Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Review: Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 05:08:35 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Murray's Mud Minions
Message-ID: <cu9hgj$538$1@rainier.uits.indiana.edu>
by Damien Sullivan

I found a paperback of Jo's fourth book in Border's last night and slurped it up, which says something right there. I liked it, and it's clever with the ideas. It's also a shorter (under 300 MMPB pages!) and I think lighter, in several senses, than the Sulien et al. books. My main criticism was that the ending felt a bit like "oops I'm running out of book". It ends up neatly, this isn't Neal Stephenson, but it felt a bit contrived.

However, that might be deliberate homage to the genre, a la Jane Eyre or something. The book is a Victorian novel about dragons, in the sense that all the characters are dragons, and their society is Victorian or Regency, (Jane Austen-like social concerns, I guess Dickensian ones too, and railroads) a blend of Jo's dragon biology, dragon psychology, and a culture picked up from "Yargeish" invaders who Conquered and Subjugated the dragons for a while before being thrown off, though they're still around on the world. It's actually not completely clear to me whether the Yarge come from offworld or are another native species; I'd guess the former, but I think I saw a line which seemed inconsistent with that.

Do my suspicions of offworldness mean this is SF masquerading as fantasy? No. There are railroads, and guns, but there's magic too.

"Is magic real?"
"Of course it is! How else could we fly, as big as we are? And why else would we grow by eating dragonflesh, but not beef or muttonwool?" (lines not exact, but close.)

I just laughed at that point, appreciating the nod to every question about how dragons do fly, as well as the clarification about their diet. (They do need to eat normal food to stay alive, but they don't grow with it.) And they do have railroads; they know enough physics to know how weird they are.

Jo, like Ken MacLeod, doesn't believe in infodumps, prologues, or appendices, so the rest of this post will have some reference information organized for those who might want it. If you'd rather experience the book freshly, go away.

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Dragon titles, for the gently born:
Majestic (ruling royalty, defunct)
Highness (royal heir, defunct)
Honorable (defunct, except for addressing judges)
Eminent
August
Exalted
Illustrious
Dignified
Respected (not a fully noble title, applies to children of Dignified and Illustrious.)

And off to the side, Blessed, for parsons. Female titles are modified forms of the male title: Exalt, Blest, Illust, Respect, Eminence. The title of an heir is one rank below that of the noble; other children have a title two ranks lower, flooring out at Respected. So the heir of an Eminent would be August, his other children would be Exalted or Exalt.

Holiness may also be a title, for the top level of the Church, but none shows up in person.

Below the gentility are common dragons, who will at least get to eat their parents, and servants, whose wings are bound and may never eat dragonflesh in their adult lives. Or at all? I'm wondering how the servant grew at all, now.

Inheriting a title is no guarantee of keeping it, if you're a small, weak, dragon who is cruncy and tastes good with ketchup. In general, dragons grow by eating dead dragons, which includes death of old age, death in combat, culled runt dragonets (baby dragons), and rarer causes. Male dragons get fire if they're big enough. Lifespans are upwards of 500 years old, though often shorter for laying females. Females start out gold, turn pink, usually permanently, when first aroused by a male, and red when they lay. Males seem to be bronze or black. Everyone turns green if they're sick enough. Males have claws, females have hands and tend to be the scribes. The probable role of females in building tools (e.g. weapons) is not really covered in the book. Neither is the probable advanced state of Yarge society after several dragon generations.