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Title | The Dragon DelaSangre
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Author | Alan F. Troop
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Cover Art | Kovek
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Publisher | Roc - 2002
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First Printing | Roc - 2002
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Title | Dragon Moon
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Author | Alan F. Troop
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Cover Art | Kovec
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Publisher | Roc - 2003
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First Printing | Roc - 2003
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Title | The Seadragon's Daughter
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Author | Alan F. Troop
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Cover Art | Kovec
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Publisher | Roc - 2004
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First Printing | Roc - 2004
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Title | A Host of Dragons
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Author | Alan F. Troop
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Roc - 2006
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First Printing | Roc - 2006
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Category | Horror
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Warnings | Great quantities of sex and human flesh consumption
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Main Characters | Peter DelaSangre, Elizabeth, Chloe, Derek, Henri, Lorrel, Aric
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Main Elements | Dragons
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Website | dragonnovels.com
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 The Dragon DelaSangre
For centuries, they have lived among us. A secret race as old as time, they have inspired our greatest legends, our grimmest fairy tales, and our grandest nightmares. Changelings by day and slayers at dark, they call themselves People of the Blood. Mankind calls them Dragons. But few have survived to this day, and none have stepped forward to tell their story. Until now.
Here at last are the private confessions of one Peter DelaSangre...of his isolated youth on an island off the coast of Miami...of the pleasures he finds in fortune, fine art and music, and the hunt for human prey...of his lonely balancing act between the worlds of humans and Dragons, neither of which feels like home...and of the overwhelming need that will finally give his life purpose: to find a female of his own kind.
Dragon Moon
Four long, lonely years have passed since the murder of Peter DelaSangre's beloved wife. Although he is devoted to caring for their young son, Peter longs for a mate, someone to fill the void left by his wife's death. But only one female can satisfy his deepest desire: Chloe Blood, the younger sister of his dead wife. Intending to claim her as his bride, Peter travels to the wilds of Jamaica and settles on a lush tropical estate, where he plans to bide his time until Chloe comes of age.
But there are those who do not take kindly to Peter's arrival. And they will stop at nothing to make sure that Peter doesn't leave Jamaica alive.
The Seadragon's Daughter
For three years, Peter DelaSangre and his beloved Chloe have lived in peace, nurturing their young children in relative happiness - until people being to disappear from boats and islands off the coast of Miami. Rumours from the mainland force all eyes onto their private island retreat. But something more threatening than mere unwanted attention lurks in the watery depths surrounding the DelaSangres, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
Suddenly, a mysterious young female appears near Peter's island. Her name is Lorrel. She is part of a sea-dwelling dragon race throught extinct for decades. And despite her seeming innocence, she will force Peter to confront his family's cold, dark past, and his own vulnerability - and threaten to separate him from his loved ones forever.
A Host of Dragons
Two years have passed since Peter DelaSangre's return to his secluded island home. And although his wife remains cold and jealous about the seductive seadragon that took him away, life is peaceful there. That is, until a strange sailboat carrying twelve mysterious foreigners docks nearby. Soon Peter's daughter has been kidnapped, his ancestral archives have been ransacked, and a massive, sinister corporation called Oudere Raad has set out to destroy the family fortune.
It is only a matter of time before Peter discovers the frightening truth tying these events together. And the visitors, led by his most formidable opponent yet, have come on a mission...
Usually I reserve October for vampire reads, but I'm doing a dragon theme this year so decided to read a dragon series that was a little different. For one, it was urban fantasy with dragons living among us, which is a common vampire novel theme, of course this forced the dragons to be able to shapeshift into human form, otherwise we'd, you know, kind of notice giant reptiles walking into the office. Also, it was being compared to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I actually hung onto this series for a few years expecting it to be very good and so saving it for a "special" moment to really enjoy it...
The Vampire Chronicles it is not. I mean there's the similarity that the protagonists both feed on humans, but somehow the blood drinking is less distrubing than the dragons gorging chunks of flesh. And Troop is nowhere near the writer tha Rice is, the atmosphere she is able to create is completely lacking. In fact...I wonder if it is a male/female thing, both the author and intended audience? In Troop's books everything is testosterone driven, to the point I wasn't sure I wanted to continue the series after the first book since about the only thing the dragons did was eat (usually humans) and have sex...a lot of sex, very graphic sex, in dragon form, and in human form, in bed, in the air...everywhere. Oh, and sometimes they would fight, lots of ripping a goring. Conveniently they are not only built tough but they have healing powers so they can go rip and gore some more. Rice's vampires don't even have a sex drive!
And the eating humans thing, I get it, they aren't human so why can't they eat us? It's just that they are quite happy to have sex with us...isn't that beastiality then? Hump it then eat it like a human with a sheep? And to make Peter more palatable to the reader he doesn't eats kids even though they are the tastiest, see, a dragon with morals...kinda? Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much if they weren't eating someone every couple of chapters.
Also the title and blurb are a rip-off of Anne Rice. The Vampire Lestat - The Dragon DelaSangre. And the blub bit about the "confessions" which implies a kind of Interview which is fact is completely not at all how the book is written, this is just a first person novel, it is not an autobiography or a tell-all like Interview or The Vampire Lestat were. Peter isn't confessing anything to anyone, he's just living his life and we as omniscient readers are watching him go about his life.
But, I own the books and I hate to get rid of something I've never read before so I kept going. The second book was also sex oriented but Henri, Peter's son, helps to tone things down a bit as he does cute four-year-old things. So I pushed on to the third, this one also had a core of sex, though there was less of it, and an interesting twist where it is a male being raped. But as we are also exposed to the world of the Pelk, the sea dragons, the readers are entertained by this completely different way of life, so different from the DelaSangres and the Bloods which live more or less like humans. The Pelk are truly alien. Finally, in the last book, the sex is minimal, instead of we have a what essentially amounts to a dragon war, and finally I started enjoying the read.
For what it's worth, Troop put a lot of effort into developing his dragon society, it's world and cultures and customs. Peter was brought up isolated from all others of his kind so he has to learn about this along with us. There are different types of dragons, and I get the feeling from the way the last book ended Troop intended to write more, maybe exploring the other types of dragons we don't get to meet (in fact when you first start reading you wonder why Peter never flames anything, but being a creature born without flame he doesn't go around thinking about the fact he doesn't have that power any more than humans do). Also the setting of Miami and the Caribean islands is interesting with Peter doing a lot of boating, perhaps a bit too much since I'm not into boats but I couldn't help wondering what it must be like living on an island and commuting to work by boat over the ever changing surface of the ocean.
So to say I was disappointed with this series is an understatement, as I had hoped it would be something new and unique (dragon urban fantasy was a new idea when I got the books, it's common now, though usually in paranormal romances). Ultimately it grew on me but should I keep the whole series because it got interesting by the end? On the other hand I love the covers. And I can't really recommend it unless you have a thing for dragon porn since the plots can otherwise be a little thin, even if there are other things going on around Peter and his bedroom.
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