in technology that he is Na-Tan, the one who will rescue them. And he lives up to it. The pace of this episode slows a bit as Brown puts the pieces of rebellion together and enables his heroes, including the Corinairans, whose planet is barely functional after a Takaran space bombardment, and the rebel Karuzari, who are all believed dead or scattered. Brown's tactical plotting leans more heavily in favor of his protagonists in this book as the Aurora, now repaired after nearly being obliterated earlier in the series, plans to take on 16 massive and much more powerful battleships. It doesn't get toasted until later in the story. And there's death and destruction in the last third of the novel. The action sequences are quite strong and don't have the dark qualities of earlier novels. At this point, the Aurora and its crew appear to be on the right track.
Profile Image for Kara.
720 reviews1,269 followers
April 26, 2017
"Head of the Dragon” is book #6 of the “Frontier Saga” sci-fi series. It wraps up the story arc of Aurora and the earth/Corinair crew battling the evil empire of prince somebody or other. That’s good, because it was time to move on.

Action in the book takes place on a planet and in space, and as usual, I liked the space battles more….but the novelty of “jumping” and hearing details of light-seconds, light-minutes etc is starting to become routine and therefore less interesting. Jess gets featured, which is always nice, but she has to wear a “wench outfit” as disguise…seriously?

The narrator does as good a job as always, and earns enough to round up a 3.5* book ranking to 4*.

Profile Image for Christian Leonard Quale.
241 reviews3 followers
September 28, 2019
This series has now moved into the list of series I would recommend to people. It probably wouldn't be entirely fair to say that the books so far have been building up to this one, there's a bit more to them than that, but even if this book had represented the point of the first five books existing it would still have been worth it.

I wasn't planning on reading this book right after the previous one until I finished book five, but at that point it felt wrong not to dive straight into Head of the Dragon. I'm very glad I did. Head of the Dragon is very much a direct continuation of Rise of the Corinari, and the events which are prepared for in that book take place in this one.

The book describes the final preparations for a battle, and the battle itself. A battle which is presented very, very, well. The "focus on what is important" style of these books, while it doesn't always seem to work that well for world and character-building, lends itself extremely well to a battle like the one in this book. The battle does go on for quite a long time, but doesn't get old at all. It remains frantic and exciting, but is still very easy to follow. It's hard to know what more to say about it - it's just simply a really well written story of relatively complicated battle.

This book also proves that the characters actually have some depth. The main characters have gone from being a bit caricatured in the early books to feeling rather real in this one, and the number of different characters, and the fact that they all seemed to have a proper personality by now, actually took me a little by surprise. The battle becomes a symphony of events, tactics, surprises, heat-of-the-battle-twists, and different characters facing different problems, and it all just works very well together.

No one needs me to recommend this book in particular, but for anyone starting The Frontiers Saga books I'd highly recommend reading at least this far before potentially giving up on it. And I would recommend that anyone who liked sci-fi starts this series. It still has a more casual feel to it than a series like The Expanse does, but in a way that at this point feels different rather than inferior. Head of the Dragon has cemented this as a series that, while I might not get around to reading all the books in a hurry, is definitely one I want to continue reading.
1,367 reviews5 followers
August 10, 2021
Piąta część cyklu nie była tak dynamiczna, jak wcześniejsze odsłony, stawiając mocniejszy nacisk na rozbudowę świata i jeszcze lepszą prezentację bohaterów. To lekkie zwolnienie akcji, było doskonałym uspokojeniem i przygotowaniem czytelnika do tego, co może on znaleźć w szóstym tomie. Fabuła toczy się tutaj bowiem w błyskawicznym tempie, z dużą ilością widowiskowej akcji (z masą brawurowych scen), solidną dawką suspensu i scen bitewnych, które powinny wgnieść odbiorcę mocno w fotel.

Sam początek książki jest jeszcze spokojny, gdzie autor opisuje ostatnie przygotowania i liczne niepewności piętrzące się w umyśle Scotta i jego podwładnych. Jest to przysłowiowy ostatni oddech przed mocną akcją, która powinna zadowolić każdego miłośnika militarnego sci-fi. Sama bitwa to ostra kosmiczna jazda bez trzymanki, która jest przedstawiona w fenomenalnym stylu. Brown skupia się tutaj zarówno na tym, co dzieje się w kosmosie opisując poczynania Aurory, jak i sporo miejsca poświęca dokonaniom piechoty, która dzielnie walczy na planecie i gotowa jest do wielkich poświęceń.

Widowiskowa strona „wojny” to tylko jedna z zalet książki. Twórca nie zapomina tutaj również o dalszym rozwoju swoich bohaterów. Świetnie pokazuje on tutaj jaką drogę przeszły niektóre postacie i jak mocno się rozwinęły. Obok tego wszystkiego znalazło się również miejsce dla kilku zaskakujących zwrotów akcji i intryg, które mogą zaskoczyć nawet największych fanów serii. Szósta odsłona cyklu to również odpowiedź na kilka nurtujących czytelnika pytań i zakończenie szeregu różnych wątków składających się na finał pewnego etapu historii.

The Frontiers Saga: Głowa Smoka to kawał solidnej i mocno widowiskowej literatury sci-fi, którą można uznać za najlepszą (jak do tej pory) odsłonę cyklu. Jeśli kolejne tomy będą równie intensywne i ciekawe, to nikt nie powinien mieć prawa do narzekania.

https://popkulturowykociolek.pl/recen...
96 reviews1 follower
February 22, 2019
Not Quite as Good as Previous Book in Series

Climatic invasion is really on too grand a scale to handle in normal sized novel at the same standard of writing. This leads to standard military Sci-fi compromise of mechanically laying the grand battle plan then brief bit of logistic setup then finally following a few highlight battle snapshots. Of course there is insertion of a few problems and necessary responses and alterations. But really not much deviation from major steps - simply to ensure readers can follow the of action and why. Unfortunately this means the surprise turning points really are not surprises but more restless waiting by the reader for those points to occur. Worse they mostly occur right before the of the book.

So overall not much character interaction or true excitement in this novel. Unfortunately this book is a fairly mechanical laid out of required and mostly expected events and personal interactions that enable the series to move on to the next stage. A fair execution given that author decided to feature a single major military platform against a small empire - and finish in a regular length novel. Really he probably had no choice since splitting the campaign between two novels would have been bad unless published at the same time. Just too complex to remember details across long separation in release dates. And obviously a double or triple length novel is not as financially rewarding for the publisher even if a better product for readers. Probably not quite as rewarding for author either on per book royalties even if initial word count pay would as good as multiple. So I guess I live with this novel for promise of better books in a continuing series.
Profile Image for JP.
1,281 reviews9 followers
October 25, 2019
The first large section of Head of the Dragon follows the Aurora and her crew as they plan just what they have to do to maintain what little surprise Einstein has allowed them before the Ta’Akar learn who, what, and where they are. It's somewhat plodding and slower than a lot of the previous books, but still relatively interesting.

The last third or so... dang that just doesn't let go. Ground forces dropping from space, ships jumping all over the place, orbital bombardment, a whole handful of capital ship to ship combats ... and a big twist that we really all should have seen coming, but was still well enough done. It's quite a send off to the first long section of the Frontiers Saga.

Now the Aurora can assuredly finally start home. It's about time.

If you've made it this far, read this book, it's a solid entry. And after this... of course we're on to the The Expanse!
Profile Image for Michael.
Author 168 books38 followers
September 19, 2017
To start, this is book six in the series - you need to start with Book 1, Ep.#1 - "Aurora: CV-01" (The Frontiers Saga), as this is not a standalone read.

What usually happens with continuations of a series is they start going downhill as the author has either exhausted his or her creativity or the story should have ended long ago. That's not the case with this series, as you have the exact opposite effect: it slowly started getting better, book #5 was a huge step forward, and this episode #6 was great. The characters are fully developed, the battle scenes were pretty much non-stop and, what I appreciate the most, is the technology leaps and battle scenes were believable and didn't make you want to call a foul: you can get your arms (and head) around it without having to stop and think of the science.

The author really gets you into the action, and you will find your pulse racing at different points in time - you feel like you are right in the middle of it as a participant. If you're looking for a good space opera, I highly recommend this one
Profile Image for Brett Bumeter.
170 reviews
February 26, 2025
Maybe this wraps up the series or at least this part of it?

It was not a bad book but wrapping up all the undone things from the other books in the series is the main reason this book was enjoyable.

In the end all the characters became less and less interesting.

The dynamics between rival officers who became the commander and XO, who did everything by the book, dropped to the commander doing everything and the XO just doing whatever. She literally got sent to the middle of no where to be a message relay.

Previous intrigues were revealed but the master spy ended up taking a shot for the secret prince instead of the false foreboding that he would do away with the commander.

The up and coming pilots sort of found acceptance for scaring and getting scared by flying.

A whole lot of soldiers just died, or were spaced. But everyone is over that sort of thing now even after the big to do of past burials.

The dialogue when everyone is communicating via ‘radio’ seemed pretty realist, fast paced when played at 115% normal speed and like real life comms, boring.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
718 reviews2 followers
October 31, 2023
Seemed a fitting end

All the obvious loose ends tied off, seemed an obvious end to the series and then book 7 appears as available
Next obvious storyline is Earth, so I have to assume that's what it will be
Having looked at how many books in the series there are, I'm less than half way and struggle to see how it can last as long as that. Hopefully the author is not trying to drag out what was a good series and ends up spoiling it
Oh well off to book 7. I will have to see how it goes
Profile Image for Andrea.
1,043 reviews4 followers
September 16, 2020
The Aurora and her allies are finally going to take out the Ta’Akar. Tug is going to assault the palace and find Ciaus the Great.
With each book Brown does an increasingly amazing job. This book is filled with a massive battle with many casualties. Each time Nathan is affected by the loss of life. I really admire that about him.
There is a huge reveal this book but if you have been paying attention you should have already guessed it.

PG-13- Violent and graphic battle scenes and deaths.
41 reviews
February 5, 2024
A Stellar Sci-Fi

Book 6 of ‘The Frontiers Saga’ is masterfully written and holds a memorable place in my heart. The poignant writing of the author, Ryk Brown, did something no sci-fi book has ever done before. It made me shed tears. Having read all the books of this Saga but 1, I encourage any and all Sci-Fi readers to read not just this book but the entire Saga. You will NOT be sorry!
899 reviews2 followers
December 10, 2018
Always before, Nathan Scott had been protecting worlds, and striking back only in defense of subjected systems. Now, Nathan plans to take the fight to the Takaran home world, in an offensive strike intended to take down the empire.

If they are successful, they may get peace in the sector. If they fail, they might never get back to earth.
Profile Image for Thomas James.
578 reviews12 followers
August 12, 2018
They just get better and better.

I am enjoying these stories more than anyone has a right to. I cannot put them down! This one has a matured crew and captain, Nathan (Na-Tan), and loyal friends. Like always victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat at the very last moment. Amazing!
Profile Image for Hakan Jackson.
635 reviews7 followers
May 18, 2019
As you could probably tell by the title as long, as you've read up to this point, that this is the end of an important part of this series. Ryk Brown did such a good job with this book that I contemplated not reading any more books to make sure I didn't ruin how good this series has been. Thankfully I didn't do that and I've kept on reading.
348 reviews
December 23, 2022
Awesome series

I think this is one of the best series that I have ever read. It had technical data, but not so much that my mind turned to sludge. It had characters that became friends. It had a great story line and was full of intrigue. The only thing that I could have asked for more of was romance....I was hoping the commander would hook up with someone...
Profile Image for Taylor Pye.
19 reviews5 followers
June 25, 2023
Wooo what a ride and read

Another great book in the Frontiers Saga by Ryk Brown. Highly recommended, but I feel like if you are at this book, you’re probably fully committed to go the distance and finish up the story. Liked the twists and turns and the dialogue, as always, was on point and superb.
Profile Image for Louise Pass.
283 reviews1 follower
June 16, 2017
Space opera

For Military fans this sweeping space saga, this is the series for you. Bombs, torpedo, kinetic rounds, flying circles around the enemy, it is all here. Secret princes, and super weapons, read the whole series!
Profile Image for David Syzdek.
122 reviews2 followers
July 23, 2017
Keeps getting better p!

A tight, action-filled plot and interesting characters all set in deep space with lots of space navy battles makes this book an exciting thriller.

My only (minor) peeve is that the ships names aren't italicized which I think would help with fast reading.
Profile Image for Will Hudson.
229 reviews1 follower
August 11, 2017
The only real knock I would have on this book, is that the big reveal, wasn't that unexpected. They had kind of hinted at it a lot. That said, it doesn't distract at all. The series seems to get better and better.
Profile Image for Pablo.
Author 1 book43 followers
July 6, 2021
This one had a few moments that made my hair stand up. I really enjoyed it. Also the story is advancing faster than I expected and now I'm super intrigued by what's coming up next. I starting reading the next one immediately.
Profile Image for Bakumur.
1 review
May 5, 2018
Мне понравилось, как и предыдущие тома)
850 reviews10 followers
July 21, 2017
The excitement persists

One mystery is solved at the end but more continue to pop up. The realism and believability are surprisingly Hough for S F.
Profile Image for Mitch Raley.
10 reviews1 follower
January 31, 2018
Wow!

Normally after 6 books the "epic" is over. No! And I can't tell you how happy I am! This wraps up the first great story but I am sure more to come. Great series...so far.
32 reviews2 followers
July 17, 2018
All or nothing

Action all the way with ups and downs galore. Several unexpected twists in storyline, all building to a grand climax.
3 reviews
August 26, 2018
Exciting

An awesome read that leads you to the very heart of the Ta’Akar and the struggles of the Allie car to free themselves from Cauis grip.
6 reviews
January 17, 2019
Couldn't put it down!

Could not put it down! Keeps the momentum going as the Aurora goes on the attack. Did not disappoint. 5 Stars.
Profile Image for Chris.
1,084 reviews
February 12, 2021
Six books in and still a fun ride. Like how much detail goes into the mundane stuff of simple repairs and war planning. Very interested in the next book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews

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