The Iron Dragon's Daughter [Hardcover]

Michael Swanwick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2012

Named a NEW YORK TIMES notable book of 1994, THE IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER tells the heartrending story of a changeling child who is kidnapped to a realm of malls and machines and enslaved in a vast, infernal factory. Ultimately she escapes and attempts to educate herself about this alien world, while being tormented by visions of the life she was denied.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Swanwick's nihilistic tale features a human changeling who tries to make her way in a cutthroat society that mirrors contemporary life. While the players are elves, dwarves, lamies and other "magickal" creatures, they could be 20th-century juvenile delinquents and power politicians in a society ruled by caste snobbery, drugs, a mall culture and child labor. Determined to end her slavery in a steam dragon plant, the young human Jane escapes with the help of a rusted old dragon hulk named Melancthon. Thereafter, she goes to school disguised as a fey in order to learn the magic necessary to repair the ravages inflicted on the dragon by time and battle. But the misfit Jane finds school horrifying, and she turns to shoplifting to gain friends. She falls in love with a young man destined to be the annual sacrifice; when she loses her virginity, her usefulness to Melancthon as a magic-maker is ended. After her lover's tragic death, Jane is taken under the wing of a power-hungry elven lord, Galiagante. Eventually she joins Melancthon once again as he sets out to destroy the Universe. Nebula Award-winner Swanwick ( Stations of the Tide ) develops a powerful, yet dark and hopeless fantasy that should forever shatter charming illusions of Faerie and its folk.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

When Jane, a human changeling, steals a magical steam dragon to escape the factory/prison that has been her home, she embarks on a life of freedom and normalcy in a world of timeless shopping malls, alchemy classes, and high school "wicker" queens--only to find that her stolen dragon has other, bigger plans that may change her life forever. Swanwick ( Stations of the Tide , Avon, 1992) brings his particular brand of elan to the fairy world, where high tech and magic are interdependent and where the denizens of folklore include leather-clad werewolves, half-elven pilots, and brash dwarven mechanics. Combining cyberpunk's grit with dystopic fantasy, this iconoclastic hybrid is a standout piece of storytelling.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Avon Books (T) (February 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380972336
• ISBN-13: 978-0380972333
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,514,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal, May 14, 2004

By 

Hillary "jezebelxiii" (abington, ma United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Paperback)

Iron Dragon's Daughter, an amalgam of steampunk and fairy, will have you screaming, laughing, and crying all at the same time.

This is perfected madness, incredible storytelling.

Iron Dragon is one of the smartest books I've read in ages. The story follows a changeling, Jane, who is placed in a factory to work alongside other enslaved fairy children. Their task . . . to build weapons. The conditions are awful, the quality of life is awful, and the future is less than promising. That's until the Dragon, Number 7332, begins to tempt Jane with tales of the outside world. He offers her freedom, but the cost . . .

Honestly, I am going to have to read this novel again. Swanwick has a tendency to jump around, and it's not that it's poorly done, it's just sometimes difficult to follow. I'm sure I missed things, and the quality of this story is so great, that I want to make sure I catch every last detail.

Fans of fantasy, steampunk and fairy stories in general will adore this book. It's worth the investment. I borrowed the copy from a friend, and have since gone out and purchased my own. I don't want to share it!

Happy Reading!

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful, challenging, and useful book, June 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Paperback)

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.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It was only a Dream...not really, January 1, 1998

By 

Ann W. Unemori (Savannah, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Paperback)

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*.