Subject: Michael Swanwick: The Iron Dragon's Daughter

From: [email-masked] (Joel Finkle)
Date: 17 Feb 94 02:51:40 GMT

Review of Michael Swanwick's _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_

Recently, two of my favorite SF authors came out with fantasy books, 
and it so happened that both were the first books I've bought by these
authors as new hardcovers.

Lois McMaster Bujold's _The Spirit Ring_ was a romantic fantasy set
in the middle ages, with a firm tie to history and then state-of-the-
art alchemy.  It worked pretty well, playing on Bujold's strength in
characterization.

I was a little hesitant to see that Michael Swanwick's latest book was
fantasy, not SF, but I snatched it up anyway, expecting at the very least
wild strangeness.  I was not disappointed.

One of the most overmined sub-genres in fantasy seems to be the mixing
of science fiction with fantasy: magic found in a futuristic society. I
have enjoyed some of this type of stuff, but it starts to grate. _The Iron
Dragon's Daughter_ (IDD from now on) is a look in a very different
direction.

IDD is set in an industrial faerie.  This brings back the 'beautiful and
terrible' aspects of faerie: There is great beauty and wonder, pollution
and class struggles.  It is as if the magical world kept advancing in
technology as did our own, and abuse of power is magnified from this
world, just as the power is.  Sort of faeriepunk (sorry, I had to say it). 

Some of Swanwick's themes found in Vacuum Flowers and Stations of the
Tide appear here: Rebellion against fate, the nature of reality, the
power of sexual magic.  This is by no means a light romp, a la Piers
Anthony or Terry Pratchett. 

The book deals with Jane, a changeling brought over from the lower world
(here), working in the dragon mills, and her fate intertwined with a
world-hating dragon, and two souls who keep reappearing in her life. 
She escapes this life, but with each step raising herself up socially
she becomes more entangled in tragedy.  There's funny stuff here, such
as a class in Comparative and Speculative Anatomy, using laser
spectrometry for divination, but Jane's life itself is grim, doomed.  
Is there a predestined fate for each of us? Can we make our own lives,
our own identities?

The end of the book seems rushed, another 20 pages might have smoothed
things up a bit.  But perhaps that is the point -- that the end can't be
smoothed out. 

Overall, if you enjoy Swanwick's writing, you should enjoy this book.  If 
industrial magic makes you gag, you may want to steer clear.

%A Michael Swanwick
%T The Iron Dragon's Daughter
%I AvoNova
%G ISBN 0-688-13174-3
%O $23 US
%D 1994
--
Joel Finkle
Searle R&D
[email-masked]

"And when I die don't bury me / in a box in a cemetery.
Out in the garden would be much better,
I could be pushin' up home grown tomatoes" -- Guy Clark, "Home Grown
Tomatoes"