Daisy and Wild-Eye (and adorable baby dragon Ace) are at it again. This time, the two lifelong friends and minor criminals are running cigarettes from Texas back home to Oklahoma at the bequest of Daisy’s werewolf boss Dusty. After a brief interaction with a highway trooper who realizes that its best to stay out of Dusty’s business, Daisy starts mentally hearing cries of distress high in the sky. What swoops down to attack them is a monstrosity of a creature – a hippogriff formed out of a palomino horse and a red-tailed hawk, original proportions and all. The creature does not understand what’s happened to it, and is terrified and violent as a result. Daisy and Wild-Eye put the poor thing out of its misery and haul it back home to Douay to try to figure out what could have made such a creature.
In the meantime, Dusty has a potential client out at Martin’s Midnight Menagerie, a new tourist trap 20 miles outside of town. Daisy and Wild-Eye bring over a truckload of meat for the menagerie animals and meet the owner, Marten Skygge. Under the guise of getting to know his new vendors, Marten brings them inside the exhibit to see the “secret” animal, and reveals a cage set up for Ace. Turns out that Marten and his boss are the ones who originally arranged for the theft of Ace’s mom and dad from Germany, and they are mad as hell that Daisy & Wild-Eye thwarted those plans. They can’t get to the other dragons safely home in Germany, but there is still a baby dragon in this country, and they will do anything to get her back.
Marten and his boss have money, high-powered lawyers, and oh, turns out that Marten is some eldritch ancient being that can meld animals together into hideous forms and then control them utterly. He proves his power by melding Daisy & Wild-Eye’s hands into one, and holding them hostage in demand for Ace. While they manage to escape that situation (and get separated safely), Daisy & Wild-Eye realize that they’re up against a foe that they have no idea how to combat. And they’re going to need the help of all of Douay to keep Ace, and the town itself, safe from Marten and his monsters.
Ferrett Steinmetz excels at these fun capers with high & personal stakes, and The Hippogriff Riders of Oklahoma is just that – a tense conflict (with some pretty severe body horror thrown in there, FYI) that is still funny and hopeful at the end. This is a solid conclusion to the trilogy that still leaves open the possibility for more installments in the future. I, for one, would love to visit Douay and all its residents again.