The Dragons of Babel (Tom Doherty Associates Books) (Hardcover)

by Michael Swanwick (Author) "The dragons came at dawn, flying low and in formation, their jets so thunderous they shook the ground like the great throbbing heartbeat of the..." (more)
Key Phrases: obsidian throne, queen mare, mortal blood, Lord Weary, Salem Toussaint, Michael Swanwick (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this triumphant return to the universe of The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1994), Hugo-winner Swanwick introduces Will le Fey, an orphan of uncertain parentage. After defeating an evil mechanical war dragon who has enslaved him and his village, Will finds himself displaced by war, first imprisoned in an internment camp and then transported to the many-miles-high city of Babel. On the way, he falls in with Esme, an immortal child with no memory, and Nat Whilk, a donkey-eared confidence man of superhuman abilities. Fusing high technology seamlessly with magic, Swanwick introduces us to a wide range of marvelous conceits, fascinating digressions and sparkling characters. His language bounces effortlessly back and forth between the high diction of elfland and thieves' argot to create a heady literary stew. This is modern fantasy at its finest and should hold great appeal for fans of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys or China Miéville's novels. (Jan.)
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From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up—An unusual combination of Faerie, postindustrial Earth, and biblical places, The Dragons of Babel will immediately capture readers' interest. A war is going on, but the "dragons" involved are part machine and part magic. One crash-lands near a Faerie village and declares itself king. Teenaged Will, part mortal, is forced to become its lieutenant and carry out its commands to the villagers, which eventually causes him to be driven out after it is killed. He is rescued by female centaurs during a battle of giants and ends up on the train to Babel accompanied by Nat Whilk and his adopted daughter, Esme. The three of them wind up in underground Babel (think New York City with a postindustrial fairy twist) where he helps the downtrodden. In a world full of every fairy imaginable (and maybe a few that aren't), Will becomes the center of Tower of Babel itself. Readers will empathize with the teenager, who is struggling to find his place in this world, and growing both in stature and knowledge, and the zany characters who accompany him. Earthy, bawdy, and often brutal, it's a story that will keep science fiction/fantasy fans involved till the end.—June H. Keuhn, Corning East High School, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765319500
• ISBN-13: 978-0765319500
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #470,250 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Weird and flawed but powerful for all that, March 9, 2008

By	booksforabuck "BooksForABuck.com" (Dallas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

6 of 6 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

By	Michael K. Smith (Gonzales, Louisiana) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars A surreal dream that doesn't quite slide into a nightmare., May 30, 2009

By	C. McCue (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Dragons of Babel (Mass Market Paperback)

I'll admit that Swanwick had me worried a few times that this dark, steampunk-flavored fairytale was going to have one of those dreadful nihilistic endings that authors of serious scifi or fantasy are prone to writing, where the protagonist finds out that his cause is hopeless, life is pain, etc., and I almost stopped reading. Nihilism gets less and less appealing to me, for some reason, as I get older. But I stuck with it and was fairly pleased and pleasantly surprised with the way it ended.

I like to describe this kind of story as 'world-based' as opposed to a 'character-based' story where I identify with and empathize with the main character. It's a twisted worldscape, peopled with highly colorful characters from a wide variety of myths, with modernity thrown in the mix. Babel could be New York City, if it had been founded by haints, elves, dwarves and a hundred other types of supernatural beings. Through the eyes of a recently arrived war refugee, Will le Fey, the reader wanders, lost and overwhelmed, trying to find sense in the chaos.

Will le Fey has a lot of the characteristics of a hero. He's clever and cunning, with a sufficient dose of both compassion and ruthlessness. He's courageous and ambitious, and makes several attempts to do big things like lead a rebellion and win his true love, but he's continually being thwarted, not because he's done anything wrong, but because the world isn't actually what he thought it was. Reality carries him along for a while, then pulls the rug out from under him, but he does achieve a kind of mixed success in the end.