Rachel Aaron (and Rachel Bach, for that matter) has a well-deserved reputation with a fun and popular Sword and Sorcery series, Eli Monpress under her Aaron name and the Paradox trilogy under her Bach name. Not content with spinning fun, fast paced tales in two sub genres of Speculative Fiction, she launches an urban fantasy series – Heartstrikers – with Nice Dragons Finish Last. Julius Heartstriker is the protagonist here, one of the youngest dragons in a long line of dragons – his mother used an alphabetic naming system whereby the first offspring had names beginning with “A” so with a “J” name, his youth (at 24 years) compared to his many siblings is evident. He is the least like his family, an introvert more concerned with continuing his online education and playing MMPORGs until his mother Bethesda kicks him out and tells him she will kill him unless he starts acting like a real dragon. Bethesda, as one might surmise by this small introduction is not a kind dragon (as is befitting her race), for she excommunicates Julius to DFZ, the Detroit Free Zone sealed in his human form…which is fine since Detroit is the one place where Dragons are not permitted by the Algonquin, Lady of Lake, the magical/supernatural ruler of the domain. Luckily, one of his many siblings is in Detroit and has a job for Julius. He’s got a couple of days to finish the job or he’s going to be roasted.
The first thing that sets Nice Dragons Finish Last apart from other similar Urban Fantasy novels is that Aaron eschews the common first person narrative many other authors employ. Although we see the story primarily through Julius’s point of view, this more omniscient storytelling technique allows Aaron to provide a wider, less limited canvas to tell the story. That said, in many ways, I was reminded of ML Brennan’s Generation V; both protagonists are the younger/youngest members of an otherwise aged and large family and both are very much slackers. (A good thing because I enjoyed Brennan’s debut quite a bit.)
Julius tries to do things his way, in other words not be what he perceives as a forceful, brutish jerk to others to enforce other people into doing things. He favors a more nuanced approach, building trust rather than fear with people. In other words, Julius is in many ways the ugly duckling of Bethesda’s brood. Fortunately for him, when he arrives in Detroit, he meets up with Marci, a freelance mage who offers her services to Julius. However, she has problems of her own that have followed her from Las Vegas. Aaron does a nice job of intertwining their two problems into one plot line as the novel moves along. She also does a convincing job of the romance between the two characters; there’s enough give and take to let the story breath without beating readers over the head with their evolving relationship; the two characters simply have great chemistry together.
Nice Dragons Finish Last is also a coming of age tale. Although Julius is 24, which by human standards might be a bit older for a protagonist in a coming of age tale, it is miniscule in dragon years. It was very rewarding to see Julius grow and mature as a character and take some of what “it means to be a dragon” into his growth as a character while still remaining true to himself.
I found the world-building here very interesting and fun; the explanation of how magic and supernatural creatures exist in a near future version of our world to have an interesting starting point. A meteor crashed into Canada in 2035, which triggered a powerful surge of forgotten magic into the world, including spirits that had lain dormant for nearly one thousand years. The action of the novel takes place 60 years after magic’s return, so there is a status quo and a generation of people who have known only a world with magic. So even though this novel reads primarily as an urban fantasy, there are also hints of post-apocalypse in that the world has been changed by a cataclysmic event. In that sense, I was reminded of the world building in Steven Boyett’s wonderful novel Ariel.
As much as I enjoyed the world-building, it was the element that I feel was a bit confusing. I found a slight disconnect in the accounting of time; Magic has only really been alive in the world again for about 60 years, but the dragons in particular speak of having lived hundreds of years. Perhaps this element will be explored or clarified in future stories/novels featuring the Heartstriker clan.
I’ve been a fan of Aaron’s work since I read the first few books in the Eli Monpress novels and each book I read by her reaffirms that I’ll read just about any tale she chooses to spin. Nice Dragons Finish Last is a great start to what could be a very fun and entertaining series. Between the characters, their chemistry (whither good or some variance of toxic) with each other, and the fascinating mix of post-apocalypse and urban fantasy world building, I really want to see more of all of it.
Recommended
© 2015 Rob H. Bedford
Review copy courtesy of the author
eBook / June 2014
http://www.rachelaaron.net/books-heartstrikers.php
