WARNING: Late Arrival Spoilers abound for Nice Dragons Finish Last.
"The future is set, bought and paid for."
— Estella
Following her defeat in the last book, Estella, eldest daughter of the Three Sisters, has returned from another plane of existence with a scheme to finally destroy Bob and his clan for good. Meanwhile, Julius has been working with Marci in the DFZ to handle magical animals for the bounties. He is called back home for a party that he supposedly organized, in which the Daughters of the Three Sisters are to celebrate their current alliance with the Heartstrikers.
Then Bob starts losing track of the future, Marci gets captured by a dragon hunter and placed under a horrible curse, and Julius' eldest sister tries to steal her away.
This book provides examples of:
- Fatal Flaw: As Bob says repeatedly, Estella gets obsessed with something and gets tunnel-vision. She made a number of mistakes in this book (starting with being obsessed with taking down Bob no matter the cost), but the biggest one is that she fails to consider what might happen after she dies. She trades her hair away, allowing Algonquin to pretend to have killed her, which in turn lets her ambush the Three Sisters when they attack the DFZ in revenge.
- Godzilla Threshold: The chains. You trade many futures for one. The more unlikely the future you want, the more futures you need to trade. Estella traded all her futures for one where she dies in three days, considering destroying Bob to be worth it.
- Sword of Damocles: The original. It's an extremely powerful curse that will cut a person's body along a specific line (it's typically placed on the neck) if certain conditions are not met. In Marci's case, she can't leave the DFZ until she brings a dragon to a specific location by a certain time. It's also immune to all curse-breaking techniques, even illegal ones like Blood Magic, since you have to allow it to be cast on you, which puts it under all the normal defenses.
