Tooth and Claw (2003)

I died and went to heaven with this book. Victorian pastiche with dragons. What's not to love?

The plot revolves around the family of Bon, an older dragon who has raised himself from humble beginnings. At the beginning of the book, he is on his deathbed and subsequently dies, causing a rift with his children and his son in law over his inheritance. With lawyers, trains, jobs in the city, fallen women, family tensions, and the all importance of millenary, I sometimes forgot I was reading about dragons. However, in this society, the strong literally eat the weak, so the characters' worries can be life or death.

The ending was a little weak, it seemed to step away from the perfect Victorian pastiche of the earlier chapters. But having said that, plot wise it was very satisfying. ( )

Tooth and Claw is a Jane Austen-ish tale, of maidens with slightly compromised virtue, inheritances, betrothals, law suits... Except, all those involved? They're dragons. I really enjoyed how Jo Walton handled this aspect: she sets up a whole culture for the dragons, with plenty of history in the background -- not detailed so that it drags down the plot, which is very much about the present, but enough to feel real.

I have to confess, when I first started reading it, I didn't get into it very much. I picked it back up tonight, though, and read the last two thirds of it all in one go, giggling in the appropriate places and squirming on the edge of my seat, wondering how things could possibly turn out alright.

It's fun. It's inventive. It has characters you can get to care about -- I think my favourite is Sher: he seems so basically good, despite his flightiness initially, and he comes to care so much about Selendra.

My only quibble is in that something, whatever it was, in the first third that failed to catch my attention. And, I suppose, how much Jo Walton crammed in here that she didn't really get to examine in the detail I would have been interested in: the issues of the enslaved dragons, the foreign dragons, and the True Believers.

On further thought, that is just like Jane Austen, though, e.g. the light mention of the slave trade in Mansfield Park. ( )

Jo Walton is a wicked clever writer. This book has a plot reminiscent of Trollope (both the Trollope of Barsetshire and the Trollope of He Knew He Was Right, though some of the domestic scenarios almost smack of Compton-Burnett), with Dickensian social commentary and deeply human characters--who are dragons. Wheee! Plenty of fun from the fantasy angle, but there's more to it than that; what do we calmly accept that might seem as beastly (if not downright monstrous) to an outside observer as some of these dragonish practices do to us? There's plenty of, ahem, food for thought here.

This was one of my Next Five Reads from the Seattle Public Library and it was an excellent pick. ( )

I don’t have too much to say about this one, because I loved it! Jo Walton is pretty much always great. Here she writes a Victorian novel of manners (AND, I was SO happy, this really is Victorian, not Austenesque!) whose main characters are dragons. Also, brilliant use of Tennyson. ( )

Weird, weird book. Not your usual dragon story, that's for sure. ( )