This re-tread of the same world some 15 years later obviously takes place in the same universe, but uses completely different characters. This time, however, I feel that Swanwick has done justice to his ideas. The story takes off so many fantasy tropes and stories that it would be tough to enumerate them all. There's the farmboy who goes to the city and gets taken in by a con-man story. There's the victim of an oppressive dragon who is made into the oppressor of his village story. There's even an "oh, and it was all a dream" story. There's a tragic love story. But they all happen to one character, a boy named Will, who at the start of the story sees a war hit home as the remains of an Iron Dragon (a magic-powered sentient fighter-bomber analogue) lands near his village.
Unlike his previous attempt at telling a story in this milieu, however, the action starts and it then never stops, not for the 300 pages it takes to tell this story. And what a marvelous 300 pages it is! By the end of it all, you've explored a city and several fantasy stories (all twisted in the usual Swanwick fashion), and learned a lot about this world the characters live in. It's a wild, almost psychedelic romp through fantasy-land and whenever I stop I had to pause to take a breath, so it took quite some time to finish this book (that and I had to read it on paper, with no Kindle edition).
All in all, a worth-while read --- easily one of the best novels I've read this year.
4 comments:
As I cannot find it in my local library and so have to buy, would you say you need to have read the "first" novel or can it be read as a "standalone"?
BTW, bought my son Alan Moore's Future Shocks for Xmas after reading about your graphic novel blogs (its a new arena for me) and he is loving it!
Yes, Dragons of Babel can be read very well as a standalone (especially since the first novel is lackluster after the first third). I'm glad your son's enjoying Alan Moore! He's classic. Read everything he wrote you can get your hands on, that's all I can say. (Well, ok, Prometheus and Lost Girls are not for kids)
Thanks!
For the moment they have to be in Spanish though from the local library. Not the same at all.
I can understand why that would take a while. What annoys me even more is when there's a separate UK and US version of the book, because the idiot publishers think that Americans can't read a book if neighbor is spelled "neighbour".
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