19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Who you are depends on how you'll like it, April 18, 2004
Reading earlier reviews, it seems that the people who want 'dark' and 'edgy' fiction do not like this book. They feel it is boring and there's no action. That's fair enough; it's not fast-moving and the focus is not on the 'bad guys'. I haven't read much Anne Rice (I can't stand her), so I don't know if it's like her. It's not like Laurell K. Hamilton either.
I like this book. It has a very sci-fi feel, despite not being a sci-fi. The dragons are *not* human, and they aren't really based on myths either (and really, in fantasy, it doesn't matter if creatures are or are not based on myths. Someone may have a preference, but it doesn't make or break a book). They have different interests, and this book is dedicated to exploring a young dragon who was raised partly among humans--it reads like a book where an alien was raised among humans. Few fantasys now days take a serious look at what it may be to not be human. They give their non-humans too much humanity. Troop doesn't do this with his dragons, and yet he creates an interesting main character.
The plot is very basic. A shapeshifting dragon who goes about his life, catches scent of a female, then goes on a quest for a mate and tries to find his self between his dragon nature and some of his human-ish morals and thoughts. If you want swashbuckling and fights and magic and fire and action, this probably isn't the book for you. If you want an exploration of a non-human character and culture, and writing that is definately above average, then it is for you.
I hope I clairified what type of book this is. The "This book sucks!" comments were getting on my nerves, espcially because it's rare for me to find a new author that I like, and I could give you a list a mile long on some books that really were bad and cliche that I've read. This book is a gem. It's not flashy, but it's solidly made and interesting.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
There are worse things than dragons that stalk the night ..., September 7, 2003
... and this book is one of them.
I see people trying to compare this work to that of Anne Rice and I am offended... aside from the derivative style of the title, I see nothing in common. Even Rice's throwaway victim characters are better developed than the lead in this story; a plain vanilla playboy who systematically throws away any trace of humanity out of what appears to be no more than laziness.
I am a rabid dragon fan; and even more, a bit of a morph art fan. So, if anyone could understand this book and give it an honest chance, it would be me.
First off, we start with one of the worst possible mistakes a writer can make - creating a character who is smarter and more experienced than the writer himself. In this case it results in a protagonist who is at best a bore, and at worst simply too dumb to believe.
He alternates between moments of almost decent human-ness and stupid dragon-ness in the flick of an eye... he moons over the delights of a human girl, then in the next instant bites her head off to keep her from learning his secret without even trying to hide himself and prevent it... then moons over her some more, then feeds her to his Father. Yeah, so human.
The dragonish half of the equation is even worse; I could at least respect his father - a true predator, unashamed of what he was and devoted to his offspring.
I find the entire concept of a dragon who eats humans because he PREFERS them to be ludicrous in this day and age... aside from the obvious moral dilemma revolving around the concept of a sentient creature treating another sentient creature as prey, the hundreds of different toxins a human being carries around as a result of exposure to his artificial environment would make him distasteful to any carnivore... that whole "taste of human flesh" thing is arrogant anthrocentric BS.
Everything else reads like some adolescent boy's masturbation fantasy... the dragon courtship ritual is a cliche' right out of some 50s B-movie... Fight another male to the death, feed off it's carcass, then ravage the not-unwilling female and she's yours for life.
Good lord, I thought this kind of drivel died out with the Duke.
The human sex is weak at best, and the dragon sex, while slightly more detailed, is described in too much detail to be mere allusion, and not nearly enough detail or creatively rendered enough to be the least bit interesting.
The entire story alternates between him mooning over someone or making the dumbest choices possible... like allowing his stupid cow of a dragoness wife to wear the murdered girl's necklace to an interview with her brother, when anyone with half a brain would have disposed of the trinket in the sea, and any real predator would have killed off the brother long before he could become an actual threat.
Throughout the story we hear the dragon couple talk of love... though I can see no honest foundation for it other than time and parenthood. These two have nothing in common except species, and quite honestly, I think neither of them is capable of love.
The ending is very well telegraphed; by the time he meets his dragon mate's family (the first quarter of the book) everything is in place, and I already know what will eventually happen. Why I kept reading I don't know; I guess it must have been sheer stubbornness. I was rewarded for that in some small measure with the climax. The last 30 pages of the story are in fact decent collegiate level creative writing, but it all depends on stupid artificial constructs from earlier on, and even then here and there we see uncharacteristic behavior and artifice inserted to make the ending come out the way he needs. I really hoped for more.
Peter Delasangre is not our protagonist here; most who read this will come to feel for the dead sister's brother much more than him, and that only because he is the only one who isn't scum.
Delasangre is not any kind of good at all... yet, he is not evil enough or smart enough for you to respect and despise him at the same time... he doesn't even stick to his own rules, and throughout the book shows absolutely no moral fiber whatsoever, be it good or evil. He doesn't qualify as a hero, he dooesn't qualify as a villain, in fact, he doesn't even get past the casting call.
His father repeatedly tells him "We are what we are."
He is neither... what he is or what he is not... because the writer is too busy masturbating his mind to decide what that should be.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Vampire Novel with a Twist, January 9, 2004
The Dragon Delasangre is one of those rare novels wherein the protagonist is essentially unlikeable, yet the writing is good enough to keep you reading to the end. Basically a variation on a vampire story, Mr. Troop spins an engaging yarn about a creature caught between two worlds - that of his draconic ancestry, and his human upbringing. Unfortunately, where Anne Rice manages to make the reader care for her blood-thirsty monsters, Mr. Troop's attempts to humanize his main character by inserting moments of remorse and conscience smack of insincerity due to their unlasting affect on the character. Peter Delasangre kills humans (his kind's preferred food) again and again, usually without even a pang of regret, then bemoans the tragedies in his own life such as his loneliness and the loss of loved ones. While it is made clear that Peter could survive on rare steaks instead of human flesh, we are expected to believe that his acts are necessary simply because humans have always been the preferred food for dragons. While Mr. Troop undoubtedly intends that we understand that Dragons are not human - the main theme of the book - the obvious humanity of the character combined with his blood-thirsty ways, leaves the reader in the unenviable position of disliking the viewpoint character and not caring what tragedies befall him.
It's like expecting the reader to care about a remorseless mass-murderer because he's depressed over being lonely. This novel is worth reading, but don't expect to come away from it with a warm fuzzy feeling. I'll probably read the sequel just because Mr. Troop is a talented writer, and because I'm curious to see if he can develop the character of Peter into something more sympathetic and likeable.
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