Tor Books, 2003.
Overview: Mistress of Dragons tells the story of a High Priestess named Melisande (George R.R. Martin, did you rip this name off?), which, for the curious, is apparently derived from Old French and Old German, and originally meant "animal strength." Huh. Melisande is gifted in dragon magic, which she and her fellow priestesses use to repel dragons that try to invade their kingdom. Draconas, a "walker"--a dragon with human form--and Braun, a dragon-shaped dragon, suspect that a renegade dragon has taken control of Melisande's kingdom, and cleverly enlist the help of a neighboring king to investigate.
My reaction: Overall, this was a decent read. There were some excellent plot twists, and I enjoyed that the cover art made Melisande's temple warrior lover, Bellona (which means "goddess of battle" and is derived from Latin), look similar to Xena, but for some reason I just didn't connect enough with it to be really motivated to read the rest of the trilogy. Maybe it was the heavy-handed exposition at the beginning, or my resentment over a rather yucky manipulation of the king and Melisande, and and even more disturbing/horrifying scene with an evil dragon...I can't really finger it as any one thing. Honestly, this was pretty close to decent because it did keep me reading and the plot twists both made sense and surprised me, but a couple of scenes and my general indifference to the next books downgrade it to "meh."
P.S.--I used the scholarly source thinkbabynames.com to research the name definitions. URLs are below:
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