The Iron Dragon's Mother, by Michael Swanwick Synopsis: Framed for treason, the pilot of a military dragon must dodge the law while trying to clear her name. Book Review: That synopsis is really, really inaccurate, but it's the best I could do with a single line. There's two reasons for this. The first is that it gives the impression of a fantasy world. The world of this book is far closer to a Final-Fantasy-style JRPG than a standard fantasy world. It contains battle mechs with dragon spirits in them, sniper rifles and magic swords, elves and wraiths and cell phones and Coca-Cola in aluminum cans. It is a glorious mashup of everything cool that constatly keeps you off-balance, and if you like that sort of thing (and I do) it's fan-freaking-tastic. The second reason is that it gives the impression that this book is a standard narrative story. You know, one that follows a single character (or group) as they acheive some goal across the span of the novel. This is not that, and at first it hurt my enjoyment. By the third time the story seemed to go off on a strange digression that was ended abruptly (sometimes with a Deus Ex Machina) and didn't have much to do with what I thought the plot was about (ie: what's in my synopsis) I was beginning to get grumpy. I kept reading though, until it finally clicked. This isn't a traditional narrative. It is, instead, a collection of individual stories that are loosely woven together by having a single character moving between them to serve as our POV. And not just
SF/F Review – The Iron Dragon's Mother
SF/F Review – The Iron Dragon's Mother
SF/F Review – The Iron Dragon's Mother
The Iron Dragon's Mother, by Michael Swanwick Synopsis: Framed for treason, the pilot of a military dragon must dodge the law while trying to clear her name. Book Review: That synopsis is really, really inaccurate, but it's the best I could do with a single line. There's two reasons for this. The first is that it gives the impression of a fantasy world. The world of this book is far closer to a Final-Fantasy-style JRPG than a standard fantasy world. It contains battle mechs with dragon spirits in them, sniper rifles and magic swords, elves and wraiths and cell phones and Coca-Cola in aluminum cans. It is a glorious mashup of everything cool that constatly keeps you off-balance, and if you like that sort of thing (and I do) it's fan-freaking-tastic. The second reason is that it gives the impression that this book is a standard narrative story. You know, one that follows a single character (or group) as they acheive some goal across the span of the novel. This is not that, and at first it hurt my enjoyment. By the third time the story seemed to go off on a strange digression that was ended abruptly (sometimes with a Deus Ex Machina) and didn't have much to do with what I thought the plot was about (ie: what's in my synopsis) I was beginning to get grumpy. I kept reading though, until it finally clicked. This isn't a traditional narrative. It is, instead, a collection of individual stories that are loosely woven together by having a single character moving between them to serve as our POV. And not just