I initially read and finished this book at the age of 13 (I'm now 28) on the car ride home from a trip a few states away. As soon as I got home I went out with a friend and got into an accident resulting in a severe head concussion. I've spent my time since then with incredibly bizarre partial memories of happenings in this book and up until a few weeks ago had not tracked down and reread the book to make any sense of it.
Let me tell you... this book is a terrible book to have fragments of floating around in your brain. At first glance you pick up the book and read the back. You'd think to yourself "Oh great. This sounds wonderful". You'd think the story is about a young girl in an incredible fantasy land stuck as a slave in a factory creating magical beasts of iron while always dreaming of escape. You'd think she makes lots of friends and meets some shady characters and maybe by the end she might escape this nightmare of a factory.
You'd be wrong.
The back of the books covers roughly the first 4 out of 24(?) chapters. After the fourth chapter the book takes a radical turn where the reader is trust into an even more dangerous and adult fantasy universe. You travel with the character Jane as she learns about the world and builds her own experiences maturing into an adult. Along this experience she encounters many men, wild sexual adventures, magic, drug and substance abuse, and people out to get her or use her for their own misdeeds. After finishing the book I was pretty blown away at how perverse and adult the themes of the book are for something I read before gaining any of those particular experiences of my own. From what I remember of the book felt very dark and negative. It was truly shocking and disgusting in ways and my memories are very sickening.
As an adult rereading the book I actually felt much different. I would think that due to the important years of early "growing up" I did between the first and the last read I've come to a much better understanding of who this girl is. It felt much less shocking and much less sick. Even as an adult a lot of the events Jane goes through and decisions she makes are extreme and often lewd, but the story the author is telling is very real. It covers a lot of emotional dilemmas children face when learning about the harsh cruelties of the world and gaining experience from making mistakes or "bad" decisions. I really like how the book is written in that not everything is blatantly explained outright. Often times you meet characters or creatures that are explained by name only and you're left to piece together your thoughts on that creature. The story never leads anywhere you think it's going to and staying ahead of what happening is nearly impossible. I felt the pacing was well done as any time things become close to be boring, something else happens and everything changes. She's in a factory, in the outer parts of a city, goes to college, witnesses a catastrophic event, and sees the beyond. The twist is hardly original, but it wraps the book up better then anything else anyone could think of I think.
If you like dark and original tales and don't mind smut or substance abuse I would imagine you'd like this book. It will take you places you've never thought of before and you'll meet very memorable and often twisted characters. It's a story about life, living, learning, and making bad mistake after bad mistake.
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Dark, fast-moving fantasy, but for what audience?
There was a time, back in the early Seventies when I was in high school, when I read Tolkien, and then lots of other fantasy, including Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter), Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, James Branch Cabell, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, and all of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser I could find. Stories about dragons, elves, and dwarves haven't been my thing since then, and neither am I a reader of young adult fiction. The only reason I read this book is that I recently discovered Michael Swanwick, and consider him to be one of the best SF/fantasy writers alive today.It is of course incredibly well written, and fast-paced. I enjoyed it, but not as much as "Stations of the Tide." I can't figure out who the audience is for a twisted young adult story that includes very adult elements, and a fantasy world with typical inhabitants (dragons, elves, dwarves, and many others) that are all seen through a horrifying vision, "through a glass, darkly." It is a world much more like our "all too human" world than an idyllic, pastoral setting. Of course by now "Game of Thrones" has popularized that idea! But Swanwick's mise en scène is not medieval, but rather modern -- technology and magick are intertwined and combined.Swanwick created a strong female protagonist in Jane. None of the other characters are very well-developed, and they are about equally balanced between female and male. One of the things about his industrial faery world that I quite enjoyed is that machines are alive -- it's an animist cosmology. This includes the mechanical dragons, one of which features centrally in the plot, but other more mundane machines as well. As we approach the dramatic dénouement, Jane needs to find an elevator: "The passenger elevators had all been drawn by the heat to the burning floors like moths to a candle. But the freight elevators were simpler creatures, operated manually. Jane commandeered one" (392).There are a couple of places where characters channel voices from our world. A troll at one point utters a string of gibberish that includes: "The Cold War is over. We stand at the dawn of a New World Order... "...drawing a line in the sand. The vision thing... To sum it up in one word, it's jobs! (356). I suspect that younger readers may not recognize (they certainly can't remember) George H.W. Bush (41) as the source.Like me, you may not ordinarily read young adult fiction or stories about dragons and elves, but with the caveat that there is an abundance of sex and a fair amount of drugs, I recommend "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" to those who value scintillating imagination and superb writing.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2015
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2020
It is of course incredibly well written, and fast-paced. I enjoyed it, but not as much as "Stations of the Tide." I can't figure out who the audience is for a twisted young adult story that includes very adult elements, and a fantasy world with typical inhabitants (dragons, elves, dwarves, and many others) that are all seen through a horrifying vision, "through a glass, darkly." It is a world much more like our "all too human" world than an idyllic, pastoral setting. Of course by now "Game of Thrones" has popularized that idea! But Swanwick's mise en scène is not medieval, but rather modern -- technology and magick are intertwined and combined.
Swanwick created a strong female protagonist in Jane. None of the other characters are very well-developed, and they are about equally balanced between female and male. One of the things about his industrial faery world that I quite enjoyed is that machines are alive -- it's an animist cosmology. This includes the mechanical dragons, one of which features centrally in the plot, but other more mundane machines as well. As we approach the dramatic dénouement, Jane needs to find an elevator: "The passenger elevators had all been drawn by the heat to the burning floors like moths to a candle. But the freight elevators were simpler creatures, operated manually. Jane commandeered one" (392).
There are a couple of places where characters channel voices from our world. A troll at one point utters a string of gibberish that includes: "The Cold War is over. We stand at the dawn of a New World Order... "...drawing a line in the sand. The vision thing... To sum it up in one word, it's jobs! (356). I suspect that younger readers may not recognize (they certainly can't remember) George H.W. Bush (41) as the source.
Like me, you may not ordinarily read young adult fiction or stories about dragons and elves, but with the caveat that there is an abundance of sex and a fair amount of drugs, I recommend "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" to those who value scintillating imagination and superb writing.
Dark, fast-moving fantasy, but for what audience?
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2020
There was a time, back in the early Seventies when I was in high school, when I read Tolkien, and then lots of other fantasy, including Lord Dunsany (The King of Elfland's Daughter), Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, James Branch Cabell, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, and all of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser I could find. Stories about dragons, elves, and dwarves haven't been my thing since then, and neither am I a reader of young adult fiction. The only reason I read this book is that I recently discovered Michael Swanwick, and consider him to be one of the best SF/fantasy writers alive today.Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2020
It is of course incredibly well written, and fast-paced. I enjoyed it, but not as much as "Stations of the Tide." I can't figure out who the audience is for a twisted young adult story that includes very adult elements, and a fantasy world with typical inhabitants (dragons, elves, dwarves, and many others) that are all seen through a horrifying vision, "through a glass, darkly." It is a world much more like our "all too human" world than an idyllic, pastoral setting. Of course by now "Game of Thrones" has popularized that idea! But Swanwick's mise en scène is not medieval, but rather modern -- technology and magick are intertwined and combined.
Swanwick created a strong female protagonist in Jane. None of the other characters are very well-developed, and they are about equally balanced between female and male. One of the things about his industrial faery world that I quite enjoyed is that machines are alive -- it's an animist cosmology. This includes the mechanical dragons, one of which features centrally in the plot, but other more mundane machines as well. As we approach the dramatic dénouement, Jane needs to find an elevator: "The passenger elevators had all been drawn by the heat to the burning floors like moths to a candle. But the freight elevators were simpler creatures, operated manually. Jane commandeered one" (392).
There are a couple of places where characters channel voices from our world. A troll at one point utters a string of gibberish that includes: "The Cold War is over. We stand at the dawn of a New World Order... "...drawing a line in the sand. The vision thing... To sum it up in one word, it's jobs! (356). I suspect that younger readers may not recognize (they certainly can't remember) George H.W. Bush (41) as the source.
Like me, you may not ordinarily read young adult fiction or stories about dragons and elves, but with the caveat that there is an abundance of sex and a fair amount of drugs, I recommend "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" to those who value scintillating imagination and superb writing.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2016
Top reviews from other countries
JustAGuy
Horrible world building and nonsense plot
Reviewed in Canada on February 7, 2021
nsm
The worst book I have ever read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 19, 2013