Books like Nice Dragons Finish Last

I absolutely love Sharon Shinn’s writing, both her luscious, sophisticated prose and the way she writes relationships between characters. She hits the perfect balance between well-planned, interesting plots, rich fantasy worlds, and the exact right amount of romantic subplot and character development.

This book—which follows a group of magic-wielding mystics and the reluctant, militaristic King’s Riders assigned to protect them as they travel the land, investigating a rise in anti-magic sentiment—is my favorite of her books, not least because it has some of the coziest found family dynamics and campfire friendships to be found outside of classics like The Lord of the Rings!

I am so impressed by Pirateaba’s worldbuilding. While there are some fantasy staples in the series, like dragons and dwarves, there are also plenty of lesser-seen races, like gnolls and djinni, and some that are completely unique creations, like the Antinium and the Gazers.

What’s more, all of these races feel like they have their own identities and shared culture, and then, on top of that, individuals from each race are distinct! Two gnolls won’t necessarily see eye-to-eye just because they’re gnolls.

The character work in this book is so good.

What happens when Earth turns into a competition to the death, all for the entertainment of alien cultures around the universe? Well, you get an eminently engrossing tale that my husband and I have been reading aloud to each other! 

As a cat mom, I've completely fallen for Princess Donut the Chonk. She is imperious, yet her vulnerability shines through too. Carl is a fine hero, as he grapples with his morals and grows in his ability to save others.

My husband and I are hooked. We're literally reading the series aloud to each other, complete with a watery accent for Zev and her fish tank hood, Princess Donut's innocent voice, and nasally shapeshifter Mordecai.

Completely bingeable!

Kristen Britain’s Green Rider is an adventure that takes place in a carefully crafted medieval world.

What’s notable is the way Britain integrates medieval culture and tradition into the story. From the honor code of the Green Riders to the standard of loyalty and virtue, the novel is steeped in values commonly held in the medieval era. This adds authenticity to the story.

The series also introduces ‘fantasy flair’ in the Eletians, a group of people I could closely associate with the Elves in my own book.

The best stories are the ones that inspire us to read more, right? I love history and mythology—something instilled in me by Tamora Pierce's books—so the inspiration for this setting, India's Mughal Empire, appealed to me before I even cracked the book open. Mehr had a strength that didn't falter through the entire story. I wanted her to win, to succeed, no matter what that meant for the rest of her world. This book was not afraid to carry me to some dark places, which I needed to see to push the limits of my own work. Immediately after I finished this, I snapped up everything else Tasha Suri had on the market. I may also need to read some more books about the Mughal Empire.

Forging Hephaestus is a fantastic book about a tenuous treaty between superheroes and villains in a four-color world.

Hephaestus AKA Tori Rivas is a new supervillain and is learning the ropes from the most powerful one of them all, Fornax. Fornax is a lot nicer guy than you'd expect from the most terrifying of all villains, which shows this world is a lot more complicated than it seems.

I love the complexity, deep characterization, and thickness of this book. It’s over six hundred pages and full of fantastic details about a complicated but believable superhero world. By the end, I wanted to read a dozen more giant-sized volumes.

This book does one of my favorite things: deconstructing and reconstructing tropes. It goes ahead and uses Jin, the main character, to critique everything that doesn’t quite make sense in the cultivation subgenre, and then it later uses other characters to validate the same tropes it earlier poked fun at. 

On top of that, the contrast between a relaxed Canadian farmer and his ultra-chuuni “death before dishonor” rooster never fails to be delightful.

This is one of my favorite Discworld books. It’s hard to choose between it, Carpe Jugulum, and Reaper Man, but I went with this one because the sequence during the finale where Vimes is totally off his rocket and knows he’s missing bedtime storytime with his son is simultaneously so epic and so ridiculous. 

If you’re a parent who has ever tried to balance the demands of family life with the demands of life in general, you’re gonna empathize with Vimes so hard.

How can I not include an Elmore Leonard title in a list of favorite novels about murder and matters of the heart?

Of course, no compliment by me of Mr. Leonard will be anywhere in the vicinity of new, but I will add to the heap of praise of the man that in this particular novel of his, the snappiness of the dialogue, the overall wit, and the surprising nature of the twists and turns will always strike me as ideals to strive for as I write my own noir.

After all, writers can dream, can’t they?