Dragon Kings Series by Lindsey Piper-a review

 

A fierce and sensual new paranormal romance series features demonic gladiators, ruthless mafia villains, and a proud race on the brink of extinction.

SILENT WARRIOR (Dragon Kings 0.5) by Lindsey Piper

ABOUT THE BOOK: Released April 22, 2013

ORDER:  Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk/ Barnes and Noble / KOBO /

An exciting, emotionally charged prequel to “The Dragon Kings” trilogy, featuring warriors fighting for their lives in violent Cage matches to guarantee their clans’ survival.

A silent woman ashamed of her criminal background becomes a Cage warrior to seek redemption. An unrepentant fortune hunter chooses combat over death to appease a mafia family. Although rivals in battle, they find common ground when seeking their clan’s stolen idol, but for vastly different reasons. Neither one suspects that love will begin when he becomes the first man in five years to hear her speak

NOTE: The Dragon King series is NOT a series about dragon shifters or dragons. It is a series about the descendants of a race who believe themselves to have a connection to the dragon.

REVIEW: SILENT WARRIOR is the prequel novella and introductory storyline in Lindsey Piper’s dystopian/paranormal Dragon King series. Like most novellas, the storyline is limited with background information about the world of the Dragon King and left me with many unanswered questions due to the complex nature of this particular story. But because it is a prequel, Silent Warrior teases the reader about the dystopian world presumably somewhere in the future and leaves the reader wanting more.

Silent Warrior focuses on ‘Silence’ and Hark-two members of the Clan Sath who meet in, what can only be described as, an underground MMA caged arena for their kind. Barely escaping with their lives and their earnings, Silence and Hark must run from the rabble looking to take back the money for payment of debt.

The relationship between Silence and Hark is very quick to build. Their attraction to one another begins as sexual tension and aggression-being Dragon Kings, the pair soon encounter a connection they never thought possible. The sexual heat is fueled by their attraction to one another and the knowledge of what they are doing may be tempting fate and placing both of them in danger.

The storyline is fast paced but the actual writing and cohesion is jumpy. I can only describe it as things were ‘inferred’ into the storyline rather than explained which resulted in a restless feel to the novel. Also the structure of the telling of the story quickly jumped between the two perspectives on numerous occasions without a pause in the writing. At times I had to go back and see if there was something that I had missed. The story is told in third person but the combined perspectives were confusing at times.

Silence can best be described as a powerful warrior; an amazon and a woman with a past shrouded in mystery and pain, which she hides behind a quiet and silent persona. Hark, on the other hand, is a talkative, over the top personality with the arrogance of a male who knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. But Hark also has a dark secret that haunts him every night.

SILENT WARRIOR is an interesting introduction to the Dragon Kings trilogy that has a little bit of everything for the paranormal-romance junkie in all of us: a little romance, a little sex, a little tension and a little of the paranormal but it also has a lot of unanswered questions which is to be expected in a short story that only touches on the premise of the series.

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CAGED WARRIOR (Dragon Kings #1) by Lindsey Piper

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 25, 2013

ORDER: Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk/ Barnes and Noble / KOBO /

Ten years ago, Audrey MacLaren chose to marry her human lover, making her an exile from the Dragon Kings, an ancient race of demons once worshiped as earthly gods. Audrey and her husband managed to conceive, and their son is the first natural-born Dragon King in a generation—which makes him irresistible to the sadistic scientist whose mafia-funded technology allows demon procreation. In the year since her husband was murdered, Audrey and her little boy have endured hideous experiments.

Shackled with a collar and bound for life, Leto Garnis is a Cage warrior. Only through combat can Dragon Kings earn the privilege of conceiving children. Leto uses his superhuman speed and reflexes to secure the right for his two sisters to start families. After torture reveals Audrey’s astonishing pyrokenesis, she is sent to fight in the Cages. If she survives a year, she will be reunited with her son. Leto is charged with her training. Initially, he has no sympathy for her plight. But if natural conception is possible, what has he been fighting for? As enemies, sparring partners, lovers, and eventual allies, Leto and Audrey learn that in a violent underground world, love is the only prize worth winning.

REVIEW: CAGED WARRIOR is the first full length novel and second storyline in Lindsey Piper’s Dragon King paranormal/dystopian fantasy series. A word of caution: This is not a series about dragon shifters. This is a series about the descendants of the five clans of powerful beings known as the Dragon Kings. Each clan specializes in a specific power and those powers can be combined or used in various ways. Caged Warrior is Audrey (aka Nynn) and Leto’s story.

The premise focuses on Audrey as she endeavors to survive the torture and ultimate fighting cages in the underground facilities of the Master known as ‘The Old Man”. Her husband murdered, her son missing and her life virtually not worth living, Audrey survives day to day in the hopes that she will be reunited with her six year old boy. But the longer she stays imprisoned, the more likely neither she nor her son will survive.

Training under the hardened and collared Dragon King Leto Carnis, Audrey will discover that the powers she once believed were non existent needed a little focus and encouragement to draw forth. And in the end, Leto could very well bare the brunt of her new found ability and anger.

The relationship between Audrey and Leto begins as prisoner to warden, then trainer to trainee, then cage fighting partners and eventually, friends to lovers. But the climb has been anything but easy as Leto pushes Audrey (now known by her Dragon King name Nynn) beyond her limits and expectations. Leto is a warrior, one who by duty and order, is a menace to those he considers beneath his time and Nynn is more of a burden than anything else. But if she cannot best an opponent in the cage, she will surely die or remain in pain the rest of her life. And it is with Leto’s help, faith and eventually love that Nynn will focus on her end goal and take down the people responsible for the pain and heartbreak in so many lives.

Caged Warrior is a detailed and intriguing storyline that flows smoothly but there is still very little background information revealed about the history of the Dragon King Clans or their powers. This is also a story that is both graphically brutal and violent and, those in power are verbally and sexually abusive. But saying that, this is a dystopian story about a species of being who have survived because of their ability to withstand pain and suffering and years of abuse at the hands of those calling themselves superior. To downplay the violence would probably not evoke the same reaction to the story.

Caged Warrior is a fascinating look into the world of the Dragon King and their struggle to survive. Lindsey Piper draws the reader into a storyline fraught with violence, sorrow and most of all love between two people who have suffered at the hands of humans and their own kind.

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BLOOD WARRIOR (Dragon Kings #2) by Lindsey Piper

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date July 30, 2013

ORDER:  Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.uk/ Barnes and Noble / KOBO /

As a young man, sarcastic, violent Tallis Pendray believed the Dragon Kings’ survival depended on a prophecy delivered in dreams by a woman named “the Sun.” His role has been to complete inexplicable, even reprehensible tasks. First, by murdering a priest, he united his fragmented clan in their hatred of him. Dubbed “the Heretic,” Tallis fled his family’s Highland estate. Now disillusioned, he seeks revenge on the woman he holds responsible for two decades of exile.

Telepath Kavya Indranan is a charismatic, seductive cult leader born to a prominent family. However, she grew up terrorized by the ominous threat of her powerful, insane twin brother. On the run and hiding among the poor, she witnessed the destruction wrought by her clan’s centuries-old civil war. Maturity nurtures Kavya’s determination to end the cycle of bloodshed. Those who follow her call for peace have nicknamed her “the Sun.”

REVIEW: BLOOD WARRIOR is the second full length novel in Lindsey Piper’s Dragon King series focusing on the descendants of a powerful species of supernatural warriors. This series is not about dragon shifters but about a race who believe they have connections to the dragon and all of its’ powers.

Blood Warrior focuses on Tallis Pendray – member of the Pendray Dragon Kings and a berserker. His violent history among the Dragon King clans is well known but the cause of his rage and pain is not. His search for the woman who has invaded his dreams for twenty years has ended and with it, so too, will he end her life. Only the woman he has found is not the woman from his dreams-something about Kavya of the Indranan Clan screams ‘mine’ where the woman from his dreams pushed him beyond sanity and into the depths of a two decades murderous rage and revenge.

Kavya is a beautiful Dragon King-one of three triplets- and on the run from the brother who means to take her life as he took their sister’s years before. Gathering the telepathic Indranana and other Dragon King Clans together for peace and solidarity Kavya will come face to face with her worse nightmares-Tallis of the Pendray Clan and her brother. Hoping for the lesser of two evils, Kayvy runs with Tallis only to discover the man has come to take her life.

The storyline follows Kavya and Tallis as they try to outrun Kavya’s brother and their growing attraction to one another. The relationship begins as a captor and jailer, to friends and lovers but the road is fraught with bloodshed, anxiety, memories of betrayal and lust and, a constant need to run from a brother she once loved and called her friend. The sexual attraction between the two is immediate although both try to deny their feelings.

Once again, the world building and storytelling is detailed, graphic and fast paced. A little more is revealed about the Dragon King Clans and their history but on a need to know basis throughout each storyline and novel.

The series reads like a dystopian/paranormal storyline as the five major Dragon King clans fight for survival in a contemporary human world that at time rivals many historical romance settings. Lindsey Piper takes the reader on a tour of Europe and Asia and into the mountains of the Himalayas all the while weaving a story of betrayal and survival among the five Dragon King Clans.

Copies supplied by author

Reviewed by Sandy