I have read a lot of Swanwick and enjoyed it variably. I think he
comes up with fantastic setups and fantastic events to follow them
and then, some of the time, fantastic excuses to avoid wrapping his
story up in any kind of resolution.
_The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ went that way; it was vivid and
overwhelming and I still have no idea what happened in it.
_The Dragons of Babel_ is vivid and overwhelming and totally
satisfying at the end. It's got all of Swanwick's *sneakiness* (and he
is a sneaky bastard) but he has it harnessed to making the book go.
(I now have painful visions of Swanwick reading this post and saying
"Yeah, I *thought* this was my least interesting and clever book, and
now I have proof." I struggle forward in the face of my fears.)
Will is an orphan in the chaotic, modern Elfland which Swanwick first
introduced in _Iron Dragon_. He lives in a country village... until
one day a dragon crashes nearby, brought down by a ground-to-air
basilisk. The dragon hauls itself into town and declares itself king
until it can be repaired. And it grabs Will -- whose part-mortal
genes make him tolerant of iron machinery -- to be its liaison,
slave, mouthpiece, what-have-you.
It is only a small spoiler to say that the dragon is eliminated within
thirty pages, because that's not what the book is about. Will finds
that he's an ex-collaborator in a village menaced by war; his old life
is not available for the retaking. So he walks away, and what this
book is about is Will trying to invent a new story for himself.
I think everything else I have to say is a big spoiler.
** SPOILERS **
_The Dragons of Babel_ is a series of episodes, and each episode
starts out as a story -- and then collapses. Will is a dragon-slayer;
no, he's reviled and driven out. He's a refugee in a prison camp; but
his attempts to be honorable and protect people are thoughtlessly
savaged. He's a hero of an underground revolution; no, it's wiped
away. He's a daring thief and rogue; no, he's a pawn and the woman he
loves (in the most classic meet-cute-thief imaginable!) ditches him
like garbage.
Halfway through I came up with the term "anti-stories" for what was
going on, and by the end I was sure of it. Swanwick is (I am sure)
consciously pulling up story-pattern after story-pattern, and then
subverting each one with the thoughtless, heartless, or soulless
cruelty of Elfland. The people Will meets are not his fated friends,
lovers, parent-figures; they are fay.
--------
Will stared up at her, awestruck. The young woman in the saddle was
all grace and athleticism. [...]
She was glorious.
The rider glanced casually down and to the side and saw Will gawking.
She drew back on the reins so that her beast reared up and for an
instant seemed to stall in midair. Then she took the reins between
her teeth and with one hand yanked down her halter top, exposing her
breasts. With the other hand, she flipped him the finger.
Then, jeering, she seized the reins again, pulled up her top, and
was gone.
--------
And this whole mess, Will's search for self-justification, only turns
around when he starts *making* his own story. (I won't spoil that
bit.)
I'm pretty sure that Swanwick is drawing mortality as the key
distinction: Will's heritage is from *our* world, unnamed though it is
in this book, and *we* are the storytellers. *We're* the ones who
believe in love and happy endings and the bildungsroman as a form of
novel. The world Will lives in isn't shaped to give him those things,
but he is still able to create them for that world -- because (and
yes, I think Swanwick is being exactly this meta) _The Dragons of
Babel_ written by a mortal for mortal readers. Will has the capacity
to play Swanwick.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
*
9/11 did change everything. Since 9/12, the biggest threat to American
society has been the American president. I'd call that a change.
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