The Dragons of Babel (Mass Market Paperback)

“A smart, stark steampunk fantasy.  It’s gritty and magical and, in sensibility, is similar to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and MirrorMask….Original and dashing, The Dragons of Babel is a breath of fresh air.”
--Starlog  

"This is modern fantasy at its finest and should hold great appeal for fans of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. . . ."
--Publishers Weekly, (starred review)

“Dark, subversive, inventive, challenging, outrageous, and very funny… has to be a contender for one of the best fantasy novels of the year.”
--Interzone

“Swanwick's expert craftsmanship gives his fiction a brilliant, highly polished surface.”
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The Dragons of Babel will immediately capture readers’ interest…. Earthy, bawdy, and often brutal, it’s a story that will keep science fiction/fantasy fans involved till the end.”
--School Library Journal (starred review)

“Swanwick’s major accomplishment here—aside from his standard authorial equipment of finely honed prose, inventive plotting, engaging characters and clever symbolical patterning—is to instantiate a world where BMWs and motorcycles can be parked side by side with hippogriffs and manticores without rendering either “vehicle” ridiculous…The ride you get from [Swanwick’s] dragons will be like no other.”
--Sci Fi Weekly (grade A)

“Witty, inventive, written with enormous flair, this is one of Swanwick’s most complex and rewarding novels.”
--Asimov’s

“If you haven’t read Michael Swanwick yet, you’ve been missing some wonderful prose…Con men and ward heelers, cluricauns and hobgoblins, and a stunningly beautiful elf-woman who rides a hippogriff all entire and enrapture Will, and the reader as well.”
--The San Diego Union-Tribune

“I no longer read much fantasy, but would return to it in a Babel minute if I could find more like this: elegant, erudite, slyly funny, hard-nosed, compassionate, propulsive, and capable of punching through overused conventions and sentimentalities and delivering the jolt that restores the form to its primal power.”
--Locus