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Michael Swanwick "The Dragons of Babel"
Posted on 2010-03-15
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More The Dragons of Babel The Dragons of Babel (Tom Doherty Associates Book) By Michael Swanwick * Publisher: Tor Books * Number Of Pages: 320 * Publication Date: 2008-01-08 * ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0765319500 * ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780765319500 Product Description: A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner! A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think. Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel -- infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City -- Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love–a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form. Summary: What's happening???? Rating: 1 You would think the beginning of the book would hook you in and keep you there--but it doesn't. I became so sick of the book--so sick of the writing style, his distasteful sexual jokes especially concerning pre-pubescent boys, and the complete unfamiliarity of time, place and situation. I'd give a better review, but after getting as far as I could.. I had to put it down, and it was truly freedom to be rid of this book. It's like a book written in a different language, and then poorly translated so you're not sure if what you're reading is correct because it doesn't seem to make sense, and you just lose the plot of the book--if I ever knew there really was one. The summary on the inner flap of the book is complete BS and definitely makes the book sound more simple and entertaining than it really is. Summary: "A train whistle at night means the same thing in all langusges." Rating: 5 Swanwick is certinly one of the most original fantasists working today, and _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ was perhaps his best (even though the evangelicals loudly denounced it). This one, while not actually a sequel, is set in the same world, which is a mish-mash of modern America and Faerie. You know you're there when the centaurs carry assault weapons, a high elf rides a Vespa, the haints play reggae, the royal palace includes rooms designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Cabinet of Curiosities displays both a stuffed capricorn and a Soyuz spacecraft. Will Le Fey is a young orphan subsisting in a rural village which is just trying to keep its collective head down while the endless war between East and West rages on. Then a war dragon (sentient, but with a half-human pilot) crashes and takes over the village for its own survival -- and appoints Will its lieutenant. When the dragon is killed (more or less), Will is forced out . . . and so begins a series of adventures in the classic pauper-to-prince picaresque tradition, from refugee camp to the tutelage of a master con man (keep an eye on him), to a period as an underground rebel leader, to his attempt to pass himself off as the lost heir of His Absent Majesty. (And, of course, there's more to the scam than he knows.) For all his occasional naivete, Will has innate cunning -- although when he tries to win the heart and hand of his True Love, who happens to be one of the ruling elite in the towering city of Babel (or maybe Babylon), the reader knows it won't be a sure thing. Swanwick's patented tongue-in-cheek cynicism and ability to make even temporary secondary characters interesting will keep you reading far into the night. Summary: Intriguing mix of the familiar and the strange... Rating: 4 This (20thC.)techno/non-Victorian steam-punk-ish fantasy has squadrons of mechanical dragons flown by half-fey/half-mortal pilots (pure fey could not stand the iron the dragons are made of) that rumble over-head fighting the aerial battles of the war plaguing the land. Young, orphaned Will becomes the servant of a wounded but still powerful dragon that happens to crash in his small village and declares himself King. What follows is a strange and picaresque adventure that goes way beyond the dragon and the small village of Will's youth and follows him through a very bizarre fairyland as he is exiled from the village, becomes a refugee from the war, meets up with Esme who is a perpetual child and Nat Whilk, a confidence man extreme. He finds his way to the great City of Babel where more adventures ensue, underground with rebel armies and above in the warrens of the city streets with its local politicians and neighborhoods and far above at the dissolute entertainments of the powerful High Elf families. Will is a little shallowly drawn as a character. Things happen to him, but it's hard to know what he's really thinking. He reacts rather than thinks and plans. But despite many questionable actions, he seems basically sympathetic and at least not horribly evil or corrupt, and his adventures are certainly fascinating given this gritty, strange contemporary-cum-magical world. When a plot finally is revealed, it's somewhat of a standard fantasy trope, yet the world-building keeps it from being a disappointment. Many episodes were not tied up at all, but again, this helped keep this tale from falling into something completely expected. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed this tale, but it was intriguing and memorable. It did leave me wanting to read more! Summary: Uhhh.....whoah? Rating: 4 First off, I picked this book up having never heard of the author and knowing nothing about it. Saw it at the library, thought the cover and title were cool and left. Basically, you've got a very strange fantasy world here...it's almost like Final Fantasy Universe meets the Bible meets the Fifth Element meets....I dunno what else. It's very dark, fairly comedic and very strange. There are dragons...but they're giant machines but still seem to have personalities. Babel seems like a fascinating city reminiscent of the huge megalopoli from games like Final Fantasy 7. The characters are pretty good, but honestly the main character is unfortunately the weakest. I had to give it 4 stars because it seemed a bit too ambitious for its length and there was a bit too much sex (words like "cock" are used, etc etc). It's not that I'm offended by sex in books, its just that, well...I wasn't ready for it in a fantasy novel. I suppose it worked though. If you go into this without preconceptions and you like edgy fantasy, give it a shot. I know I'll be checking out more by this guy. I hear he's won several Hugo awards. Summary: Weird and flawed but powerful for all that Rating: 5 He's just a country boy, living in a small village after his parents are killed by the war. But when a dragon crashes nearby and decides to make himself king of the village, Will Le Fey gets drafted as the voice of the dragon. That role gives him a certain amount of power, but it also earns him the hatred of everyone in town--and when his best friend decides to lead a resistance movement, Will finds himself in a no-win situation. When war extends across the land, Will and many others become refugees, finally making his way to Babel, the left of the Empire. There he falls in with confidence men and dreamers--and becomes the catspaw for a clever scheme to take advantage of the absent king and place him in the position of pretender--with all of the financial benefits that might create. Author Michael Swanwick creates a powerful world, where technology and magic coexist, where pointless war is waged over forgotten slights, and where the ruling elite parties, indulges in casual sin, and where both the mob and the elite dream of a return of the absent king--for very different reasons. It's hard not to draw parallels between Swanwick's fantasy world and the world in which we live (Babel's library has stone lions out front, and Will dreams of crashing dragons into the great tower of Babel), and piecing through the clues to figure out exactly what Swanwick is saying about our current situation is half the fun of the story. Will has vowed revenge for the casual destruction the forces of Babel called down on his home, but the world seems uninterested in his vows, conspiring to defeat his dreams at the same time as it showers new opportunities on him. Clearly Will is being manipulated. Exactly who, or what is doing that manipulation is less obvious--partly because so many forces seem intent on doing that. There are some loose ends to the story--a long section in the middle where Will serves as an underground (literally) warrior champion seems poorly integrated with the story and I expected to see more of a resolution of the issues involving ex-friend No-name, the dragon, and Esme. Still, THE DRAGONS OF BABEL has a real power to it--the story sucked me in, made me think, and held my interest. It's a different kind of story, but it's hard to put down.
Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123 |
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