The Iron Dragon's Mother

The Iron Dragon's Daughter #3

by Michael Swanwick

A 2020 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST AND KIRKUS BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OF 2019Award-winning author Michael Swanwick returns to the gritty, post-industrial faerie world of his New York Times Notable Book The Iron Dragon’s Daughter with the standalone adventure fantasy The Iron Dragon’s Mother.Caitlin of House Sans Merci is the young half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon. Returning from her first soul-stealing raid, she discovers an unwanted hitchhiker.When Caitlin is framed for the murder of her brother, to save herself she must disappear into Industrialized Faerie, looking for the one person who can clear her.Unfortunately, the stakes are higher than she knows. Her deeds will change her world forever.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Dragons, Science Fiction Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Steampunk

360 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 25, 2019

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just finished the book [10/17/19] . I'm digesting it, and mulling over what (if anything) useful I have to add. Amazing stuff. Astounding! Fantastic! Hard fantasy with a cool SF and quantum-physics edge. Bravo! If you're a Swanwick fan, and liked the previous two "Dragon" books, you should definitely read this one. If you missed those, this isn't a direct sequel & could stand well on its own. A complex and engaging book, that I'll have to reread (at least) once more to do it justice.

Anyway, 4.5 stars or better. Not quite up to #1, better than #2. I'm going to refer you to Gary K. Wolfe, who wrote the best review I saw online: https://locusmag.com/2019/08/gary-k-w...
". . . it’s hard to accuse a fantasy world of pretentiousness when it cheerfully includes living metal dragon jet fighters along with Hello Kitty backpacks, or in which the streets of a magical underwater city are lined with Vuitton and Dolce & Gabbana shops. Swanwick first introduced us to this world with The Iron Dragon’s Daughter back in 1993 and later returned to it with The Dragons of Babel in 2008. . . .

. . . the irresistible appeal of Swanwick’s version of Faerie, along with his usual skill at drawing vividly complex and conflicted characters trying to solve a mys­tery whose stakes keep spiraling outward, lend the novel a density and texture that seems a bit surprising, considering all the fun we’re having along the way."

The book did sag a bit (for me) with some of the Raven/Trickster stuff, though Raven redeemed herself (and saved Caitlin/Cat's butt) near the end, and the coda is a bittersweet "happy" ending that would be unfair to reveal. Really, if you like challenging, twisty literary fantasy, this is the book for you. Or, go back to #1 if you missed it & maybe then jump to this one. Bon appetit!

==========Notes & earlier stuff ==========
[@p. 142]
This is the sort of book that's nearly impossible to review, except to say: "Read this. It's extraordinary!" Swanwick has truly outdone himself, in this concluding(?) volume of his "accidental trilogy."

"You will eventually emerge from these pages, but you will wish you didn't have to. You'll wish you could keep reading forever." -- Nisi Shawl, in my favorite of the 4 back-cover blurbs. All by women.
Amen!

P. 141, "The Deposition of Helen V."
"I hold in my hand a declaration of prophecy issued by the Unseely Court on the Day of the Urchin, Blood Moon, in the one hundred sixty-seventh year of the Descent of the Turbine. . . ."
Seely/Unseely = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classif...
Oh, and Tylwyth Teg = Welsh faerie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylwyth...

Tom Shippey at the WSJ finds Swanwick "The Finest World-Builder Since Tolkien"
Excerpt: 'At the heart of the Faërie universe are the iron dragons, sentient war machines in the service of Her Absent Majesty, Queen of Babylonia. The dragons carry Sidewinder and Hellfire missiles, military lasers and Gatling guns, but they also have their own personalities, cold, coiled and malicious." https://www.wsj.com/articles/science-... (paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers. But read the Locus review first.)

A good (but somewhat spoilery) interview: http://reach-unlimited.com/p/33623585...
Swanwick: "This may possibly be the first fantasy novel that includes the birth of a locomotive."
Which is actually a quite moving scene -- and shows off the MC's skills with her lignum vitae fighting staff!

Raven = trickster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickst...
I think Swanwick was using the Native American (vs. European) version:
"Native American tricksters should not be confused with the European fictional picaro. One of the most important distinctions is that "we can see in the Native American trickster an openness to life's multiplicity and paradoxes largely missing in the modern Euro-American moral tradition". In some stories the Native American trickster is foolish and other times wise. He can be a hero in one tale and a villain in the next."
And I have no clue what the Northeast Coast native trickster was/is. I'll ask Michael sometime.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice ending to a nice trilogy. Recommended.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

25 years after "The Iron Dragon's Daughter", Michael Swanwick's pioneering 'science fantasy' book about industrialized dragons and Dickensian labor conditions in Faerie, and 12 years after his related book "The Dragons of Babel", here he is again! This can be read as a standalone, but is especially good if you've read the prior two books.

Swanwick employs the same twisty plot tricks, snarky side characters, some graphic sexual humor, and a protagonist who doesn't really understand the way this unique society works. It all makes for a very fun read. Since the first book came out it has become more common to mash up the Fey with technology, but nobody does it quite like Swanwick, with what the Fey in his book call the Industrial Revelation.

If he keeps to this schedule, he'll have another book set in this world available in 2031. I'll be patient. It'll be worth it.

[Kat Hooper]

Will review at www.fantasyliterature.com.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, he just gets better and better. A fitting end to Swanwick's "accidental trilogy". Lyrical, humorous, and tragic all at the same time. Go back and start the "trilogy" from the beginning...after you’ve finished reading this.

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful fantasy novel set in post-industrial Faerie. It is whimsical and imaginative. The plot starts in a military academy where half-mortal Caitlin is flying iron dragons. Suddenly Caitlin is on the run, accused of murder when her brother disappears. While Caitlin wanders the world trying to prove her innocence, she has the ghost of Helen in her head, a 90-year-old woman from Earth. Caitlin learns a lot about how the world really works along the way. The juxtaposition of elves, dwarves, and kobolds with cell phones and talking SUVs is so fun. I just loved this.

[Володимир Кузнєцов · Rating 3 out of 5]

Не оригінал, звісно, але куди краще "Драконів Вавилона". У "Дочки" окрім химерного світу фейрі були ще сильні арки персонажів та епічна історія дорослішання, тоді як "Мати" куди більш камерна в подіях, а окрім головної героїні більшість персонажів надто картонні та скороминущі. Звісно, є кілька, що прописані достатньо добре, але, на відміну від оригінального твору, вони не мають самостійного життя. Одна з них навіть прямо заявляє "Я - помічниця, а у помічниць призначення просте - дозволити головним героям поридати над їхніми трупами". Усвідомлюючи свою роль, вона жазишає героїню, але тим також робить свою присутність незначущою, і на мета-текстовому рівні необхідною лише для просування героїні.
Також тексту бракує влучного, але соковитого побуту, яким була насичена перша частина - тут він надто уривчастий і знов-таки, більш вторинний до основного сюжет, тоді як в "Дочці" часто бувало навпаки - ми радше читали про життя, в якому поволі випліталався основний сюжет. Тут же ми маємо сюжет, в який вплетено трошки життя.
Коротше, книга хороша, але це радше ностальгія ля тих, хто скучив за "Дочкою", а в котрий раз поспіль перечитувати її немає бажання.

[P. Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quicky review...

The Iron Dragon's Daughter, despite being hundreds of pages of fucked-ed up, gloom fest, is one of my favorite books. When I stumbled on this, a sorta-stand-alone, sequel, set in the same world, I had to read it.

Swanwick's fairy world, industrialized and often mirroring ours, is just as cruel in this novel. And the protagonist is also perpetually swimming upstream, so to speak, in a society where justice varies depending on class. (Hmmmm. Sounds like a country I know.)

But this novel is considerable lighter, both in tone and theme. Nevertheless, something about Swanwick's writing just clicked for me, and this was wonderful, original escapism in a time when it was needed most.

[Shrike58 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having picked this novel up and put it down several times since publication, this time I was able to stick it out to the end. My overall reaction was that I liked the beginning and liked the ending and for a lot of the middle I was left wondering what that had to do with much of anything, apart from giving Swanwick the opportunity to give the reader a tour of his modernized version of the Fae reality. Let's just say that a really big "deus ex machina" had to be deployed to make the whole contrivance work. Still, I'm happy that I made the effort and that if you liked "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" you should find this book worth your while.

Actual rating: 3.5.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an odd book. Faeries, a trickster, flat-screen TVs and self-aware SUVs. A little tad bit of time travel.

I might have judged this differently if I had read #1 and #2, but as others noted this stands on its own adequately.

The overall plot is coherent, but as it rolls out it sometimes feels as if Swanwick was making it up as
he went along, with only an endpoint preplanned. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

At first it felt like a classic "it's so unFAIR!" plot, but that soon went out the window. It's WAY more than an unfeeling-hierarchy story.

One part felt like a game, with "you can go here if you have these two things, but you'll need the third thing to get out." But that's fair game in fantasy, where there are So Many Rules.

There are quite a lot of characters who are convinced they are the smartest person in the room.

I didn't find it as captivating and wow-this-is-great as some other books -- maybe because I've read some doozies in recent weeks -- but I give the fourth star for the bold, wide scope of what's jammed into this story.

[Elizabeth D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would be 3.5/5 if the jackbooted thugs at goodreads would let us do half stars. I keep coming back to Swanwick but I feel like there’s always a filter between me and the book that keeps me from truly falling into it. I think it has something to do with the protagonists (at least in the iron dragon trilogy) always being formless beings thrown around by fate and surrounded by a hundred variations on the same trickster character. Helen has some real grit to her, but it’s easy to forget she’s there for most of the book and her final climax doesn’t come together with Caitlin’s nearly as well as I hoped it would. I found Caitlin coming into her inheritance at the end unsatisfying (esp when compared w the end of the Dragons of Babel) and the incest reveal at the end risible and unnecessary. Faerie, as a world, is still utterly fascinating.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Returning from a soul raiding mission, Caitlin, a half-elvish dragon-pilot picks up an unexepected guest in her head, the dying human Helen. In short order she is framed for her brother's murder and on the run with only the woman in her head and an ageless waif she picks up alng the way for company. There's a massive, somewhat top-heavy and incorporated conspiracy at work, and Caitlin travels through a modernosed but perilous Faerie in search of answers and her brother and her lost commission.

Witty, sly, savage, wildly imaginative in places, constantly turning down unexpected but delightful narrative branches, this is Swanwick in absolutely top, and somewhat gleeful, form.

[David Madara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen V. is dying on our Earthly realm, she then gets transferred
to Dragon Pilot Caitlin, who suddenly gets decommissioned and
soon to be put on trial. She escapes and runs through her world,
one step ahead of the Conspiracy against her. Can she stay safe,
and become a pilot once again?

Brilliant end to a loosely based trilogy. My only complaint is that
it will take about a year for the next Michael Swanwick novel, and
that is too sad for words! I'll have to make do somehow, but I eagerly
await the next book, whatever that is.

[Sandie · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be a pilot of an iron dragon, one must be at least a half human as humans can touch iron while fae cannot. Caitlin of House Sans Merci is in training to be a pilot as she has fled her loveless home and the wicked woman who calls herself her mother. All that remains in that place for her is her brother and that is not enough to live there.

But all is not well. Caitlin has a mishap during a landing and her dragon is injured. Not enough to worry about but there has to be an inquiry. While she is awaiting that, she receives news that her father is ill and her presence is required at home. She also finds that the routine inquiry has been escalated and she is in danger of being booted out of the Iron Squadron.

Returning home, she is there as her father dies and her brother is installed as the new Lord of Sans Merci. Caitlin leaves there and soon is on the run when it turns out that after her departure, her brother has disappeared and she is wanted for his murder. Aghast and desperate, she destroys her dragon and goes on the run to prove her innocence.

This is the third book in the faerie world Michael Swanwick created in his novel, The Iron Dragon's Daughter. It is a cruel world, full of steampunk and cruel personalities whose true missions are shrouded in secrecy. Caitlin meets many people on her quest, both friends and enemies although it is sometimes difficult to tell one from the other. This book is recommended for science fiction readers.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended to me by someone from board game book club. Caitlin Sans Merci is a half-human iron dragon pilot in Faerie. She’s summoned home to attend her hated father’s deathbed when she’s suddenly framed for breaking her pilot’s oaths– and for murdering her half-brother. She embarks in a reluctant journey to untangle the conspiracy that framed her and clear her name.

This is a wild and fantastically inventive urban fantasy. It’s the sort of book where the industrial revolution and Faerie intertwine, where any moment you might expect to see an elf on a motorcycle. The worldbuilding reminds me very much of Catherynne Valente’s. Eldritch train-gods! Minotaur hobo encampments, bureaucratic Atlantis conspiracies, tricksters, plots, concerning prophecies, evil curses. The whole nine yards.

However, the one thing that marred my enjoyment of a masterfully written novel was the way Swanwick writes about women. He seems to subscribe to the idea that a woman’s lot is constant sexual assault. Caitlin is subjected to a constant stream of sexual harassments, and the threat of rape always looms. This is, quite frankly, unnecessary. I also don’t like Swanwick being weird about the concept of virginity (very stupid concept as it is).

Gorgeous worldbuilding, excellent writing. Unfortunately unlikeable MC and slightly concerning writing of women.

[John Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book in a rough trilogy (that hopefully keeps going). This is a world Swanwick has inhabited since at least the Iron Dragon's Daughter, and it is always a delight to see another side of it. After The Dragons of Babel (which might, secretly, be my favorite book in the series, though they are all wonderful), this is a return to the world of dragon pilots...and it is just tops, really. It explores new areas of the world, and new viewpoint characters, while some of your old favorites return. I try to keep my book buying to one new book every two months, and I am glad I went with this, even though
I finished it in two nights.

[Diego · Rating 4 out of 5]

To me, this loose sequel fell a bit short of the first book. It was a good story on it's own. But it felt a little, all over the place. A lot of traveling place to place and dealing with little issues that add up to the ending slowly but surely. If anything it felt more like an adventure than the first book. Catelyn was a little dry as a main character, but I guess that's why she always had someone with her. But if you didn't like the confusion and not knowing what's going on like in the first book.... This one will really throw you for a whirl. But, the ending was simple unlike the first book.

[Joe Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to describe how much I adore Mr. Swanwick’s Faeryland books. They are a fever dream of industrial fantasy in the best possible way. This is no exception. Betrayals, intrigues, prophecies, and sarcastic asides abound and delight, and his prose remains a blessing.
I do not think I could be happier with this book.

[David Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The implausibility of happy endings and the nature of the contracts required to procure one.

[Lord Humungus · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been so long since I read The Iron Dragon's Daughter, I barely remember any of it; I just remember loving it. Supposedly The Dragons of Babel was a sequel but I remember nothing of it, so to me it's only now I'm returning once again to a world I once loved, but like a dream there's only a barely recalled memory, just a feeling and we're slipping into it in mid-swing...

Swanwick is firing on all pistons, spinning his own version of what feels like a Greek epic, drawing from a multitude of sources and inspirations, developing a mythology within a mythology, stories within stories, infusing everything with a "modern" sensibility while at the time retaining both magic and technology from various eras.

For roughly the first two thirds of the book, it was an amusing intoxicating mix that put a smile on my face. I readily accepted the dream logic that drove everything forward and tenuously connected one fascinating scene to the next. In the hands of a different author, I'm not sure I would have made it to the end. But I stuck around even through the final third, where things became even more fantastical and surreal, where even the rules previously adhered to were dismissed, where it felt like multiple deus ex machinae (sp?) were used to resolve situations.

Even though I didn't like this book as much as I'd hoped, I did enjoy reading it. It was inspired and inspiring. Perhaps a second read might yield more. I know it made me want to read The Iron Dragon's Daughter again just to compare.

[Mike Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I would have given this a 3.5/5 if I could. On one hand, I stayed up until 3am reading it last night; on the other, the book felt 75% of the way there. I've seen people describe Cat as flat, or lacking depth or growth. I disagree -- I felt like some of the more enjoyable moments of the book were when she was learning about herself, her strength, and skills (e.g., when serving as a secretary). There were callbacks in the final confrontation to earlier parts of the book that I found very successful. However, in her confrontation at the beach with the character who serves as her foil, we lack sufficient backstory for the revelations to hit as strongly as they should.

The book sometimes felt like a combination of Spirited Away and Great Expectations. Reading some of the descriptions of environments, lists of foods, descriptions of fey creatures, etc. felt like watching scenes of the bathhouse in Spirited Away. These worked well for the most part (I especially loved the allusions to Taylor Swift). But I can see the argument that this novel functions more to describe and characterize the world than to develop specific characters. At the same time, certain characters learn, towards the end of the novel, that their assumptions of their place in the world were entirely unfounded. There is a certain nihilism to the novel, but its the nihilism of capitalism. I am not sure what it means then that this is the most hopeful ending of any book in the trilogy.

[Emmalyn Renato · Rating 5 out of 5]

My selection for the Reddit r/Fantasy 2024 Bingo 'Entitled Animals" square (hard mode). Four and a half stars rounded up to five. Literate science fantasy. I haven't read the first two books in the series but had read that this third one could be treated as a standalone. It certainly felt self-contained, but I do wonder how much I might I missed.

"Caitlin is the young half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon. Returning from her first soul-stealing raid, she discovers an unwanted hitchhiker. She is then framed for the murder of her brother, and to save herself she must disappear into Industrialized Faerie, looking for the one person who can clear her".

And if you think you have any idea which way the story is going to go at this point, you will be mistaken. High stakes. Mysteries and puzzles to solve. Conflicts to resolve. and so many surprise turns and twists. Highly recommended.

(Other 2024 Bingo squares that this would fit: Dreams; Survival (HM)).

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A possible prequel to the Iron Dragon's Daughter, Swanwick returns to Fairee, a world in which magic and industry mix. Caitlin, younger child of a noble house, has become a Iron Dragon pilot. After making her first raid on Aerth (our Earth) to steal souls of children to be implanted in clone like bodies and used as slave, her dragon misbehaves. This causes a minor hearing and suspension. Returning home, she finds her Father dying, her step mother as conniving as ever, her under achieving older brother as frivolous as ever. Then she's framed for treason and murder. But the strange part is... she realizes that a dying Earth woman soul jump into hers during the raid. She has unwanted but perhaps necessary mentor in her head.

Caitlin is an engaging and sympathetic protagonist who learns better as she takes a forced tour of both her world's geography and culture.

[Draconic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A return to form following a (in personal opinion) lacking second book . It was published a decade after the rest, and that shows in how much stronger Swanwick's writing has become both within individual scenes and in terms of structure. Powerful atmospheric work despite how pithy he is with scene length; deeply flawed and human characters; and an imagination for fantasy that's near untouchable.

I'm not sure if I prefer it to The Iron Dragon's Daughter simply because Daughter is so much darker and ruthless, which makes it stand out to me amongst a sea of traditional fantasy, but Mother is a more than worthy addition to the universe. It makes both the first and in particular the second book stronger for existing, all while standing on its own as an enchanting and wonderful work.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gorgeous writing, a fascinating world, and some pretty funny moments had me hooked for about half of the book.
Then the plot just went all over the place, and I grew sick of how every main female character was just turning out to be a man’s fantasy of what females are like. Example: whenever any grown woman encounters a child, her mothering instincts kick in and she instantly becomes an enamored mother figure. Shucks, I guess ya just can’t fight DNA...
Oh, and the whole concept of changelings being used as baby making machines? Plus the weird pedophilic incest reveal at the end? What is this, the set-up for some indie hentai?

Strong start, disappointing finish.

[Psychophant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Swanwick's "The Iron Dragon's Mother", despite the title, has more in common with the "Dragons of Babel" than "The Iron Dragon's Daughter", but does not really need reading those two books.

The book is more polished than the other two, with Dark Faerie more consistent and developed, but that is not necessarily good, because the unexplained events and weird magic is one of the things that make Faerie so compelling. The characters are likable, though we do not see the same character development we got in TIDD. So despite similar ages it is more a suspense romp than a coming of age book. It gets better in the second half, but that may just be because I really like Raven.

[Ferio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitivamente, esta trilogía mejora con los volúmenes: el primero, inaguantable; el segundo, respetable; el tercero, bien majete. Solo comparten los títulos y el mundo (y un personaje entre el segundo y el tercero) y podrían leerse de manera individual sin necesitar los otros, así que mi recomendación sería leer este y luego, ya si eso, dedicarse a los primeros.

Ahora bien, el final (¿los finales?) es un poco de traca, digno de Stephen King, Lost o Los Serrano. Saber terminar una historia es un arte que no todo el mundo domina.

[Mark Palermo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in this series, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, written a quarter century ago, is my favourite fantasy novel of all-time. For a while, this latest one gets bogged down in the episodic nature of its strangeness. But nobody seems as good at endings as Michael Swanwick, and the way this pulls together is at once profound and somewhat elusive -- a state of semi-understanding that I enjoy in fiction, because it makes the work feel bigger than me, absolutely truthful yet somewhat out of conscious grasp.

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie mam pojęcia, co tu się wydarzyło, po co i dlaczego. Nie zliczę, ile razy musiałam kartkować, żeby chociaż spróbować zrozumieć, co ja właściwie czytam. Niewiele tu było mowy o smokach, szkoda. Bardzo dobrze się bawiłam. Liczyłam na coś innego, a dostałam coś, czego... nie rozumiem, ale doceniam. Już od dawna nie czułam się taka zdezorientowana. Raven to bardzo interesująca postać i żałuję, że nie było jej troszkę więcej.
Przedziwna jest ta książka, ale zdecydowanie godna uwagi. Szczególnie kiedy ktoś, jak ja, lubi taką dziwaczną, pokręconą fantastykę.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very different from the Iron dragon's daughter. Set in the same world, it is pure fun, as we are following Caitlin and learning more about her world. At some point it started to feel like her quest was secondary, and the main point was to discover and describe Faerie. And Swanwick's imagination seems limitless.
P.S. The Iron dragon's daughter is dark and twisty and one of the strongest books I've read. This one didn't have the same effect, just a fun book.