The Iron Dragon's Daughter (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I've owned this book--purchased new in its first edition--for a long while now, without having ever read it. Then I recently read "King Dragon", which was incorporated into Iron Dragon's sequel, and loved it, so I figured it was time to go back and finally read the thing.The book started quite strongly, then about a third of the way through strayed unconfidently from itself, then simply fell apart in its last ten or fifteen percent.With a title like the Iron Dragon's Daughter, and a heroine named Jane, you'd figure the book is about the relationship between the girl and the dragon. Right? Makes sense? And it does start out that way, with this evil and selfish (and unique within the genre) dragon appearing to hold the key to the unexplained mysteries of our heroine's nature. The dragon cares not a whit for anyone but itself; however, it does seem like the dragon's desires and Jane's might coincide. And for a while, that's exactly how it is. The dragon helps Jane escape her factory thralldom, and--enroll in high school. Maybe not what I'd expected, considering there's, you know, this evil mechanical dragon off at the edges, but OK. You wanna send the heroine to school, alright. The high school scenes and characters are vivid and the social interplay totally reminded me of when I was in high school oh so many years ago.So you start getting used to that, and then Swanwick dispenses with the high school and dispenses with the Dragon. Jane enrolls in college, and the dragon is gone. Wait, what was the name of the book again? Maybe it should have been A Changeling School Days, or something like that, because the book spends most of its length with Jane matriculating and no dragon in sight anywhere.Jane loses a lot of her sympathetic nature when she gets to college. Again not crazy about this, but you really can't say it's not at least sometimes realistic if a book presents a good kid becoming an asshole when he goes off to college.And the book chugged along, sometimes dipping itself into treadwater scenes that seemed salacious if not even pornographic, sometimes expressing itself violently or druggily through choppy scenes that actually moved the plot forward, not as good and not as coherent as it could have been, but still interesting and still well-written. The dragon actually makes another brief appearance, but Jane has graduated college, or been kicked out, or something, and she starts hanging out with these high society elves or something.And then the whole fucking book falls apart. Sure the book had fallen off before, but this last was a *plunge*, a cliffdive. All of a sudden the book makes no sense at all. I'm on page 385 or something like that and I realize that 1) I have no idea where the action is taking place--it keeps changing 2) I have no idea who the characters are--they keep changing 3) I have no idea what exactly is happening--mostly it seems like nothing.C'mon. I mean, I had hung with this goddamn thing. I had showed my good faith, putting up with some questionable plotting in the belief that at the end, if I just plowed through, and put up with the high school and college intrigue, I'd get some answers about Jane and some answers about the dragon. And then it became apparent to me that the author had no intention of either giving answers or of even making sense as the book closed.At this point I put the book down--only 30 or 40 pages from the end--and placed it back on the dusty shelf whence it came.I don't think I've ever quit a book so close to its finish, but I also don't think I've ever read anything that was so decisively faithless to its solid premise.This was a great book that became a very poor one; you watch it methodically happen, is the best way I know how to put it. I've read a good deal of Swanwick's short fiction and a couple novels as well. He's talented as all get out. Read "The Very Pulse of the Machine" or "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" or last year's "Passage of Earth" if you doubt. But the decisions he makes with his plotting in this book are mystifying and frustrating.
This book is bleak and nihilistic. Jane, the protagonist, has few redeeming qualities. Her failure to Take Action is as disturbing and frustrating as Thomas Covenant's disbelief in Stephen Donaldson's classic series. The book refuses to be what the reader wants it to be and it jerks itself forward in endless, random, nightmarish spurts. Jane's world is cruel, intense, nearly loveless, and disconnected. Michael Swanwick's wonderful prose was the only reason I kept reading after about page 100. Swanwick kicks at stale tropes, especially either/or arguments with his "and also" set up: it's science fiction AND fantasy; there is technology AND magic; there's a ton of sex (but it's not erotic). His world is populated with many different creatures, yet he just drops us in it and doesn't give us the set-up or stop to describe each character. Eventually we see it, but he doesn't slow down to paint us a picture. That just flies in the face of writing rules that demand you draw each character as the reader encounters him/her. I was pretty amused by how he did that.The book is many things. As a genre novel, it's three, unequal acts: Enslavement, escape and aftermath, then lifeline reboot. As a literary novel, it's a statement about story, narrative, and expectations. I tend to like genre stories and shy away from literary fiction. But in this case, I was more interested in this novel after I completed it than I was when I was reading it. When it was completely over, I found a meaning for myself in the story. I imagine others will find meaning, but their interpretation will probably reflect their own thinking. Who knows what Swanwick intended! (view spoiler)[ My take on the story is that the elements of Jane's life (possibly her destiny - but not necessarily) are just random bits of information and events. Without guidance or parameters, Jane just mows through them; her life happens to and around her, but very little in it makes sense. It just is, there's a lot of "it," and then there's more of "it." When she is placed in the more ordered reality with which the readers exist, those same random elements of "destiny" seem to click into place. She is guided, she achieves, and she moves forward on an extremely predictable trajectory. It's as if Michael Swanwick says to the reader, "You don't like that crazy, rich, hyperstimulating stew? Here, then, have a story that makes sense. Isn't it boring?" (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Iron Dragon's Daughter (2012)?
So, you know the feeling you get when you encounter a difficult piece of artwork in a contemporary art museum? Maybe it's a small box left alone on a table. Maybe it's a cake made of plaster. Maybe it's a series of lights shone on a wall. You can pick up on a few clues as to what concept is being explored and what aesthetic is being showcased, but you get the sense that you might just not be intelligent or cultured enough to grasp the big, profound entirety of it all. And then it strikes you: maybe the artist is just fucking with you. You leave the museum in a disoriented state, wondering if you had finally experienced true art and whether you hated it or not. You decide it deserves three stars.
—Bree
One of the most intriguing books of science fantasy I've ever read, Iron Dragon's Daughter is set in a strange world that is best described as 'faerie cyberpunk.' Our heroine, Jane, is a changeling, a human child brought into a dark world of faeries, half-breeds and monsters both natural and technological. Jane starts the book working in a factory that produces dragons, huge flying mechs armed with state-of-the-art weaponry, using her unusual ancestry to practice her skills as a thief. One day, she discovers a dragon that appears to have been scrapped, but is merely injured and camouflaging itself amongst its broken down brethren. The dragon offers her a way out of her miserable life, even if that method should involve tearing down the walls of reality itself.
—Blind_guardian
Not so long ago, I was reading a forum discussion talking about how fantasy worlds never seem to progress past a medieval level of technology; and whether or not it's possible to write a technological fantasy world that is clearly not science fiction.This book does it, with its plethora of faerie creatures - and our protagonist, a changeling - working in factories and dealing with magical/robotic creations. The book is complex, with strikingly original ideas, and a carefully plotted structure that at first seems pointlessly rambling. As the spiraling theme of the story is revealed, the reader realizes that the plot has also been following that spiral theme.It's well done; even impressive. The book probably deserved to win at least one of the several awards it was nominated for. However, I didn't love it, emotionally. Even though it deftly slipped out of the 'it was all just a dream, or mental illness' thing that I had a suspicion it was sliding toward, for a while. I feel like I appreciated this book - it just didn't become one of my favorites.
—Althea Ann
