Dragons (novel)

The Dragons series (not to be confused with the Dragon Series; also called The Last Dragon Chronicles, but we're going with the first title used for the series here) is a group of bestselling children's fantasy novels, by the English author Chris d'Lacey. The series began in 2001, and is still going. As of this writing, there are seven main books in the series, plus a spinoff series for young readers.

The series begins when David, an Ordinary College Student, starts looking for a place to stay during his term. He finds a woman named Elizabeth "Liz" Pennykettle, who is renting out part of her house on a street called Wayward Crescent. David moves in with her and her ten-year-old daughter, Lucy. Liz is an artist - she makes clay dragons, and even gives David a dragon of his own, whom he names Gadzooks. As David settles into life with the Pennykettles, he starts noticing strange things - movement in the corner of his eye here, the feeling of being watched there, and odd noises everywhere. Through his adventures with Lucy, he soon realizes that there is more to the Pennykettles than there seems. Some of the dragons they make are just statuary, but some of them are alive. David refuses to believe this at first - but his sudden inspiration to write stories, and Gadzooks' own pen and paper, soon force him into believing that there is more to Wayward Crescent than meets the eye.

David is soon dragged deep into the secret history and world of dragons. Liz and Lucy are among the last protectors of the world's dragons - descendants of Guinivere, a maiden who befriended the last "true" dragon. Dragons aren't the big beasts they once were - now, they must take clay bodies. But they still have dragon's sparks, deep down. And David and the Pennykettles must protect them from all who would do them harm!

The books in the main series are:

• The Fire Within
• Icefire
• Fire Star
• The Fire Eternal
• Dark Fire
• Fire World

Fair warning: This series likes to do interesting things to your mind.

Tropes used in Dragons (novel) include:

• Aesop Amnesia: Despite seeing the dragons alive at the end of the first book, he's back to doubting their existence in the second.
• Alternate Reality Episode: Fire World.
• Amnesiac God: Actually it'd be Amnesiac Fain, but for all intents and purposes, David and Alexa would be very nearly as powerful.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: David doubting the dragons at first is completely logical, but by the second book, one wonders why his Weirdness Censor is so hardy.
• Arc Words: Sometimes.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The fourth book reveals that David did this, and at the end he gets better.
• Badass Abnormal: Both David and Zanna. And later Tam.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Zanna's pregnancy is announced shortly after David's apparent death.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Dark Fire.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Everyone under the control of the Ix.
• Cerebus Syndrome: One of the most dramatic examples in recent children's fiction - the first book is an adorable, harmless romp. By the third book, we have David killed via an ice spike through the chest.
• The Chosen Many: Liz and Lucy aren't the only descendants of Guinevere running around, and on the flipside, Gwilanna isn't the only nasty sibyl...
  • In Fire World, the Tapestry of Isenfier features David, Rosa, Penny, Angel, Gadzooks, and Mathew.
• Cover Drop: From Fire Star onwards, a dragon matching the cover art is described somewhere in each book.
• Disappeared Dad: Lucy's father. It wasn't his fault he left; not really. She and her mother get him back.
• Divine Race Lift: "Female god" version. However, She is also a dragon...
• Express Delivery: It does not take long for the quickened bronze egg to turn into a baby. Too bad Gwilanna turned him from a perfectly normal (well, for a Pennykettle) boy into a dragon.)
• The Fair Folk: The Fain, though they are far from the fairies of traditional myth.
• Fusion Dance: This happens when the Fain "commingle." By the end of Book Four, David also contains Ingavar, Thoran, Dr. Bergstrom, and G'lant. That's a lotta people in one body.
• G-Rated Sex: Descendants of Guinivere can become pregnant by thinking about the ones they love (or motherhood) in the presence of special clay eggs. The third book also gets a reference to sex past the radar with a character knowingly saying that David and Zanna spent a lot of time "keeping each other warm."
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Quite a bit of it, usually with regards to dancing around the issue of sex.
  • "She never lets me catch her up."
  • "Been spending a lot of time keeping each other warm?"
  • In the second book, Dr. Bergstrom lets David use his good luck talisman for, well, good luck. When he discusses the matter with Zanna later, he asks her, "Did you shake his totem?" This elicits a shocked "Pardon?!" before David explains himself.
• Goo-Goo Godlike: Alexa. She created her own father. Oh, and Joseph Henry is just as bad.
• God(ith)
• Gorn: The series has plenty of dark and violent moments, especially Fire Star, but Dark Fire is suddenly bloody as hell.
• The Hero Dies: Yes, in a children's book.
• Honorary Uncle: Liz and Arthur are this to Alexa.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: David. Yes, d'Lacey killed off the protagonist of a children's book series in the goriest manner possible in the third book. And lets not forget Hannah, a minor character in Dark Fire, who got impaled by Gawaine's claws.
• Intergenerational Friendship: David and Lucy forge a bond over trying to rescue a squirrel named Conker. No, not that one.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "David, stop talking in italics. It's not helping anything."
• Lighter and Softer: The spin-off series, focusing on the dragons themselves, is written for very young readers.
• Librarium Of Babel: The Librarium in Fire World.
• Living Dragon Figurines
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Zanna, quite blatantly so.
• Marked to Die: Ms.Gee, literally, by Hannah. Hannah threw her dead ancestors hand at Ms.Gee, and she caught it, dooming her to a horrible death.
• Meaningful Echo: In actions, the ending of Snigger and the Nutbeast mimics those of the ending of the third book. The hero (Conker/David) is dead, but there's Someone to Remember Him By.
• Mind Screw: Fire Star is really heady for a children's book. The end of Dark Fire can also be really screwy to the mind when you try to think about what happened.
• Mirror Universe: Every main character in Fire World has a counterpart on Earth. It's also Lampshaded in-universe.
  • David is ...well, David.
  • Eliza is Elizabeth.
  • Harlan is Arthur.
  • Penny is Lucy.
  • Rosa is Zanna.
  • Gwyneth is Gwillana.
  • Mr. Henry is Mr. Bacon.
  • Mathew is Tam.
  • Angel is Alexa.
  • Boon is Bonnington.
  • Stromberg is Bergstrom.
• Most Writers Are Writers: David's a geology student, but becomes a writer through Gadzooks' help. d'Lacey confesses that David is a kind of Author Avatar.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Mr. Bacon. He's the main antagonist for most of the first book, but he's not actually a bad person at all--just curmudgeonly. He becomes a grumpy good guy in the later books. His alternate in Fire World, Mr. Henry, averts this trope by being a definite good guy.
• Never Found the Body: In The Fire Eternal, teenaged!Lucy refuses to believe David is dead because of this. She's right, sort of.
• Our Dragons Are Different
• Peaceful in Death: Henry Bacon died this way.
• Perky Goth: Zanna.
• Pineal Weirdness
• Punctuation Shaker: Dragons are fond of the traditional apostrophe (see: Things like "G'ravity" and "G'lant"). Ix go for the exotic and rarely-seen ː, in things like Ixːrisor and Premːix.
  • A lot of things in Fire World have semi-colons in them, to a vast extent. To name a few, theres the world itself, Co:pern:ica, with machinery known as Com:puters, and they can send E:coms with them. Harlan teaches Phy:sics, and has a Tech:nician, Benard.
• Rewriting Reality: David seems to be doing this in The Fire Within, with Gadzooks' help. He's understandably confused. The Fire Eternal reveals that Arthur can do it too.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Hannah and Clive didn't do anything to deserve their fate.
• Sacrificial Lion: Oh, Sophie, we hardly knew ye.
  • Gwillana could count as well. However, we do not see the characters reactions to it because they're all to busy. They wouldn't miss her anyways, and its even lampshaded...well sort of.
  • Mr.Henry in Fire World. He dies because he got aged by Harlans Time Rift.
• Shout-Out: In Fire World, some authors on the books bear resemblance to real life authors. A more obvious Shout-Out is to Alice in Wonderland, when David finds a book called Alicia in the Land of Wonder.
  • Earlier on in the series there's a reference to (paraphrased from memory) 'a popular series of books about a boy wizard going to school', and then in The Fire Eternal, Gollygosh conjours up a screwdriver that 'looked very similar to the screwdriver used by the time travelling hero of the dragons' favourite television programme'.
• Show Within a Show: Books Within A Book - David's writings, especially once he gets published.
• Someone to Remember Him By: The end of David's first story, Snigger and the Nutbeast. And at the end of the third book, Zanna reveals she's pregnant with David's child.
• Supporting Protagonist: In the second trilogy, David spends far less time in the limelight as opposed to the other characters. And arguably, even he is just support for Alexa.
• Teens Are Monsters: In the fourth book, teenaged Lucy is not the same kind little girl she was.
• The Ark: In Fire World, the Librarium becomes one during the flood, complete with animals and plants.
• The Killer Becomes the Killed: Ms.Gee the sybil in Dark Fire.
• Theme Naming: All dragons' names begin with "G." Up to and including, Godith herself.
  • In Fire World, all the Firebird's true names begin with an A.
• Touched by Vorlons: When the Fain commingle with people, they tend to leave quite a bit of residue behind.
• Trilogy Creep: The first three books form a definite trilogy, with a complete story, and a very definite ending. The rest do continue it, but begin a new story arc altogether.
• Two-Part Trilogy: An inverse of the way it usually happens - the first two books form a more complete and coherent story, with the third one being more seperate.
• Unfazed Everyman: Henry Bacon - he never really knows what's going on, but he provides sturdiness in all the chaos surrounding him.
• Whale Egg: Descendants of Guinivere hatch from eggs. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Alexa in Book Four. It's strongly implied that she chose her own parents and family before her birth, and has been manipulating things behind the scenes for a long time beforehand.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: The Mark of the Oomara. By the fourth book, though, Zanna's arm is better.
• Wrong Girl First
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Happened to Gwillana when she seen the inverted version of Gawains head. She died from the sight of the thing.