15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Weird and flawed but powerful for all that, March 9, 2008
This review is from: The Dragons of Babel (Tom Doherty Associates Books) (Hardcover)
He's just a country boy, living in a small village after his parents are killed by the war. But when a dragon crashes nearby and decides to make himself king of the village, Will Le Fey gets drafted as the voice of the dragon. That role gives him a certain amount of power, but it also earns him the hatred of everyone in town--and when his best friend decides to lead a resistance movement, Will finds himself in a no-win situation.
When war extends across the land, Will and many others become refugees, finally making his way to Babel, the center of the Empire. There he falls in with confidence men and dreamers--and becomes the catspaw for a clever scheme to take advantage of the absent king and place him in the position of pretender--with all of the financial benefits that might create.
Author Michael Swanwick creates a powerful world, where technology and magic coexist, where pointless war is waged over forgotten slights, and where the ruling elite parties, indulges in casual sin, and where both the mob and the elite dream of a return of the absent king--for very different reasons. It's hard not to draw parallels between Swanwick's fantasy world and the world in which we live (Babel's library has stone lions out front, and Will dreams of crashing dragons into the great tower of Babel), and piecing through the clues to figure out exactly what Swanwick is saying about our current situation is half the fun of the story.
Will has vowed revenge for the casual destruction the forces of Babel called down on his home, but the world seems uninterested in his vows, conspiring to defeat his dreams at the same time as it showers new opportunities on him. Clearly Will is being manipulated. Exactly who, or what is doing that manipulation is less obvious--partly because so many forces seem intent on doing that.
There are some loose ends to the story--a long section in the middle where Will serves as an underground (literally) warrior champion seems poorly integrated with the story and I expected to see more of a resolution of the issues involving ex-friend No-name, the dragon, and Esme. Still, THE DRAGONS OF BABEL has a real power to it--the story sucked me in, made me think, and held my interest. It's a different kind of story, but it's hard to put down.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A train whistle at night means the same thing in all langusges.", June 24, 2008
This review is from: The Dragons of Babel (Tom Doherty Associates Books) (Hardcover)
Swanwick is certinly one of the most original fantasists working today, and _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ was perhaps his best (even though the evangelicals loudly denounced it). This one, while not actually a sequel, is set in the same world, which is a mish-mash of modern America and Faerie. You know you're there when the centaurs carry assault weapons, a high elf rides a Vespa, the haints play reggae, the royal palace includes rooms designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Cabinet of Curiosities displays both a stuffed capricorn and a Soyuz spacecraft. Will Le Fey is a young orphan subsisting in a rural village which is just trying to keep its collective head down while the endless war between East and West rages on. Then a war dragon (sentient, but with a half-human pilot) crashes and takes over the village for its own survival -- and appoints Will its lieutenant. When the dragon is killed (more or less), Will is forced out . . . and so begins a series of adventures in the classic pauper-to-prince picaresque tradition, from refugee camp to the tutelage of a master con man (keep an eye on him), to a period as an underground rebel leader, to his attempt to pass himself off as the lost heir of His Absent Majesty. (And, of course, there's more to the scam than he knows.) For all his occasional naivete, Will has innate cunning -- although when he tries to win the heart and hand of his True Love, who happens to be one of the ruling elite in the towering city of Babel (or maybe Babylon), the reader knows it won't be a sure thing. Swanwick's patented tongue-in-cheek cynicism and ability to make even temporary secondary characters interesting will keep you reading far into the night.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great up to the last chapter, but the ending could have been better, July 16, 2009
This book is a notch below Dragon's Daughter. Maybe because "Daughter" was a true original and this is book is a sequel, but this book lacked the impact of Swanwick's first book. Swanwick's world is a dark place where magical creatures gave up their immortality in exchange for a moral existence, and they appear to be much the worse for it.
The buildup was good. Our hero got into one mess after another and his life just kept getting worse and worse. He had disappointment after disappointment. Then, he met Nat the con man and his luck begin to change, sort of.
The book started wandering about along several plot lines, but came together nicely in the last quarter of the book. But the last chapter was a bit of a letdown, unless you are into endings that are not really endings. The ending is the only reason I cant give the book a 5.
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