I have to thank RouletteGirl and their review for putting The Dragon Kings of Oklahoma on my radar! The review alone really sold me on it, but I also have to give some credit to the cover – which is amazing and tells you exactly what you are in for.*
What happens when dragons turn up in small town Oklahoma?
Tyler “Daisy” Collins isn’t your typical fantasy protagonist. In his own words, he’s “a six-two shithouse of aging muscle, a fine mullet planted beneath an OU baseball cap, shirtless on my way to a summer fire.” Dealing with fires is one thing Daisy does well. A workplace accident left him with chronic pain, preventing him from working full-time, so he and his friend Wild-Eye have taken up roles as local volunteer firefighters.
Taking the title into consideration, you might guess where this is going; in the aftermath of one call out, the boys discover a mother dragon and her clutch of eggs. Seeing firsthand the absolute carnage an adult dragon could cause would send most men running to the hills. Not Daisy and Wild-Eye. Daisy’s first reaction is to take a drag of his vape and think about how his mom—a druid—would have loved to have seen a dragon close up. Wild-Eye, on the other hand, cheerfully starts spouting random dragons facts. Turns out he’s been doing a bit of a Netflix binge.
They both agree that a whole clutch of little baby dragons could snare them quite a bit of money. So they hatch a cockamamie plan of their own to spirit off the mother-dragon—who they boys nickname Turkey, of all things—to a private hideout and sell her babies for a quick profit.
Well, most of them. Sometimes you get a bit attached, you know?
This, as you might suspect, is a less than foolproof plan; dragons don’t just pop up in rural towns in Oklahoma at random. As Wild-Eye will tell you, they’re native to Germany, and the German government takes the abduction of their prized dragons very, very seriously. Within days, the boys have upset not just the town’s sheriff, but their local oxycontin suppliers, a special agent of the German government, and a werewolf.
The end result is very entertaining. Both Daisy and Wild-Eye are very endearing protagonists who have more depth to them than you would expect. While a lot of the side characters are a little less well drawn out, the small, rural town vibe hits very true to life. The antics the residents of Douey get up to with the dragons had me rolling:
“But why did you—Jesus on a pogo stick, is someone using a dragon to light their farts?”
“You can’t hand a bunch of yee-yees something dangerous and not expect them to turn it into a toy.”
Very ‘I threw a beer can at a croc and now I have to sleep on the roof of my Ute tonight!’, I felt.
The world-building outside of Oklahoma doesn’t receive as much attention—the machinations of this alternate Germany remain something of a black hole to me. It also feels oddly more fantastical than the main setting, with monocle-wearing soldiers in Prussian-style uniforms wielding high-tech weapons. It sounds fun, sure, but the disconnect with Douey was a bit jarring.
But overall, The Dragon Kings of Oklahoma was a very pleasant discovery and a very fun read. While it has the feel of urban fantasy, its backwoods Oklahoma setting gives it its own ‘rural fantasy/backwoods fantasy’ vibe. Since it’s the first in a trilogy, I’m excited to see what Daisy gets up to next.