Every kingdom loves a champion, and the kingdom of Avoury adores Ellinore the Brave. She slays monsters. She hauls back cursed relics. The bards will not shut up about her. There is just one snag, and it is a whopper: most of her legend is invented. That cheerful, load-bearing lie anchors The Last Best Quest Ever by F.T. Lukens, a cozy queer YA romantasy that opens with its heroine dragging a dead giant spider into a royal feast, soaking up the applause, and then announcing her retirement on the spot. She wants a quiet life with a garden and too many cats. The plot, of course, refuses to cooperate.
A Hero Who Cheats at Heroism
Here is the conceit that makes the book sing. Ellinore never actually butchers the beasts she is sent to defeat. She talks to them. She relocates spider egg sacs instead of wiping out a species. She splits royal rewards with a dragon named Dave, who would rather tell awful jokes than eat villagers. Lukens flips the standard chosen-one swagger inside out and asks a quietly subversive question: what if the bravest thing a quester can do is refuse to kill?
That premise gives the novel its warmth and its spine. When Ellinore’s reckless twin, Zig, drunkenly wagers his own heart to a pair of slippery mages over the horn of a creature most people think is a fairy tale, she is yanked back into the spotlight she just fled. Sixteen days. One impossible beast. A brother’s life on the line. The ticking clock does real work here, and the danger stays personal rather than world-ending, which suits the cozy register Lukens is going for.
The Company She Keeps
If the engine of this story is its premise, the fuel is its cast. The found-family crew is where the book glows brightest, and every member earns a seat at the campfire:
- Ellinore, the fraudulent legend, worn thin by the performance of being someone she is not.
- Zig, the charming, gold-obsessed twin whose mouth writes promises his sister has to keep.
- Aven, the brooding nonbinary royal and lifelong rival whose icy court mask keeps slipping to show something far kinder.
- Farrah, a barmaid turned adventurer who greets every catastrophe as the “best quest ever” and swings a mean quarterstaff.
- Rylan, a sweet young bard with budding magic and a habit of narrating fights as they happen.
- Dave, the pun-loving Golden Dragon who quietly steals every scene he slithers into.
These five bicker, blunder, and slowly learn to lean on one another, and Lukens trusts the group dynamic to carry long stretches of the road. The comedy works because it grows out of personality rather than gags bolted on from outside.
Rivals, Banter, and a Slow Burn Worth the Wait
The romance between Ellinore and Aven is the warm center of The Last Best Quest Ever by F.T. Lukens. It begins as swords-drawn rivalry, all sharp teasing and red-tipped ears, and thaws by degrees into something tender and slightly disbelieving. Lukens is patient with it. Ellinore takes ages even to recognize what she feels, and longer still to say it out loud, so the eventual payoff feels earned instead of rushed. Readers who live for prickly back-and-forth that hides real yearning will have plenty to swoon over, and the queer representation reads as lived-in and ordinary rather than ornamental.
Where the Quest Stumbles
Honesty was Ellinore’s whole problem, so let me return the favor. For all its charm, this is a four-star adventure, not a flawless one, and the soft spots deserve naming.
The biggest is tension. Lukens writes such a likable, quick-witted heroine that Ellinore often talks her way out of trouble with very little resistance from whoever stands against her. Obstacles show up, get charmed or outwitted, and melt away. A handful of creature encounters in the middle stretch start to echo one another without raising the stakes, so the journey occasionally feels like it is ticking through a familiar hero’s-journey checklist. The climactic scramble for the horn is genuinely funny, full of slapstick and clever teamwork, yet it stays firmly in comfort-read territory when a sharper jolt of danger might have made the win hit harder.
In fairness, most of this is the cozy subgenre behaving exactly as promised. You pick up a book like this for banter, big feelings, and creatures who would rather chat than brawl. Even so, readers who want their fantasy to build toward a white-knuckle peak should set their expectations before opening the cover.
A quick balance sheet:
- What works: an inventive anti-violence premise, a scene-stealing dragon, crackling rivals-to-lovers chemistry, a tender imposter-syndrome theme, and a found family with real heart.
- What could be sharper: low overall tension, a few repetitive midpoint encounters, and a finale that picks coziness over suspense.
Where It Sits in Lukens’s Backlist
F.T. Lukens has built a dependable home in queer YA speculative fiction, and longtime fans will spot familiar pleasures here. If you loved the trope-poking wit of So This Is Ever After or the swoony rivalry energy of Spell Bound, this lands in the same neighborhood, though it swaps contemporary settings for a more traditional sword-and-quest world. Earlier titles such as In Deeper Waters, Otherworldly, Love at Second Sight, and the award-winning The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths & Magic share the same makeup: heart, humor, and casually inclusive casts. The Last Best Quest Ever by F.T. Lukens may well be the author’s coziest outing so far, lighter on stakes but heavy on charm.
If You Liked This, Read Next
Finish The Last Best Quest Ever by F.T. Lukens and want more in the same key? Try these:
- So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens, for more trope-skewering queer questing.
- Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher, for enemies-to-lovers banter in a medieval setting.
- Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, the classic that lets a heroine befriend dragons and dodge every expectation.
- Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne, for low-stakes, high-comfort queer cozy fantasy.
- Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith, for found family and gentle jabs at knightly glory.
The Last Word
The Last Best Quest Ever by F.T. Lukens is a soft-hearted, funny, deeply likable story about the cost of pretending to be someone you are not, and the relief of finally letting people in on the truth. It will not white-knuckle you, and it never tries to. What it hands you instead is a dragon with terrible jokes, a romance worth the wait, and a heroine learning that the best version of herself is the one without the legend attached. For the right reader, and especially for any teen who has ever felt like a fraud in their own life, that turns out to be plenty.