An Affectionate Parody fantasy novel series by Kevin J. Anderson. The books follow some Ragtag Bunch of Misfits con artists who navigate a duplicitous yet gradually progressing medieval society while also encountering some genuine dangers and adventures. An older Cullin (The Squire), whose career of cons and occasional genuine feats of heroism led to him becoming a king, tells his son and heir about his adventures as a Framing Device. The series currently consists of two books: The Dragon Business, and Skeleton in the Closet: A Dragon Business Adventure. The final act of the first book is an expanded version of an earlier Anderson short story, "Short Straws" (which can be found in the anthology collections The Ultimate Dragon and The Funny Business).
Tropes in the Series:
- Bait-and-Switch: Many lines of dialogue go off in a different direction than they initially seem to be going for comedic effect.But the group had gotten used to soft, flea-infested beds at local inns, and Reeger felt they were getting spoiled.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sir Tremayne, who volunteers to slay dragons for free and inconveniences the Monster Protection Racket protagonists but initially seems like a Knight in Shining Armor who is far more honorable than they are. However, he has a misogynistic streak and also views some lives as more worth saving than others, trying to sacrifice Affonyl to a dragon to improve his own chances of catching it off guard.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Sir Dalbry is a former nobleman who sought to be a fair and generous provider to the needy after his father died, only for con men and False Friends to deplete his treasury, kick him out of his castle, and cut down his beloved family apple orchid for siege engines.
- Dragon Ascendant: The head of the orc mercenaries in the second book ends up taking over as the main antagonistic force after his boss belatedly discovers his fatal Plot Allergy to peanut butter during a feast celebrating the successful storming of Longjohn’s castle.
- Drawing Straws: In the final act, a group of warriors after a Standard Hero Reward draw straws to see which of them will face a dragon in battle, and repeat this in a Dwindling Party manner as they keep getting killed, with Cullin only surviving because the dragon is fat and slow after eating the others.
- Food Slap: When orcs storm King Longjohn’s castle in the second book, a serving girl injures one orc by throwing hot chowder in his face. A second servant tries this with her dish, but the finger sandwiches she’s carrying are less effective.
- Ignored Expert: Affonyl is the most well-read person in her castle, but every time she tries to tell her father that the old maps don’t support Duke Kerrl’s claims that much of their land is rightfully his, she gets no response beyond a Stay in the Kitchen dismissal.
- Karma Houdini: King Norrimund the Corpulent may be an amiable dunce, but between his Ungrateful Bastard cheapness and misogynistic treatment of his daughter (with him saying that princesses don't even qualify as real people and are only good for marriage alliances), he is an objectively unpleasant person. He avoids getting killed, and when his eviler neighbor Duke Kerrl convinces Norrimund to adopt him for a planned Inheritance Murder, Norrimund even ends up doubling the size of his kingdom when Kerrl dies instead, and the adoption makes Norrimund Kerrl's heir.
- Monster Protection Racket: Sir Dalbry, his squire Cullin, and a thug named Reeger pose as dragon slayers, bribe witnesses to fake sightings, and make fake dragon parts to show off after their supposed victories over the beasts. However, it eventually turns out that dragons and other monsters are actually real, leading to the racket having a not-entirely-willing Fake–Real Turn.
- Rebellious Princess: Princess Affonyl spends most of her time in scientific pursuits and other education and is fed up with her father and his Decadent Court, eventually faking her death to flee his castle and join Dalbry and his crew.
- Real After All: Sir Dalbry and his allies initially think that dragons are nothing more than stories for their Monster Protection Racket, but eventually, they have to fight a real one that is just as dangerous as the ones in their tales.
- Red Shirt: Sir Tremayne's fellow knights in the first book, the mercenary fishermen after the lake monster in the second book, and the castle guards in the second book all end up slaughtered after a few chapters of page time. This gets lampshaded with the fishermen when, right before they introduce themselves, Reeger complains that this is a waste of time due to how those people are about to get eaten.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The second half of the second book has Dalbry and his friends pretend a castle is haunted to scare away the orcs who have just taken the residents prisoner.
- Standard Hero Reward: The first book features a queen who pledges her daughter's hand in marriage to whoever slays a vicious dragon. Said daughter's unattractiveness takes away some of the enthusiasm of the dragon slayers.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: In the second book, King Longjohn has a collection of sculptures (like a goat-moth hybrid and a sphere with a smiley face) that he ascribes with profound meanings that only the gifted can understand. Cullin thinks the sculptors must have been eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Affonyl plays on Longjohn’s taste to make him overpay for her artwork by shoving an uprooted tree and a boulder together. Reeger's attempts to cash in on this by smearing poop on a board (or mixing "the raw material of the earth" with "a fresh fecal palette from the king's finest horses" as he calls it), and claiming that "the power of the air around us" is enhanced "by the terrible fumes wafting up," but his efforts meet with a decidedly tepid reception.
- Worf Had the Flu: A big part of the reason that Cullin and Affonyl manage to kill the first real dragon they encounter is that it has a Balloon Belly from eating several knights who tried to kill it over the last few days.
