The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Did you ever read a book and it felt liked you'd been waiting your whole life to read it? A book that for this moment in your life was so perfect and it encapsulated everything you've been looking for and articulated all those vague, ambiguous feelings you've had? Okay, if you haven't then you probably don't read as much as me....or maybe you don't fall in love as easily, but books have the power to cause paradigm shifts in our thinking and I think Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter is one of those books. Love it or hate it, I think that readers will still be transformed.

Swanwick's novel is nothing short of marvelous, and I mean marvelous in its most basic, broadest sense, in that the book causes one to marvel. That sense of marvel never disappears throughout the whole glittery, phantasmagorical, cruel and ultimately beautiful novel. Swanwick's fairy world is bitter and gorgeous and absolutely gritty. To see his fairyland is to know despair. And utter delight. His book follows the story of Jane, a mortal changeling, who so obviously does not belong in this glitzy, dizzying world that it's almost painful to follow her story. Jane's life is a series of harsh and surreal events in which she survives the horrors and wonders of this post-industrial wasteland. Eventually the book culminates in wonder, death and transformation and my head is still spinning from all the philosophy and downright skillful storytelling. Jane's relationship with the multiple and doomed Tetigistus is enough to drive the compelling narrative forward, but add in the sinister high elves, multiple fantastic fairy-tale creatures, and a truly stunning, albeit insane and dangerous dragon and the story becomes that much better.

Did I mention that dragons are made in this world. Made to be huge, unstoppable weapons of war which the high elves unleash upon each other like so many locusts? Oh yes, they're made, and they're also mad and dangerous and full of lies. Did I also mention that this fairyland takes place in skyscrapers and factories? That what gives the novel most of its haunting power is that Swanwick's dark, lush and dangerous fairy world is so very close to our own, uncomfortably close? Oh my yes.

This is the kind of book that needs to be re-read, I think. Once my head stops spinning and my memories of Swanwick's jittery landscapes and cruel wondrous characters fade, I will be re-visiting and I think I will be just as amazed and just as flabbergasted as the first time I read it. And I will most likely come away with a completely different reaction because The Iron Dragon's Daughter is just that kind of book.