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Summary: This book leaves you breathless!
Review: This book leaves you breathless and still thinking of what could happen next even though the book is over. You never know what is going to happen next. After you read the book you are never done reading it. It always comes back in your mind and you play over and over. If want to read a sappy love story or a happy ever after ending this is not the book. The emotion in this book is out standing! It will change the way you think about regular reading material!
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Summary: Powerful...Jane's desperate life in a nightmare faeri world
Review: Do not read this book if your faery tales need happy endings...or even happy things. It was as if the lords of faerie looked down at our world, saw our wars, our cruelties, our petty spites and evils and said, "We can do these things better than those puny humans can." We first see Jane as a prisoner in a nightmare world as a child, an innocent stolen to a cold prison of a life. The nightmares of childhood are there before her: bullying grown-up authority figures, distant parent figures demanding actions of her but not giving guidance, loss of friends to senseless cuelty - even the cruelty of other children. Again and again through Jane's life this is repeated - she lives in this feyworld as a child, then a teen, then a young adult, slowly gaining understanding at the price of pain and innocence. Every old wound that an adult could look back on with a twinge of remembered hurt, Jane endures a faerie version of. Remarkably crafted, the author's world came alive like a funhouse-mirror hallucination of our own world. It is a life she leads, a coming of age - but you can tell it is a coming of age into a world she should never have been exiled to, and that perhaps the person she has grown into is a darkened shadow of what she could have, should have become. I was torn a bit around the edges at the end, I'd felt for Jane as I journeyed with her. She had endured...she had passed beyond the reach of the faerie princes...would she now gain her reward? It made sense at the end, but hurt to see the price she paid for the faerie lord's crimes. At least her life had given her strength to go on, but I could feel pain and regret for what the faerie lords had stolen from her forever. I'll read more of this man's work. Recommended. Walt Smith
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Summary: an acid trip without the pleasure of acid
Review: Swanwick was going (i think) for a deeply intellectual trip through a strange and exciting world of magic and technology. he missed. there are rules people follow in books and they follow them because they make the books interesting. and unless one is a very good author, breaking the rules makes for a boring book. and the end was ridiculous. it was like the end of Congo. "well, i wrote 400 pages, guess i better call it quits. hmm, lets see. wait i got it. she'll wake up and it will all have been a dream." if it had a decent ending it might have been ok. but i guess he thought he was being clever.
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Summary: A powerful, challenging, and useful book
Review: Those who come to "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" expecting a straightforward fantasy story (or even a semi-straightforward steampunk story) are destined to be disappointed. It is a complex and open-ended book that places heavy demands on its readers. However, readers who struggle through the whole thing (and it wasn't a struggle at all for me -- I read the book in a few days, enjoying myself enormously after getting used to Swanwick's deliberate, meditative pace) will be rewarded by a book that is intricate, delicate, and possessing an optimism that completely belies its surface darkness.Its plot is convoluted and fugal: the same set of themes is repeated three times, and then, in a coda which is _not_ the equivalent of "then she woke up", is repeated as a counterpoint for a fourth, final time. The characters are difficult and often unsympathetic: the changeling child Jane, who sits at the focus of the book, possesses such a weak moral compass (and suffers so much abuse) that by the end of the novel, even the most sympathetic of readers will have given up on her. Finally, the questions posed by the novel are not resolved in any straightforward way: much of the most interesting information in the book is buried in implication, and some things we just aren't meant to figure out. The surface story is simple: Jane is a changeling girl, a drudge straight out of Dickens who labors endlessly in a large and grimy dragon factory. The dragons are one of the first of many delights in the novel, being sentient and ruthless stealth weapons used by the elven overlords of Jane's world in their endless battles for supremacy. They are, in short, total cyberpunk wish-fulfillment devices. Jane is contacted by an ancient, powerful, and cagey dragon, who outlines a way by which both he and she can escape the factory. His plan brings about the first of many compromises that Jane is pressured into within the book, and from there the book is about the tension between Jane and the dragon, as she reach! es towards maturity and her own flawed understanding of the world and her place within it. This book can be read as a parable about growing up, an allegory of the tradeoffs necessary to get ahead as a woman in contemporary society (presented in the bleakest, most savage terms imaginable), or simply as a satire of genre fantasy and cyberpunk. I've always thought of Swanwick as being a slightly more accessible Gene Wolfe, and nowhere is that impulse towards virtuosity and subtle command of the English language more evident than in this book. This is one of those books that continues to grow, luminously, in my memory, and one of a very small collection of science fiction novels that I think everyone should read.
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Summary: Wonderful, but needing a special view unlike other books...
Review: The confusion created by this book in those who read it, stems from misunderstanding and wrong interpretation. The human child, Jane, is very much human. Not heroic, but scared, cheating, lying and doing everything in her power to live in the strange fairy world. The world Swanwick creates is a reflection of a part of our own. The dark side of our society. The lies, drugs, sex, cheating, stealing, murder. As a fairyland, it's supposed to baffle us, we're not supposed to understand it. When such a view is taken, you suddenly understand. Fairies don't have logical pathways to follow. That's why the plot twists and turns with no visible logic (a suberb mastery of fairy thinking, i believe). It all ultimately comes down to the goddess (funny noone mentioned that).. Jane rebels against her as she couldn't rebel against the dragon. She didn't do anything along the goddess' plan, which makes it even more human. The cover isn't misleading. It's misinterpreted, just like the rest of this book. The dragon is protecting Jane, but for his own purposes. It's more like a big brother "noone beats up on my sister except myself" without the love attached. Jane is very much unaware of what she wants, is, or will ever become. Such is the nature of humans. That's why she's lying down helpless. This book has to be read at least twice to be at least partially understood. There is simple in the complex, but also complex in the simple.
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Summary: It was only a Dream...not really
Review: This ultimately is a sad book, in more ways than one. The (lost or stolen? it is never cleared up) human child Jane toils in the Steam-Dragon Plant, seeking escape and solace; she seems to find an ally in the disabled Moloch Dragon in the scrapyard, together planning to escape....and then the novel gets lost, or more properly never decides on a direction. Yes, it does defy stereotype, refusing to follow *expected* rules--just when I think I know what will happen to Jane next, something else twists the tale completely out of shape. This should be a good thing, only here it keeps disappointing. Jane seems to be the only human in a semi-magic world--she is not really discovered nor is her significance quite explained. Ideas are introduced, the enchanted toys Jane is supposed to play with, the addition of Decembers into a long, cold winter, the College of Magic, the Mechanical Horse who befriends Jane, yet they ultimately pan out, or never develop. The symbols of a needle and a dogs tail are seen frequently--but what did they mean? The great Moloch Dragon Jane steals to escape--this is one of the high points of Swanwicks novel, the exhileration....yet it only leads to another drab end, Jane seems to spend much time in an enchanted shopping mall and school, just another *ordinary* adolescent? I found Moloch himself less Evil than sullen, selfish--he bickers with Jane yet desires her aid. And in the end? The Dragon exhausts himself, reduced to a tiny fluttering thing...Jane *awakes* from possible autism...into what kind of world? The beginning bore almost a macabre beauty, the end was just another confused young woman--had anything been really answered? Though Swanwick avoids the cliches of fantasy, he also avoids any fulfillment of it either. Only for those who *chuckle at Kafka*.
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Summary: Dark and twisted, yet beautiful.
Review: Swanwick creates the most believable female character I've ever read. A very wonderful character. Not your stereotypical heroine, virtuous and perfect, but strong, vulnerable, confused... just a human being. The world he creates is great. Almost like are own, but not quite. Elves are the upperclass, trolls are middle management, and dwarves are are pretty low on the totem pole. It has a dream-like quality (like his other books). Just when you think you understand the logic of this world he adds something else that throws things off kilter. Keeps you on your toes. The attention to detail creates a wonderfully textured story
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Summary: almost, but not quite
Review: Swanwick stretches...leaps...and crashes in smoldering inferno that no one remembers. Well, the book TRIES to go somewhere. It builds up a beautiful fantasy world, dark and eerie with a twist of the magical. And in this world...nothing earthshaking happens. The focus dissolves, the point is lost, and the reader is left bewildered and adrift.
Was there a deadline to be met or did the author get bored? Questions we will never ask...
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Summary: Misleading...
Review: Don't be fooled by the title or cover of this book with its tender picture of a vigilant and protective dragon guarding a sleeping girl. The story contains nothing of the sort. The dragon is cold, selfish and often silent, who cruelly manipulates both the girl and others for his own ends without concern for their well being. The synopsis above is incorrect, too. Humans do /not/ pilot the dragon machines. Only human/elf halfbreeds raised to be soldiers are allowed that. Violence, obscenity and sex
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Summary: All that glitters is often just broken glass...
Review: Jane is a human child snatched from her world and raised in a fantastical modern world of faeries. But it's no sweet tale of flower gardens and moonbeams. Brutality and lewd behavior are the norm. The story starts when she is just thirteen and just one of many child slave labourers in a factory that builds sentient war machines, dragons. The story starts out with how the children plot to steal the fingernail clippings of thier demon overseer to kill him. Snitching the clippings, Jane finds a manual in the trash that with study allows her to steal a dragon, a dragon who has laid in wait, pretending to be a rusting pile of junk. She escapes, but at a price, some of her friends die. The dragon comes to rest near a landfill and there it stays, waiting for repairs. Jane lives in the dragon and goes to school, posing as a woodmay, making friends including a crude, but amusing metal horse named Ragwort and Gwen, the willow queen who lives a life of luxury for a year before she is burned in an annual televised sarcrifice. Jane is also learning to shoplift with skill, studying alchemy, trying to finance her education. This book is a good read, /but only up to a point/. And when that point is reached (the loss of Jane's virginity), you might as well toss it. Because from there, it becomes an unsatisfying rambling aimless tale of drug addiction, sex and pseudo-magik. At several points, she is wearing another character's leather jacket that he never gave her and she never took. The characters come off as personalities, but most are never given any real descriptions, just odd mention of a tail or ears, or as an afterthought, wings. Other than when she is thieving, Jane comes off as a reserved and hesistant young woman, who afraid to stand up for herself and a follower, only rarely ever a leader
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