BookBub introduced me to "Nice Dragons Finish Last" when it was on sale on Amazon recently, and boy, am I glad I decided to download it! This book is a nonstop roller-coaster ride of action, sidesplitting laughter, and awesome characters.
Here's the scoop on the plot: Julius is the youngest of the Heartstriker clan, a very large family of dragons. He's also the runt and the least dragon-like: all his siblings are cruel, ambitious, and conniving, whereas Julius is a nice guy. So he tries to just stay out of the way and not cause trouble, but his formidable mother Bethesda is not satisfied with this behavior. So she puts a spell on him to bind him into his human form and carts him off to the Detroit Free Zone--which is the city of Detroit after it's been taken over by the water spirit Algonquin and where dragons are illegal--with the threat that if he doesn't prove he can be a "good" (in other words, despicable) dragon in a month, then she'll have him killed.
Enter Marci. Marci is a human mage on the run from a shady business mogul named Bixby, who desperately wants a magical artifact she has that her father stole. (Also relevant is the fact that Bixby had Marci's father killed in revenge for stealing the Kosmolabe, the artifact in question.) Marci flees to Detroit at about the same time Julius gets dumped there, and they end up working together to try to track down a runaway dragon from another clan, Katya, to prove that Julius is competent, though Marci doesn't know that she's dealing with dragons (yet).
After saving each other's lives several times, Julius and Marci become fast friends, which does nothing good for Julius's reputation with the other dragons. On top of trying to prove his worth, Julius has to keep the secret of his true nature from Marci, and they both have to deal with Bixby's goons coming after them multiple times. PLUS Detroit is full of dangerous magical monsters, which makes for some epic fight scenes. I think my favorite fight scene was the one with the giant mutated lampreys in the sewers. The really massive one reminded me of a Hydra from Greek mythology, or the basilisk from Harry Potter.
One reason I had to give this book a full 5 stars was that I loved Julius and Marci together. They both start out kind of wary of each other, since they've been used and manipulated before, but over the course of a few days of working together, fighting side by side against Bixby's goons and Detroit's magical monsters, they each discover that here is someone who will stick by them in good times and bad, and I loved watching their relationship evolve into something so wholesome and just all-around *good.*
I also thought the solution to the conflict Julius figured out was both elegant and realistic. He managed to figure out a way to prove his worth to his family without betraying his conscience, and that made me SO happy. I hate when good people end up doing horrible things, because if the protagonist is not someone you can admire, why are we even rooting for them?--but that didn't happen here at all. Julius began the story as a stand-up guy and he came out of it still a stand-up guy, but with more of the worldly experience necessary for dealing with the sneaky other dragons.
Another great thing about "Nice Dragons Finish Last" was how doggone CLEAN it was. I'm used to reading YA fiction that has at least a few swear words in it, sometimes an implied sex scene, but this book was a nice breath of fresh air. I don't recall seeing a single cuss word, though there were a few uses of the word "whore," and occasional references to dragons' "mating flights." Nothing crude or inappropriate, though. I really loved reading a book that was so clean.
My only real complaint about the book is a minor one--it could have been more scrupulously edited in terms of grammar/spelling/etc. There were occasional homophone mixups and apostrophe errors that a copy-editor should've caught and corrected, and Bixby's name was at one point misspelled as "Bibxy." But like I said, this is a minor complaint, since I could always figure out what the author was really trying to say, and the errors were pretty few and far between.
My other complaint has nothing to do with the book itself; I'm just disappointed that book 2 has not been released yet, because this is a series I want more of, and I want it now! Hats off to you, Rachel Aaron, for writing such a fun, upstanding novel! My interest has been piqued for your other books, which I plan to read while I'm waiting for Heartstrikers #2. Outstanding job.
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Popular Highlights in this book
It was hard to hold the moral high ground while also trying to hold in your innards.Highlighted by 315 Kindle readers- “We bend the rules of the universe on a daily basis. Presumptuousness is the base line for entry.”Highlighted by 244 Kindle readers
- “Honestly, Julius, what kind of friend would I be if I left you to pull off a miracle on your own?”Highlighted by 139 Kindle readers
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