Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Phenomenal, May 15 2004
Iron Dragon's Daughter, an amalgam of steampunk and fairy, will have you screaming, laughing, and crying all at the same time. This is perfected madness, incredible storytelling. Iron Dragon is one of the smartest books I've read in ages. The story follows a changeling, Jane, who is placed in a factory to work alongside other enslaved fairy children. Their task . . . to build weapons. The conditions are awful, the quality of life is awful, and the future is less than promising. That's until the Dragon, Number 7332, begins to tempt Jane with tales of the outside world. He offers her freedom, but the cost . . . Honestly, I am going to have to read this novel again. Swanwick has a tendency to jump around, and it's not that it's poorly done, it's just sometimes difficult to follow. I'm sure I missed things, and the quality of this story is so great, that I want to make sure I catch every last detail. Fans of fantasy, steampunk and fairy stories in general will adore this book. It's worth the investment. I borrowed the copy from a friend, and have since gone out and purchased my own. I don't want to share it! Happy Reading!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
This is a Book to Come Back To, Mar 22 2004
The Iron Dragon's Daughter is a book that stays with you, and it is definitely a book you have to read more than once to fully comprehend. The tale follows Jane, who is introduced to the readers as a forced child laborer in a steam-dragon plant. She is the sole human in an eclectic mix of feys, shifters, giants, dwarves, and other fantastic creatures. She (and all the other children there) dream of escaping, and she manages to achieve that dream with the help of what is thought to be the rusted out hulk of the dragon 7332, or Melancthon. With the dragon's help, Jane is disguised as a fey, and takes up a normal life in the woods 'somewhere else', going, as all young women do, to school. After she loses her virginity to a boy supposed to be a sacrifice, Melancthon abandons her, and leaves her to her fate in the University in the city. Things progress from there, and she eventually meets with the dragon again in a somewhat confusing and wholly surprising ending.The first time I read this book, I was just 15 years old, and I didn't like it. I was a prude little know-nothing, and Swanwick's incorporation of foul language and sexual scenes made me feel, to use his phrasing, "unclean." I was embarrassed to be reading the book. However, I picked it up again a month away from 16, and (with a little more worldly knowledge this time) it made a lot more sense. This book has definitely moved from my "this-book-exists-but-nothing-more" shelf to my "favorites" shelf. Swanwick writes in a style I've never seen before. He takes setting completely familiar to us modern day humans, such as shopping malls, squalid cities, and college, and infuses them with a type of grimy urban fantasy, the likes of which I've never read. Elves snort coke and faerie dust. Wood-mays get drunk. Gryphons fight each other in the air for cans of thrown beer. The familiarity of the settings and situations Jane finds herself in only lend to the overall alien feel of the story. The plot can be a little confusing and hard to follow at times, but this is a book that gets better each time you read it, so even if you don't understand the first time (I certainly didn't) it will become clearer with each time you read it. I highly recommend this!!!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The Industrial Revolution Comes to Fairy, Jan 23 2004
If Bret Easton Ellis wrote fantasy this could easily be the result. Filled with jaded characters with dark appetites, The Iron Dragon's Daughter slips into the bleak tone of cyberpunk and applies it to land of fairy. Instead of bucholic landscapes we have overbearing cities where death is commonplace and is peopled with dwarves, elves, pixes, nymphs, and host of other fairy creatures. A cynical way of viewing this book would be to say that author was just some Everquest geek trying to convince jaded socialite that he was cool: drug abusing elves, mechanical dragons, S&M, and lots of death... To be less cynical, the book is unique and despite its nihlism entertaining. Swanwick is a great story teller with a good sense of pace, and a lean style of writing that allows the reader's mind to paint the details of Swanwick's world where he has left only broad strokes. The characters feel real, perhaps because they're so flawed. Child slavery, snorting pixie dust, fascist sentient ant colonies, human sacrifice, sexual mind games, and an omnipresent threat of destruction. You could call it fairypunk.
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by Michael Swanwick
by Stephen King
