The men of Irdna, tough as they were, stared at the face of death lumbering slowly and inexorably toward them. The bravest among them gripped their weapons tightly and licked their lips in anticipation. Then the Ice Dragons reared up, and Blade caught his first clear glimpse of the Dragon Master.
In every limb and feature that Blade could see, the Dragon Master appeared human. He was dressed in a shimmering silver suit, slightly baggy at the joints, and his head was concealed in a spherical silver helmet with a jet-black visor.
The wall of dragons suddenly reared up and came down, their legs thudding into the ground like the hammers of hell...Their approach cut a swath of death through the ranks of the waiting Irdnas. Blade saw one man stumble, and before he could recover his stride, a huge head swooped down and then up again, the man firmly clamped in its teeth. Others simply failed to clear the path of the onrushing dragons and vanished under the massive feet which moved forward with a thunderous sound that drowned out every dying scream.
I've read a fair number of books in this series. They are generally enjoyable. In each book, Richard Blade, a British secret agent, gets transported to a different parallel universe. There is always a human world menaced by some kind of evil. Some of the worlds are at a primitive technological level (fantasy focused) while others are equal to ours or beyond (SF focused). I tend to like the fantasy focused ones more than the SF focused ones.
This one, "Ice Dragon," was misleading. The cover certainly suggested a fantasy theme, as did the title, "Ice Dragon," but this one is primarily an SF story about a human world being terraformed by aliens who love cold weather. The aliens have a mad scientist from the humans helping them, and Blade has to defeat them both.
This was definitely not my favorite among the books in this series that I've read so far, and may even be my least favorite. It just seemed that there was a lot of talking and planning by Blade on how to defeat his enemies rather than taking action to do so. The end has a lot of action but I'd pretty much lost interest by then.
One other thing I'll note about this series is that they are considered "adult" men's adventure. That means they have sex in them. Of course, this was written in 1974 so the sex is relatively tame by today's standards. Another thing, though, is that--strange as it may seem--Blade is actually very much a gentleman with the opposite sex. There's never any violence or threat made against the women by Blade. One particular sex scene in this book illustrated this very well. Blade is given a slave woman to pleasure him, and she is clearly very frightened and has had awful experiences in the past. Blade carefully eases her fears and makes sure she is satisfied before allowing himself to take pleasure. It was kind of a sweet touch.
The Ice Dragons resemble quadruped dinosaurs more than worms.
Generally there are three separate races/cultures that are at odds for some odd reason or other. This installment adds a little spice with the introduction of a fourth agency. One from beyond.
Sci-fi adventure ensues as Blade must determine who is the real villain and how in the world is he going to vanquish them? In a world on the brink of global Ice Age.