The Iron Dragon's Daughter

A strange and challenging book. Apparently Michael Swanwick wrote it as a response to what he saw as a tiring over-abundance of Tolkien-inspired fantasy during the 80s and 90s that recycled the same stock tropes, and Swanwick takes those tropes in The Iron Dragon's Daughter and subverts them until what comes out the other end is a work quite unlike any other.

The plot follows Jane, a changeling girl, from her formative years in a factory constructing highly advanced, sentient dragons which function more like fighter jets with intelligence, right through her years at school and college where she studies alchemy. Throughout the story she forms this link or bond with one of these dragons - called Melanchthon - whom she learns to pair with or "pilot", with the help of a grimoire she discovers at the start of the story.

The setting is kind of like our world; shopping centres, universities and automobiles are all a part of it, but populated by various magical creatures and ruled by elves. Swanwick's story rejects any notions of a 'chosen one', 'destiny' or even any 'heroes and villains'. It is a hopeless, amoral world that Jane becomes increasingly disillusioned by as she ends up using and discarding others, using 'sex-magic' in order to both increase her own magical power and also fuel Melanchthon to aid their final, joint goal of destroying the Universe.

The writing is very good and the story takes the form of a spiral - the significance of which becomes clear later - shown by the re-appearance of characters who had seemingly died and have then returned. The ending I could see as maybe being polarising, but bear in mind that it's indicative of the nihilism which Swanwick was trying to convey with this story. Not for everyone for sure, but if you want something subversive with high-quality writing then perhaps give it a try. I appreciate what Swanwick was trying to do and the technical merits of the novel, but I don't think it will be one of my favourites.