Customer Reviews

Tooth and Claw

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some fantasy novels are epic, with rich plot lines, multiple characters on a quest to save the world from some hidden magic or powerful being. These books can be a lot of fun and very interesting, though often the plot overshadows the characters. Other fantasy novels are light and fluffy comedies where nothing much happens but they make you laugh your tail off.

Finally, there are those fantasy novels that really defy description. Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton. As the dust jacket says, this is a novel that is based on the Victorian novels of Anthony Trollope. Walton takes the Victorian setting, and gives it huge twist: all of the characters are dragons. Yes, that's right. Fire-breathing (though not all of them do) lizards that can fly (though not all of them can). And, most importantly, proper fire-breathing dragons who have formed a society based on class structure, money (especially gold and treasure) and arranged marriage. Walton takes this concept and writes an intriguing story of family honour and love. It's a real treat to read.

The plot description doesn't sound very interesting. I think that's because this sort of plot usually does nothing for me. It does sound rather dull, doesn't it? I would not have read this book if I hadn't both received this as a review copy and been a big fan of Jo Walton. However, I'm glad I did, because I think it transcends the genre and becomes a nifty little (256 pages) novel in its own right. When I say "transcends the genre," I'm speaking as somebody who has not read any Victorian fiction, so Walton may be way off in her homage. However, Walton is good enough that I trust she hit it pretty good.

The conceit that dragons are living in a Victorian-style society is simply a wonderful concept that Walton does a lot with. She adds the proper-sounding customs and traditions (dowries, arranged marriages, family honour and the like), and then mixes that with touches of her own (the eating of the dead to make the rest of the family stronger, the binding of servants' wings so that they can't fly away and the ritual binding of the wings for religious figures) that simply add to the fantasy element but still blends favourably with the Victorian style. Every once in a while, you forget that you're reading a book about dragons, and then Walton will mention something about wings, flying, or the size of the dragons and you'll remember that she's talking about beasts that can reach up to 40 feet long.

Walton tells the tale with the gentleness and humour that, I imagine, most Victorian novels have. Her prose is again wonderful, making the genre conventions her own and putting her own spin on them. At times, the narrator of the piece intercedes to speak directly to the reader (something else that may be a genre technique, though I don't know), bringing a humour aside or clarifying a point that the reader may have missed. I thought this would be distracting, but it doesn't turn out to be. I would call the whole style of the book "pleasant." There are a couple of deaths, but only one through violence and even that is not vividly described. Thus, it is not a page-turner, and you have to lose yourself in the writing or already be a fan of this type of story in order to make it through. If this style bores you and you find you're not entranced by Walton's evocative writing, then even 256 pages will seem too long.

I haven't said anything about the characters yet, and that's mostly because there isn't a whole lot to say. They fit what I imagine are the genre character roles they are supposed to fit: women who are either looking for their place in society or who have already married and found their place, men who are either conceited in their status or just trying to make their way in the world as well as find a suitable woman to marry and have a clutch of dragonets with, servants who try not to be noticed (or, in the case of Daverak's servants, eaten), and local religious figures who are either soft and noble (Penn) or pushy and arrogant (Blessed Frelt). Walton does a great job with all of these characters, making us care about them and letting them stretch the bonds of their Victorian roles without losing the basics of them.

There is nothing deep or meaningful about Tooth and Claw, and nothing earth-shattering in its presentation. Instead, we get a delightful story that reminds us of old times, washing over us with a feeling of nostalgia and a quieter time. If you're a fan of Victorian novels, you'll probably like this one despite the fact it's about dragons. However, I don't think the reverse is true. I don't feel myself drawn to any other stories like this, and it's Walton's ability to bring me into the fold that makes this book a standout.

David Roy

Scheming clergymen. Heartfelt do-gooders. Social-climbing petty nobility. And they're all scaly, semi-bipedal, twenty-plus-foot-long dragons.

I ordinarily despise fantasy tropes such as dragons, the Good/Wee/Seelie folk and the like. I'm not even sure what led me to pick up this book in the first place--maybe the fact that Ms. Walton won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, maybe the Jane Yolen blurb on the back. But good heavens, I'm certainly glad I did.

Walton's spot-on narrative style captures the things I love best about comedies of manners, whether penned by Jane Austen or Lois McMaster Bujold. Without once becoming mired in exposition, she deftly portrays a society at once wholly alien and wholly familiar. The customs may be different, the players reptilian, but the drives and conflicts and personalities ring wonderfully true. The plot is deliciously complex, every strand woven skilfully into a lip-smackingly satisfying denouement.

Thank you, Ms. Walton, for this incredibly enjoyable read! And thank you for not ending on a cliffhanger and signaling the beginning of an interminable series... though I would, very much, like to read some more about the dragons of Agornin and their friends and foes someday. Please?

I hadn't planned on reading this book, I was actually looking for something by Elizabeth Moon, and due to the fact that my local bookstore employees have a terrible time properly alphabetizing the books they sell, I came across Tooth and Claw. I am delighted I did, another reviewer has mentioned the fact that on the surface the story seems rather dull, but Ms Walton has done a wonderful job blending the Victorian novel with fantastical elements, primarily dragons. Dragons who are as conceited, egotistical cruel, kind, loving, caring beings, who just happen to eat their dead and the weak.

This book was a delight. I love Austen, Trollope, and Heyer, and I also love good fantasy novels. I've never read Walton before, but will now hunt up everything of hers that I can find -- On a basic level, Tooth and Claw works much the same way that Watership Down worked. It doesn't matter that the characters are dragons, not humans. They are perfectly believable. Walton's writing is sharp, funny, and addictive. The Austen-like mores & social politics make a perfect kind of sense for the dragons in Walton's book. Social rituals and courtesies are crucial in a society where larger dragons might otherwise eat smaller, weaker dragons. This is definitely one of the strangest books that I've read this year, but it's also one of my favorites. Highly recommended for anyone who loved the books of Austen, or Heyer (or Laurie Colwin's more contemporary novels, for that matter), and wishes that someone was still writing social comedies that were just as sharp and just as pleasurable.

Tooth and Claw is something quite different to Jo Walton's first three novels -- it is a fantasy set in a world in which dragons are real. Its plot is based on Anthony Trollope -- specifically Framley Parsonage. With the details of dragon physiology and culture cleverly molded to fit the Trollopian view of Victorian England.

One lack in Walton's first novels is wit, and any sense of lightness. To be sure the novels are all to an extent tragic in outlook. At the same time, though, Walton seems so immersed in her imagined world that she doesn't want to play with it at all -- the books are quite earnest in tone, often a bit too earnest, or even ponderous. But Tooth and Claw, happily, is abundantly witty.

The novel opens as the old dragon Bon Agornin is dying. His son Penn, a clergydragon, hears his confession -- which is controversial according to Penn's religion. (It harks of the Old Religion -- setting up a conflict analogous to Victorian Era attitudes of Anglicanism towards Catholicism (and possibly a bit towards Methodism and other dissenting sects).) Bon's confession includes a shameful secret about his rise from a poor dragon to wealth and relative social standing. Then Bon dies, and his body is divided according to tradition, with his heirs each eating a portion. It seems that dragon meat is magically useful to dragons, allowing them to grow and thrive. However, against Bon's apparent wishes, his son-in-law, the Illustrious Daverak (equivalent to perhaps an Earl?), takes a large portion for himself and for his dragonets. This enrages Penn and his younger sisters and brother, and sets in play the main motivating force of the plot -- a lawsuit that Penn's brother will bring against Daverak.

Bon Agornin's children are the already mentioned Penn, Daverak's wife Berend, another son, Avan, who is establishing himself a position in the Civil Service, and two maiden daughters, Selendra and Haner. Penn has a living with a very high ranking dragon family, the Benandis. He is able to take in one sister, Selendra; but Haner must go live with the unpleasant Daverak. Daverak's bad nature consists of such things as abusing his traditional right to cull weaker dragons (for their meat), forcing his wife to get pregnant too often -- which can fatally weaken a female dragon, and mistreating his servants. This then is Haner's problem. Selendra's conflict is that her virtue is compromised by an oily clergydragon -- leaving it possible that she will not be able to get pregnant. Then it seems that the young Exalted Benandi (a Marquis?) is falling for her -- very much against the wishes of his stuck-up dowager mother. And Avan, back in the capitol city, has a live-in lover who has a couple of important and dangerous secrets of her own.

It all works out with the precise unwinding of the plot of a Victorian novel -- and in quite satisfying fashion. The real delights of the novel are the affectionately portrayed characters, the great fun Walton has mapping dragon physiology to her plot needs, and the wit. And small things like the offhand revelation of the origin of the name Yarge, which applies to the soft-skinned bipeds with whom the dragons have historically warred. I enjoyed Tooth and Claw as much as any novel I've read recently. It won the World Fantasy Award -- an award I am happy to endorse.

Bon Agornin, patriarch of a well-off family, is on his death bed. His family has gathered around him, including his oldest son Penn, who is a country parson, and Avan, the younger brother who is making his way up in the bureaucracy of the capital city. Also there are his unmarried daughters Haner and Selendra, and oldest daughter Berend, who is married to Daverak, a young nobleman. When Daverak claims a large part of Bon's wealth, a complex family drama starts, involving an inheritance battle and the search for suitable matches for the young daughters.
So far, fairly standard plotting for a Jane Austen novel. The twist here is that every character in this novel is a dragon, and the wealth of the dying dragon doesn't only include his hoard of gold but also the flesh of his body, which dragon children traditionally eat to grow in strength.
When I read the reviews for this novel, I couldn't have been less excited. First of all, I try to avoid fantasy with dragons (because I think they are the oldest cliche in the book), and secondly, it sounded way too gimmicky.
However, I was pleasantly surprised. The novel is expertly written in the Victorian style, including third person omniscient POV with the occasional authorial side-step ("Dear reader, at this point you are probably surprised by..." and so on). Aside from a strange fondness for run-on sentences, Walton does a great job impersonating Jane Austen. She also paints a realistic dragon society (yes, I know), including religion, social values, and even some social upheaval on the horizon. After a few chapters, it somehow seems normal to be reading Pride and Prejudice with dragons. To my surprise, I ended up enjoying this novel tremendously.

I don't know whether to like or hate this book. When I saw it at the local library, I knew immediately I had to read it; I'm a sucker for books about animals, and for fantasy, and a fantasy about sort-of animals was just the thing that made my (night).

However, the first few pages into this novel, there was a rather strange feeling inside my head that I didn't like. It was actually sleep and insomnia mixing together; but it also had something to do with the writing style itself. Not that it used bad grammar or anything of that sort (there were some problems with the commas, but I chose to ignore that), but it was the voice itself. It seemed to be explaining a lot of things without the details that I would have liked to see. And it was the constant explaining that made it quite tedious to read.

Nevertheless, it wasn't bad enough to deter me, so I kept at it (the next day). As I soon found, this book is actually quite entertaining, although I was disappointed to find that again, the action did not occure 'close-up', but more in terms of explaining and reasoning. The constant shifting of the characters was also difficult to contend with (although I understand this is required of such a book). Instead of feeling 'in-tune' with the Dragons and their world, therefore, I felt more distant, as if something was happening in front of me but I was and could never be part of it. That was the kind of feeling I had, actually, while reading the whole thing.

Still, if you can brave through these probably minor flaws, this book is pleasing, with plenty of humor thrown in (perhaps unintentionally; but it worked well). Although the characters did not come off as deep or quite believable, there were a few whose actions and dialogue brought a smile to my face. I guess not every book can be perfect. Give this one a try, and if it's your sort of thing (or even if it's not but you can tolerate it), it should be a worthwhile read. I was satisfied when I finished it. It won't come off as the best read I've had this year, but I was satisfied when I finished it, and that's pretty good compared to the pile of crap I've read the past few months...

Never has the reality and result of class distinctions been laid so graphically bare as in this sparkling bit of froth. The father dies. One of his sons, a parson, comforts him by hearing his confession in a rite no longer sanctioned by the church. His married daughter defers to her husband who greedily takes a share promised to her siblings. The younger brother decides to go to law over it; he's not yet established in life and needed his father's inheritance. He's aware that his parson brother and younger sisters would be shocked by his personal life in the capital. One of the younger sisters becomes interested in the plight of the lower classes; the other has a troubled love life.

They are all dragons; they sleep on gold; they eat their kin when they die because only by cannibalism can dragons grow. The upper classes eat the lower classes whose wings are bound so they can't fly. This is a book for confirmed fantasy readers who will be able to take this sparkling satire raw. It's not for the squeamish, but it is pure delight.

As with the best Victorian novels, this story grows on you gradually. I was surprised to find myself drawn so throughly and vividly into this hybrid universe. Walton's writing is light and taut, understated but gripping.

This is one of the few books I have ever read in my life where, immediately upon finishing it, I turned right back to the beginning and read it all over again. There are some truly memorable characters in this book. Their dragon nature is very much part of the story -- it's not just a stunt, telling a story that could easily have been done with human characters. Applause to the author for a truly original work, a joy to read (and reread).

I would like to add: If an animated film is ever made of this story, it would be wrong not to beg Stephen Fry to provide the voice of Daverak.