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Jamethiel_bane's Reviews > The Iron Dragon's Daughter
The Iron Dragon's Daughter (The Iron Dragon's Daughter #1)
by
by
Faerie cyberpunk. Jane is a changeling, working as slave labour in the dragon factory. Her life is planned out for her, and it's not particularly pleasant path. Then she meets an iron dragon, and decides to rebel.
This is a FANTASTIC book. The world is incredibly detailed and very well thought out.
The only trouble is, it's about two books in one. We start off with Jane in childhood, and go through to her adulthood. Jane is wonderful. Smart, stubborn, not always especially moral and very, very angry.
SPOILERS
There is sex in this book. Jane has sex and enjoys it and doesn't get punished for it (other than having guys who she doesn't particularly WANT a lengthy relationship with hanging round. And that happens!). Some will see it as nihilistic and it's certainly very dark. She doesn't treat people well. She actually kills some blameless people to give her the means to escape. It's calculated, as well. It's certainly acknowledged as being morally wrong and Jane does feel guilty, but like most survivors she has the attitude of "I will think about that later".
However, I found a theme of--dark hope, or acknowledgement of the human-ness of anger and defiance. Jane is trapped and stuck and she enjoys herself along the way, but she's always angry about it. And come the penultimate part of the book, in the Spiral Castle where she could very easily acquiesce and say "No, you're right, I'm nothing and I submit." she doesn't. She sticks her chin up and says "NEVER", fully expecting to be annhiliated.
If you take the penultimate part of the book as the ending, it's actually a pretty powerful atheist statement. That anthropomorphising the cosmos is useless because it doesn't care about us. This rather bleak message is undermined by the very end.
The ending is something that almost subverts the message of the entire book. The book is about--surviving, muddling through. Doing the best you can in a world which doesn't give you rules and has no purpose. But we see recurring characters in Jane's life. The same souls turn up again and again. The "goddess" in the spiral castle actually explicitly says that they're part of Jane's purpose and she just disregards them.
The final part of the book reinforces that an individual's destiny is largely what they make of it themselves, but that other people and our treatment of them is the most important thing. It's gorgeous writing on from Swanwick, to see things that are foreshadowed and take forever to build up fall into place in the final chapter.
In conclusion, a fantastic book. Highly recommended.
This is a FANTASTIC book. The world is incredibly detailed and very well thought out.
The only trouble is, it's about two books in one. We start off with Jane in childhood, and go through to her adulthood. Jane is wonderful. Smart, stubborn, not always especially moral and very, very angry.
SPOILERS
There is sex in this book. Jane has sex and enjoys it and doesn't get punished for it (other than having guys who she doesn't particularly WANT a lengthy relationship with hanging round. And that happens!). Some will see it as nihilistic and it's certainly very dark. She doesn't treat people well. She actually kills some blameless people to give her the means to escape. It's calculated, as well. It's certainly acknowledged as being morally wrong and Jane does feel guilty, but like most survivors she has the attitude of "I will think about that later".
However, I found a theme of--dark hope, or acknowledgement of the human-ness of anger and defiance. Jane is trapped and stuck and she enjoys herself along the way, but she's always angry about it. And come the penultimate part of the book, in the Spiral Castle where she could very easily acquiesce and say "No, you're right, I'm nothing and I submit." she doesn't. She sticks her chin up and says "NEVER", fully expecting to be annhiliated.
If you take the penultimate part of the book as the ending, it's actually a pretty powerful atheist statement. That anthropomorphising the cosmos is useless because it doesn't care about us. This rather bleak message is undermined by the very end.
The ending is something that almost subverts the message of the entire book. The book is about--surviving, muddling through. Doing the best you can in a world which doesn't give you rules and has no purpose. But we see recurring characters in Jane's life. The same souls turn up again and again. The "goddess" in the spiral castle actually explicitly says that they're part of Jane's purpose and she just disregards them.
The final part of the book reinforces that an individual's destiny is largely what they make of it themselves, but that other people and our treatment of them is the most important thing. It's gorgeous writing on from Swanwick, to see things that are foreshadowed and take forever to build up fall into place in the final chapter.
In conclusion, a fantastic book. Highly recommended.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
August 1, 2002
–
Finished Reading
February 18, 2008
– Shelved
