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Editorial Review Product Description
Easton Press, 1994. Signed by the author. full leather stamped in gold, raised bands, silk e.pages, aeg, ribbon marker as new hardcover leatherbound 82178 ... Read more Customer Reviews (54) 
". . . that strange, spacey feeling you get about an hour after dropping acid, just before the rush hits."
The Iron Dragon's Daughter is one of those rare gems: a phenomenal novel packaged as genre fiction.Like many great novels it deals with coming of age and personal growth, and Swanwick's Bildungsroman follows the changeling Jane through four distinct phases of her life: her childhood slaving in a dragon factory, her short stint at a seemingly parochial faerie high school, her psychedelic experiences as an alchemy major at university and finally her descent into adulthood.Shadowing her movements and subtly influencing her life decisions is the inscrutable and hate-personified Melanchthon, the titular Iron Dragon.
Without spoiling anything else, I should say that IDD challenges the reader in a refreshingly playful manner.Its difficulty cannot be compared to many of the great "difficult" novels and poems of our time, but Swanwick does leave many questions for the reader to puzzle out on his or her own--which I think is a blast.Several reviewers have complained about this aspect of the novel with questions such as "What happened?Why did this happen?Why did it end the way it did?" etc.I would encourage those reviewers to read the book again, as the characters drop hints and clues throughout the story as to the nature of the universe they populate and eventually the "why" of IDD.Pay special attention to the parables and ask yourself one question: what kind of troll will you be?
Along this same vein, IDD treats its readers like discerning adults with complex palates and the ability to think critically.We need not make our discoveries as Jane makes hers; oftentimes Jane will reveal something the reader has already understood for many pages (such as the mixture of Chomskian deep structure, mobius/klein formulae, and Buddhist samsara that informs Swanwick's system of reincarnation).At other times Jane remains remarkably obtuse to what is unfolding around her, especially as she floats through the haze of her college years and beyond.At this point the reader cannot necessarily rely on Jane and must depend upon his or her own memory of past events to piece together the puzzle.The pale man, the witch, the child-catcher, the Lamia, the dragon.Pay attention to their stories and you will know what this universe is about and the end will make sense.
In the defense of frustrated readers, I first read this novel when I was fourteen, and like these reviewers I can safely say that I did not "get it."I knew I liked it but I wasn't sure why and I was too distracted by the scenes of sex and drug abuse to give a crap.Now I can look back and say that IDD is one of my most cherished novels.Is Swanwick a masterful stylist like Melville or McCarthy or Joyce or whoever?Nope.He often commits stylistic faults that cause one to cringe (redundant adjectives, needless adverbs, sometimes silly descriptions of characters and at one point an utterly ridiculous description of masturbation).Does he tell a rippingly good story with a pacing that is all his own and a denouement (if you manage to follow him through the numerous twists of the Mobius strip) that will leave you a bit breathless and thinking long after you've put the book away?Yes, yes and yes.Sometimes I had to set the book down because the pace suddenly exploded and left me dazed at the end of a chapter. And sometimes the pace was relaxed and flowed and I simply took part in and enjoyed some of Jane's more nostalgic experiences.And sometimes I was just pleasantly distracted by the occasional reference (meaningful or not) to Heidegger or Chaucer, or Swanwick's use of Scottish dialect.My advice?Enjoy the rush.Enjoy the spaciness.Run with the apes of hell.
When wyverns carpet bomb your funny candy castle
Michael Swanwick and I appear to be on the same page, which is kind of nice.
Not that the notion is a concern to him either way, but at least I find it mildly comforting.I've read a number of fantasy novels over the years and while many of them are entertaining, a fair number seem to be content to plow the same field that Tolkein first planted seeds in years ago, without really changing too many of the tenets that we tend to take for granted, letting them become stereotypes or cliches.Whether it's because the authors feel that the audiences only want a certain kind of fantasy (not impossible, when people like something, they tend to want more of the same of it) or because they can't be bothered to break their own ground and thus have to play with the standard pieces in the standard way, it all boiled down to one thing . . . fantasy had become safe and mundane, not so much magical as an excuse to trot out the elves and the magic swords so the secret farmboy-king could go and save the world once again.Yawn.
"Iron Dragon's Daughter" blows that out of the water.This is not safe fantasy.This is fantasy so far from safe that it has you walking alone in the most run down urban section of the most crime-ridden city of the country, with all the streetlights broken, footsteps all around you and growing closer and your cell phone out of service.There's nowhere to run and no one to run to.Everything you thought you once knew has been left behind, and redefined.
Swanwick has written a scorching steampunk fever dream of a story, giving us a world that operates by its own rules and if those rules are not in your favor then you are totally and royally screwed.We encounter Jane when she's working in a horrible dirty factory with other children, all of them putting together parts for giant metal dragons, winged lords of destruction, like the Ships from Iain Banks Culture series, only hideously cruel and wantonly bestial.The tone is set right from the start, the prose is grimy, the setting is grim, loyalities are always suspect and Jane begins her habit of constantly making the wrong decision wherever she goes.
She's a changling, you see, a mortal child stolen from her own world and dumped here, in a fairyland that has nothing to do with the magical and gauzy stillness of a Lord Dunsany novel.There's real harm here and it never abates, not even when Jane escapes with a rusted old dragon who wants her for its own schemes.It takes off seething with hate and puts her in a school.But the price is that she has to remain a virgin and when that vow is broken, it dumps her without a second thought to fend for herself in a world that seems actively designed to crush her spirit.Things, as it were, do not get better.
Swanwick has designed a world unlike anything we've ever seen in fantasy, retaining just enough real world elements that we can see the decadence and unfairness, the glimmers of beauty that have been perverted and twisted.He has systematically taken every facet of what we knew about fantasy, broken it and put it back together.He has created a world made entirely of razors and makes us watch as it cuts Jane to pieces, as she willingly walks into the halls of knives because she has no other choice.She takes the easy way out constantly, shoplifting and using people and suffers greatly for it.But she falls in love and suffers for that too, repeating the same pattern over and over.Stumbling and floundering, trying to get back to the world that she supposedly belongs to, even as the dragon has made it quite clear it wants everything dead, that the universe is so stacked against them that the only way to solve it is to trash it all and start all over again.He hates it so much he doesn't even want to be around to dance in the ashes.
For fantasy lovers, this is an extreme book.Sexually explicit and thus not for the faint of heart, its grimy carnal heart beats in places that we recognize.Its main character often does despicable things in the name of getting what she wants, while elves and fauns and dwarves all cross her path, all out to use her before someone else gets a chance.He has inverted almost everything we might like about fantasy, including that abiding sense of hope and left us with this searing view, where hope lies fallow and flat, and a better life is just the story you tell people when you want to distract them from the fact that the world is standing right behind you ready to bring a hammer down on your skull.
No, it's not perfect.It's bleak vision, bordering on nihilism, may leave some readers cold.The plot leaps around and sometimes it feels that things aren't explained properly (the Tiand anyone?).Sometimes things are meant not to be explained, leaving you to puzzle out the gaps.Some of its changes eventually became cliches in themselves (elves even in steampunk are typically haughty suit wearing aristocrats).But the ending works as the best endings do, underscoring the point you didn't even realize was there while seeming like a natural place to finally stop.People looking for a typical trip into epic world saving splendor are going to flee screaming from this, because this novel strips away all the cozy aspects we've known and only leaves us with this, the spiky and tarnished edge that always existed just below the surface, that we cushioned ourselves against in sunny vistas and black and white morals, the edge that we've left behind for pleasant familiarity.
But Swanwick, thank goodness, didn't forget.And the genre, and us, are all the better for it.
Highly enjoyable sci-fi and fantasy mix
The Iron Dragon's Daughter grabbed my attention from the very first pages. The world that the book takes place in is a crazy mix up of fantasy and sci-fi, full of all kinds of mythical creatures and beasts. The heroine is a young human girl Jane who was kidnapped from the Lower World (world dominated by technology like ours) and forced to work 12 hours a day in an iron dragon factory together with a lot of other non-human children, and the only thing waiting for her in the future is becoming a breeder for human-elf hybrids to pilot the dragons. She struggles to survive and to find her own place in this macabre world, but it seems everyone has their own plans for her - including a rogue dragon who dreams of destroying the world.
It was definitely one of the most unique fantasy books I've read in a while and I'd recommend it to any fantasy fan who doesn't mind trying something different.
More powerful (but less fun) than THE DRAGONS OF BABEL
If you're like me, you recently encountered and read Michael Swanwick's THE DRAGONS OF BABEL and, having enjoyed it, now want to read THE IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER, a book that takes place in the same universe and was published fifteen years ago. The two books do not form a traditional series: they tell different stories, they share no characters in common, and the earlier book's obsessions are deeper and darker than those of the later.
THE IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER is still raw, edgy, surprising and powerful fifteen years after it was first published. Jane, the book's protagonist, is one of the more vivid characters in contemporary fantasy literature. A human girl stolen from her mother by faeries to serve as a slave worker and brood mare, Jane refuses to become a victim. She ultimately decides that no tool is too contemptible or degrading -- a semi-cooperative iron dragon, shoplifting, blackmail, sex, fame -- if it allows her to survive, be free, pursue love, and seek knowledge. She finds moments of joy, yet she remains imprisoned in a hell she can't escape; being a human girl in a faery world, a fugitive from lifelong servitude, and a rogue dragon's accomplice, Jane is always haunted by -- and rendered vulnerable to blackmail by -- those who seek to drag her back to the factory or the breeding camp where she "belongs".
Swanwick's tale can be read at multiple levels; in fact, he insists that it be read at multiple levels, never leaving the reader certain, not even at the end, which one is "right". To portray the scuzzy boss as an ogre, the anorexic supermodel as be a haughty high elf, or the violent street punk as a goblin is not much of a stretch. But what does it mean that Jane can cross worlds and visit her mother at a Starbucks, or visit her own, real body in a mental hospital? What does it mean that Jane keeps encountering the same people -- in different bodies -- over and over? What does it mean when the dragon enlists Jane in a quest to destroy the world? Is any of this real? (And what does all this mean for THE DRAGONS OF BABEL, in which none of this cross-world traffic is even mentioned?)
Some readers will feel that Swanwick is rubbing their noses in depravity for its own sake. Some will feel that this book is relentlessly downbeat for no reason. I think Swanick is courageously doing what the best writers always do; cutting deep, skewering hypocrisy, pushing it to the edge. It's not comfortable, but it is impressive and it is not -- despite what others say -- without a great deal of wry wit, compassion for Jane and (at least some of) her peers, and, at least a very little bit of optimism.
Probably better if you're on acid
Some people don't like to admit that they didn't "get" a book, but I'm secure enough with myself to say that I didn't get this one.
The Iron Dragon's Daughter started off well. Jane is a human changeling who works in a faerie factory that makes flying iron dragons for weapons. Jane and the other child slave laborers (who are a mix of strange creatures) are entertaining and bring to mind Lord of the Flies and that scene in Sid's room from Pixar's Toy Story. Michael Swanwick's writing style is fluid and faultless. There were a few flashes of Valente-esque creativity: a timeclock with a temper, a meryon (whatever that is) civilization similar to that in A Bug's Life, a conniving jar-bound homunculus, gryphons who dive for thrown beer cans. I truly enjoyed these parts of the book.
But, after Jane escapes from the dragon factory, the whole thing plummets like a lead dragon and it never returns to its former glory. The writing style is still lovely, but the plot is -- I don't think I've ever used this word in a review before -- awful. I hated it.
Jane was never a sympathetic heroine, but after her escape she turns into a remorseless foul-mouthed thief, drug-user, slut, and murderer. I didn't like her or any of her acquaintances. The plot had no order, the world had no rules, everything that happened seemed random, chaotic, and senseless.
Knowing that other people have praised this novel and that it's sequel (The Dragons of Babel) was nominated for a Locus award, I pressed on. About two-thirds of the way through, I figured out that there was a method to the madness, but the chaotic nihilism was so disturbing that even though I realized it contributed to the entire philosophy of the novel, I still hated it. I think perhaps if I'd dropped some acid, the plot would have arranged itself better in my mind, but alas, I had none to hand.
For me, The Iron Dragon's Daughter was weird, disjointed, obtuse, and inaccessibly bizarre.
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Jaundiced and Partisan