Nice Dragons Finish Last

Will review at Fantasy Literature.

Great start to a series

This was refreshingly different. Julius the dragon's story had me riveted. It's not often that a story is worth finishing in one sitting. The world building was good and the characters engaging. Definitely worth picking up.

4,5 stars I didn't expect this book to be so much fun, party because the other thing I read by the author (some of the Eli Monpress books) wasn't brilliant, it was inconsistent and lacked being in any way coherent and refined. Partly because... honestly, so many similar books written in the last few years were just plain crappy. I will explain what I mean by that later. What we have here is some kind of a future scenario where magic returned to the world, with the technological advancements still going on, so basically it's a future with supernatural added to it without one or the other being completely inferior to the other. Julius is one of the big dragon clans, who all come with the ability of living in a human form and man, they are brilliant at it. Extremely competitive, greedy, calculating and just generally ones to get to the top whatever it costs, meek and laid back Julius is not really considered a good dragon at all, which results in his mother throwing him out, cutting him off when it comes to money and locks his powers completely, so he is basically just a super awesome human now. To get back his powers Julius needs to find the runaway daughter of another dragon clan and take her back home. For any of his plans to work he needs someone with magical abilities, so he recruits human sorceress Marci, who has her own problems, namely being pursued by a gang. We all love a good underdog story, am I right? Julius is kind of an awkward guy, not particularly outstanding at anything among his super talented siblings and honestly, he doesn't even want to compete for real. He could have easily become a total disaster. I mean many authors do the thing with the kind characters being ugly and being defined by what they lack, just to become beautiful once they get ahead. What I particularly loved here was how Julius wasn't a freak of nature. Among the humans he is actually considered handsome and quite agile, he's not at all repulsive or portrayed as kind because he is freakish. It's the opposite; among his people he is considered freakish BECAUSE he is kinda nice. Marci is our other protagonist. Nowadays, when female characters are so often portrayed as needing no maaaaan or being the only moral compass in the whole story, Marci was fine. She does her thing, she is good at it, but without having to undermine Julius to show how she is a “strong female character”. They both need each other to solve their respective issues and I loved that bond. I don't even mind how it's inevitably leading to a love story, which I generally don't like, because they do some kind of a chemistry and they complete each other without it being a stupid gotcha competition or annoyingly trying to play hard to get. The side characters have so much potential as well. We see some of Julius' siblings, all of them brilliant in their own way, but having all kinds of different characteristics. They are a group with cohesion in some ways, while having their own voices. I especially like Justin, the brother who is completely different from Julius (mainly great with physical combat, extremely hot headed, big on pride, etc.), but is closest to him. Is he could survive the series... I would love that, really. Another thing I loved was how it was a light, easy to read story and the situation of the protagonist was still a metaphor. Not an exceedingly deep one (basically how you should make your own way of life and expectations don't have to define you), but STILL. Why am I saying this? Because I feel more and more authors don't know how to use a metaphor in the theme of the book. Sure, they use it for smaller components of the story here or there, but then the protagonist turns to the camera and tells you verbatim. Some example would be [b:Sufficiently Advanced Magic 34403860 Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension, #1) Andrew Rowe https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488182235s/34403860.jpg 55506810] , where the author seems to believe we are too stupid to understand anything without him making the character do all the things his father will not like. (Then again, I think some readers are to blame as well. Namely the ones who bitch up a storm if their favourite social themes are not spelled out in the books for them to feel enough virtues were thoroughly signalled.) This was a first book, though. The very first little case in something that we are told is much bigger, so I refuse to give it 5 stars. There must be more of it out there, something that needs to tie it all together and I'm reserving the perfect rating for that thing. If it happens. Not sure. But so far I really had a blast with this. I feel the author working on her craft, having a better paced and planned story that makes sense and doesn't lack any element that is needed for a truly well-made book. I am definitely going to read the sequel. Have a nice day and don't leave this to last!