DRAGONMAN

In Ted Lazaris's first fantasy adventure novel, Dragonman, the Adventures of Luke Starr, the reader  was introduced to the likeable Luke and his seemingly normal way of life growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Luke was portrayed as a quiet, average kid plagued by all the inherent problems of the typical American teen: dealing with a crush on a girl he's too shy to approach,
pesky sisters constantlypoking their noses into his business, bullies at school and exams to study
for.  But Luke, readers soondiscovered, was burdened by a far greater weight than any of his peers, as he struggled to come to terms with his birthright as The Chosen One, savior of the distant world
 of Spellville. Not only that, but, like hapless Peter Parker forced to juggle his complex life as Spider-Man while pursuing his love interest and his not-always-easy career, Luke had to learn to harness the enormous powers of Dragonman, his super alter-ego, a persona that regrettably did not come with an instruction manual.  In this second, action comic-like installment, Dragonman and the Poseidon Encounter, Luke seems to have come to terms with his legacy and appears well in control of his super powers--which he will be called upon to use this time around to save the world from an evil demon who seeks to claim the souls of every human being on earth.
     The mood of impending danger is set from the very first page, when author Ted Lazaris takes off his gloves to delivering a knock-out of an opening scene: Five-year-old Bobby Blakely, running downstairs on the morning of his birthday, finds not the hoped for brand new bicycle as a gift, but rather an enormous blue whale that has somehow "washed up" in the small lake on his parent's isolated farm. While many consider the whale's appearance a hoax, others believe it to be a sign of impending Biblical doom.  And it is enough to rouse Luke's suspicions that worse is about to happen--which it does.
     In a pace that never flags, Poseidon Encounter unfolds in a complex thread of differing tales, from an old-fashioned detective murder mystery to a science fiction fantasy, all neatly stitched together by an intriguing cast of characters, both good and evil and not-exactly-as-they-seem.  An imaginative writer, Lazaris blends magic, mysticism, religion and the fast-paced action of the comic book world into a book that fans of the first Dragonman tale will find hard to put down. www.dragonman.tv