Here, Gary Thompson <quuxa23@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Apr 4, 5:03 pm, Andrew Plotkin <erkyr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > 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.)
>
> While I quite enjoyed the _Iron Draon's Daughter_, I still regret that
> I'll never see the Neo-Dickensian fantasy the first few chapters had
> prepared me for. Glad to see he's written a sequel, but after the way
> the first ended, it's a little surprising.
No relation in character or plot. It's a separate book in the same
universe.
(But equally not what the first few chapters might lead you to
expect.)
I meant to make this point in my original post: while each of the
story-sections of the book is... sneaky... they're all enormously
*readable*. I had a great time reading this book; it's just that
every time I fell into a complacent assumption of what it was,
Swanwick tipped me out of my chair.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison
without trial, it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not
because of the Fifth Amendment.
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