...and please think of the intended audience. you the author may like them - but I and other customers may hate them, as they make the book harder to read
and like the guys have said, they chances of them looking as intended on all of your customer's devices are not good
I think google will back me up on the readability issue- to my mind these date back to the time of medieval monks doodling their way bored lives away at the book copying desk- when was the last time you saw dropcaps in a newspaper ?
for me they just detract from readability, and since they usually go haywire in a calibre conversion, ( because fonts get rescaled). I just delete them!
further reading
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012...est-practices/