The Dragon’s Banker by Scott Warren- ARC Review

Finance: The lifeblood of any country’s beating heart and the life’s work of Sailor Kelstern — Merchant Banker. While wizards brood in their towers and great warriors charge into battle Sailor is more interested in the price of ore, herbs, and alchemicals carried by the trade ships.
But when a spell of bad fortune and bitter rivalry leaves him scrambling to turn a profit on little more than winds and whispers, one such whisper catches Sailor’s ear— a dragon has been seen in the west.
Sailor soon finds that the dragons are very real, and not at all what he expected. And they practice a very different sort of economy — one of subterfuge and fire. (taken from Amazon)

                               Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This will be available in stores on September 25th.

Wow, this book proves that everything is better with dragons, even the world of finance. I loved every single moment of this book! It was a blast. Not every fantasy book needs to have vicious battles of the physical sort. Sometimes, the battle of the wits is much more cutthroat.

Sailor is a banker (oddly enough). He’s incredibly good at what he does. Think Scrooge McDuck but with a sense of compassion. He loves money and he loves numbers, both in pretty equal value. What he’s not a huge fan of is adventure. He’d tell you that he’s not a coward, he just prefers his comforts to trekking through the wild or sailing.

When he takes on a new client he learns that he is, in fact, working for a dragon. This dragon has realized that with the advent of paper money, his vast hoard will be less impressive and he wants to get ahead of the game, so to speak. It’s the most clever idea for a book, and it made me actually give a rat’s ahem about numbers.

“One should never tell a dragon that he is becoming…well, not poor but at least less obscenely rich than he was before.”

The characters are enjoyable, and the story moves at a good pace. This book is just flat-out fun. I highly recommend it.