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A few weeks back, I finished the novel Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanick. (And it is more than possible I misspelled his name to the considerable annoyance of many a person reading this lj, but really, you should be used to that from me by now. Not that that is meant to be an excuse.) It is a science fiction fantasy novel that is currently out of print, although I believe it is due to be republished in hardcover this October. I got a used copy for $3 via Amazon.
The story is a young woman's coming of age tale as told by a man, utilizing Celtic mythology, with a bit of Marxism thrown in. The pov is the young girl's - who we first meet as a child, in a factory that creates weaponery for a bunch of elves. The Iron Dragon of the title is living weapon that flies and burns everything in its wake. Metaphorically it is the girl's father figure or the masculain element in her life, while the maternal aspect is the goddess or the reality that she is mentally in. The dragon is both her way in and out of this reality, it brought her into it and it takes her out again. But the reality, we learn at the end of the novel, much like the reality in Lewis Carroll's Alice books, is one of the mind, not physical, but mental. Jane - the changeling or human child who has became lost within the vestiges of fairy - is in truth lost within the labrynthe of her own subconscious. It is a psychological novel, where the story folds back upon itself, until we and Jane herself feels as if she is merely repeating herself, replaying the same thread over and over, yet always, somehow getting it wrong. We never quite progress, so much as repeat the same situations in different ways.
( cut for spoilers and possible incoherence, read at your own risk. The book in my defense isn't exactly the most coherent thing on the planet. It's a bit reminiscent of reading a long meandering prose poem by Yeats who got mangled up with TS Eliot on his way to hell, with a touch of Dante thrown in. )
The story is a young woman's coming of age tale as told by a man, utilizing Celtic mythology, with a bit of Marxism thrown in. The pov is the young girl's - who we first meet as a child, in a factory that creates weaponery for a bunch of elves. The Iron Dragon of the title is living weapon that flies and burns everything in its wake. Metaphorically it is the girl's father figure or the masculain element in her life, while the maternal aspect is the goddess or the reality that she is mentally in. The dragon is both her way in and out of this reality, it brought her into it and it takes her out again. But the reality, we learn at the end of the novel, much like the reality in Lewis Carroll's Alice books, is one of the mind, not physical, but mental. Jane - the changeling or human child who has became lost within the vestiges of fairy - is in truth lost within the labrynthe of her own subconscious. It is a psychological novel, where the story folds back upon itself, until we and Jane herself feels as if she is merely repeating herself, replaying the same thread over and over, yet always, somehow getting it wrong. We never quite progress, so much as repeat the same situations in different ways.
( cut for spoilers and possible incoherence, read at your own risk. The book in my defense isn't exactly the most coherent thing on the planet. It's a bit reminiscent of reading a long meandering prose poem by Yeats who got mangled up with TS Eliot on his way to hell, with a touch of Dante thrown in. )