Paleontologist Grant Coleman gets an invitation he can’t decline. Join a rescue mission to find his college mentor, Professor Maxwell Carson, who has gone missing in the wilds of China. But his professor’s notes about his expedition must be wrong. They state that he was hunting for the fossils of dragons.

The others on this rescue team make Grant uneasy. One is Mike Rabon, an old college friend who studied with Grant under Carson. But while Grant pursued an academic career, Mike has been working the black market, selling fossils to unscrupulous collectors. Then there’s the mysterious expedition leader, Laoxin Chou, who has brought her own team of thugs and seems to be hiding a secret agenda. To make matters worse, when they land, Grant discovers that none of them are even legally in China.

The search for Professor Carson takes them from windswept deserts to silvan mountains and a village outside what the locals call the Forest of Fire. And along the way, clues all point to the same conclusion: dragons still roam these timberlands of China.

Subterfuge and double-crosses abound as the expedition tries to stay ahead of government forces and escape the creatures that inhabit the mountain. Are the ancient legends of fire-breathing dragons true? Will Grant be able to defy the odds and survive the Forest of Fire?