The Dragon Factory (Joe Ledger #2)[August 7, 2025]

[Yanique, Thread Master]

This is a Buddy Read for The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry starting on August 7, 2025.


Happy Reading!

[Nirkatze]

Thank you!

Here goes... working off of the list on Maberry's website:
https://www.jonathanmaberry.com/joele...

Joe Ledger DMS main series [link]
1. Patient Zero (Jul 7)
0. Short: Countdown in Joe Ledger: Special Ops collection)
1.1 Short: Zero Tolerance (in Special Ops)
1.2 Short: Deep, Dark (in Special Ops)
1.3 Short: Material Witness

2. The Dragon Factory (Aug 7)
2.1 Short: Dog Days (in print versions of Dragon Factory)
2.2 Short: Changeling (in Special Ops)

3. The King of Plagues (Sept 7) [link]

====Requests made to here====

4. Assassin's Code (Oct? Dec?)
4.1 Short: A Footnote in the Black Budget in The Madness of Cthulhu collection
4.2 Short: Mad Science (in Special Ops)
4.3 Short: Borrowed Power (in Special Ops)
5. Extinction Machine
6. Code Zero
6.1 Novella: Three Guys Walk Into a Bar in Limbus, Inc.: Book II
6.2 Short: Artifact (in Special Ops)
6.3 Short: The Handyman Gets Out (in Special Ops)
7. Predator One
8. Kill Switch
9. Dogs of War
10. Deep Silence
10.1 Short: Atoll in Joe Ledger: Unstoppable collection
10.2 Novella: All the Devils are Here in Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror

Joe Ledger: Rogue Team International
1. Rage
2. Relentless
3. Cave 13
4. Burn to Shine
5. Red Empire

Joe Ledger Collections
Joe Ledger: Special Ops (all shorts listed above)
Joe Ledger: Unstoppable (various authors playing in Maberry's sandbox)
Joe Ledger: Unbreakable (2nd Multi-author collection)
Joe Ledger: Secret Missions Volume One and Two (crossover collection)
Maberry's reading order puts Unstoppable here--but he also stopped updating after 2015

Dead of Night
Picks up a few years or so after the Rogue Team books. Some cameos by Ledger.
1. Dead of Night
1.1 Short: Jack and Jill in 21st Century Dead collection
1.2 Short: Chokepoint in Hungry Tales collection
1.5 Short The Wind Through the Fence in Wind Through the Fence: And Other Stories
2. Fall of Night
2.1 Short: Lone Gunman in Nights of the Living Dead: An Anthology
2.2 Short: Not This War, Not My World in Wastelands: The New Apocalypse collection
3. Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire
4. Still of Night

Rot & Ruin
Picks up a decade or so after Dead of Night series. Joe becomes a regular by #3. Younger protagonists.
0.5
1. Rot & Ruin
1.5 vingettes In the Land of the Dead Bonus on Maberry's Website: (https://www.jonathanmaberry.com/files...)
2. Dust & Decay
2.3 Novella: Dead & Gone in Tales of the Rot & Ruin: Rot & Ruin; Dust & Decay; Dead & Gone; Flesh & Bone or solo Kindle ebook
2.5 Graphic Novel: Rot & Ruin Warrior Smart #1-5
3. Flesh & Bone
3.5 Novella: Tooth & Nail Kindle ebook?
4. Fire & Ash
5. Bits & Pieces

Broken Lands
Direct continuation of Rot & Ruin--#1 of Broken Lands is #6 of Rot & Ruin
1. Broken Lands
2. Lost Roads

V-Wars
A series of Graphic Novels with Ledger cameos

[Nirkatze]

I read this earlier this week and enjoyed it, though it had a bit of a rough start. I don't think I really got engaged in the book until (view spoiler)[82 showed up. Toss a kid--especially a kid surviving on their wits, with a hard life, and helping/saved by the good guys and I'm hooked. I was almost hopeful that the twins would be redeemable too, but they turned out to be almost as twisted as their progenitor...

I wasn't expecting all of the deep-connection twists, for the mad scientist to go so far back or the Cabal to be so widespread. The major dying at the end was sad, but felt like a Bond-girl death. On to the next romance. (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Reminder that every Joe Ledger series other than Joe Ledger + Rogue Team International, is an alternate Joe from a different timeline where zombie apocalypses happened differently, not a chronological continuation...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read Countdown (pretty much a prologue to book 1, including the incident that put Joe on Church's radar)...

Also read Zero Tolerance (tying off the loose end from book 1, with the Type 12 zombie Amirah)... I checked and this was written 2 years later, so I guess Maberry decided he didn't want to reuse her in future books...

And Deep Dark (felt bad for the test subject)...

And Material Witness (this was a crossover with Pine Deep, another Maberry series I think... one that might be in the same world, and not another dimension version, actually)... unexplained weirdness abounds...

Starting Dragon Factory now... I forgot the Vice President was introduced so early in the series, as a plot point...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Nirkatze wrote: "I read this earlier this week and enjoyed it, though it had a bit of a rough start. I don't think I really got engaged in the book until 82 showed up. Toss a kid--especially a kid surviving on thei..."

Regarding the start... that's kind of the story structure of the series... something tends to happen early on that keeps Joe & the DMS scrambling...

Meanwhile, you get tons of enemy POVs and random innocent POVs, becoming victims of attacks or knowing too much, things start coalescing in the middle, but Joe and the team don't figure things out until the 11th hour, and save the day, averting apocalypse... but possibly leaving a bit of a trail of collateral damage / non-apocalyptic damage...

By the newest releases, the world of Joe Ledger has diverged quite a bit from the real world... things don't return to a relatively matching equilibrium each book, I don't think... but that reality isn't really explored either, because Joe and team are generally too busy dealing with the next threat, and we don't see much of the in-between times...

[Nirkatze]

I didn't realize that each book is an alternate universe... that's kinda cooky.

I also forgot that one of my favorite characters was (view spoiler)[the guy who "doesn't need legs to shoot." I'd love to see him piloting a mecha.

There were also little interesting tidbits, like when they were navigating the factory in the dark, and how they communicated with each other and kept moving forward as a team. I thought that was cool. (hide spoiler)]

I need to go back and read those shorts...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I reached your spoiler fave...

That extinction timer plot device of the book is ticking down super slow... read 50% of the book and 20% of the 100hr timer has depleted... I expect it to start dropping faster towards the end of the book when the MCs need to travel to the villain locations... or something...

[Ann-Marie]

Dammit I posted in here a bit ago! I liked it a lot, I loved the action & fights, I was shocked at the death, I forgot the shorts and will read those soon, looking forward to continuing :)

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Today I learned I can still lose comment drafts with my browser extension, if I delete cache for any reason (a site was bugging, and reddit said it had been fixed and I needed to delete cache and site data of 1 specific site to fix locally)... then I refreshed this page... dammit...

I wrote a post about the anthologies...

Summary:

Unstoppable is listed as #9.5 in the Joe Ledger series page of Goodreads

Secret Missions released between Relentless and Cave 13 of Rogue Team International (technically an omnibus for ebook/audio release, but it seems the 2 volumes were otherwise released simultaneously in hardcover/paperback because otherwise it would be a 600-700 page anthology...

Unbreakable released between Cave 13 and Burn to Shine of the Rogue Team International series...

[Narilka]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Reminder that every Joe Ledger series other than Joe Ledger + Rogue Team International, is an alternate Joe from a different timeline where zombie apocalypses happened differently, not a chronologi..."

Does that mean the short stories are alternate Joe? I was thinking you meant the other series only like Rot & Ruin.

[Nirkatze]

Oof, yeah, I read that post as every book, not just every series...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

In Nirkatze's list, everything past Joe Ledger collections is alternate timelines/dimensions... And the multi-author short story collections are questionable... And anything where Joe meets characters from other series in a short story is basically authorial fanfiction... Like 3 men walk into a bar...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Finished my re-read this morning... Nice when multiple problems solve one another ;)

Common axiom about have 2-3 problems...

[Narilka]

Authorial fanfiction is a great description :D

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I think I saw someone else call it that... Like when Ilona Andrews writes a Kate/Curran + Rogan/Nevada interaction on her website

[Narilka]

Well yours is the first time I've read that phrase so you get credit in my book :)

[Ann-Marie]

I read the shorts and OMG Joe (view spoiler)[HAS A DOG NOW???? Love that for him! And for me lol I wish he had the dog with him in Changeling but I understand why he didn't with the whole baseball game plans. If Joe replaces Grace with Felicity and she immediately dies I will be annoyed, this would take away from the series for me so I hope that doesn't happen any time soon. (hide spoiler)]