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shadowkatA 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.
The setting for a good portion of the book is an academic one. First it is high school, then the university. But we don't really experience the classes, or for that matter the relationships, so much as her sexual interactions and escapades with numerous would-be friends. Whenever a relationship threatens to deepen, Jane either pulls back from it or the individuals die horribly in front of her. One feels reading this books as if you were jumping from room to room to room in an endless maze. It lacks the coherent structure of Gaiman's Neverwhere, and feels in some respects far more like American Gods - an aimless wander through a nightmarish landscape of the mind.
I can't help but think the writer had a negative scholarly experience - for much of the landscape is a university, and many of the monsters teachers and academics housed within it. In this respect it is reminiscent of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, except I think the celtic mythos is more intricate here and the writing more advanced.
I leave Swanick's book forever haunted by his characters, while I left Dean's with little more than a reflection. Swanick has four main characters, two that keep reappearing in different guises - Needle and his female consort, the aspect of the goddess or her representative, the other two are the Dragon and Jane herself. Needle who serves in part as JAne's love interest - the boy she cannot save, but is forever attempting to, starts out fairly repugnant, and ends up as attractive to the extreme. The child version is crippled and obnoxious, teasing and cruel, yet also kind. The teen version helpful, yet a bad boy, vulnerable, yet a loser. The post-adolescent, a theif, a smuggler, a dealer, a flirt. And the adult - a pilot of an iron dragon, distant, helpful, quiet, secure. The magic in the book is sexual. Jane is useful to dragon as a child only if she remains a virgin, later her sex magic fuels the dragon - along with her ability to steal the names of every man she beds, stealing with it their souls, their identity. Once the dragon has all the power it needs, she flies it to break through the fabric of reality, destroying it in the process along with all who follow in her wake. She alone survives, finding herself in a white room that soon becomes filled with city streets, then forests, with trees that grab and eye her with reproach. She walks the pathways with her guide, an elf that has popped up in various aspects, some horrifying some less so, throughout her journey. They reach the Goddess - who takes on many aspects, that of a child and that of her scientist mother in a labortory.
Jane rails at the Goddess - asking it the same question all humans ask the gods they worship and project a human aspect upon, why do you allow pain and suffering and violence and bloodshed. And like all gods, she remains silent, until Jane is tired of screaming. Tired of asking why the Goddess creates imperfect beings.
Finally, in her labortory, the goddess laughs at Jane and says, such imperfect beings, some days I think I should scrap the whole thing and start fresh, but I love you too much and am far to curious to see what you do, to do it.
The work is to a degree a rambling discourse on the meaning of life or lack thereof.
It is filled with metaphors, more than most novels of its kind. Some that I found to be rather offensive, others, rather apt. The celtic mythos is no different than what you may find in the Mabinogi, or within the works of Tom Tyron, or Guy Kaverial - the Wandering Gyre. And the themes are really no different than the ones we find within Christian, Greek, Roman, and Jewish myth - the theme of ritual sacrifice. A life for a life. The son who is perpetually crucifying himself in the arms of the mother as an act of love. The daughter who is perpetually descending to the bowles of hell to rescue the son, only to leave empty handed. Or the woman who takes on the mother's crown and burns under her gaze before she can become the crone, the wicker woman of the harvest, the wicker man who is her consort. I studied this in college and the stories, no matter how many I read or what culture, do not change. The thread is the same. We die for our gods, we become our gods, we are our gods. And yet we aren't. Birth, life, death, rebirth. The snake eating its own tale.
Each religion swears that it does not condone human sacrifice - yet at the center of the stories, there lies human sacrifice. Mostly metaphorical in nature, not necessarily literal. Any more than it is here in Swanick's work.
Swanick's Jane journeys through her own mind, in attempt to congueor what lies inside. But she never quite does, escaping from it, more or less the same as she entered. She doesn't change. She doesn't evolve. She doesn't learn. The story folds in on itself. Acting more like an allegory in some respects than an actual tale. And I think therein lies it's failing. It is hard to care about a character that never learns, never changes, is doomed to repeat. You are left feeling a bit empty and tired at the end. The sex that occurs is nihilistic in nature and somewhat perverse. The learned environment pointless. And the goddess, a flaky parent with an incoherent message. While humans persist on a materialistic and nihilistic course, unable to find meaning elsewhere.
At least that was what I was left with. Not a book I feel much love for, but one that I remain haunted by all the same. You don't forget Iron Dragon's Daughter after reading it.
The images stay ingrained on your retinas long after the fact. Whether you like it or not.
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.
The setting for a good portion of the book is an academic one. First it is high school, then the university. But we don't really experience the classes, or for that matter the relationships, so much as her sexual interactions and escapades with numerous would-be friends. Whenever a relationship threatens to deepen, Jane either pulls back from it or the individuals die horribly in front of her. One feels reading this books as if you were jumping from room to room to room in an endless maze. It lacks the coherent structure of Gaiman's Neverwhere, and feels in some respects far more like American Gods - an aimless wander through a nightmarish landscape of the mind.
I can't help but think the writer had a negative scholarly experience - for much of the landscape is a university, and many of the monsters teachers and academics housed within it. In this respect it is reminiscent of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, except I think the celtic mythos is more intricate here and the writing more advanced.
I leave Swanick's book forever haunted by his characters, while I left Dean's with little more than a reflection. Swanick has four main characters, two that keep reappearing in different guises - Needle and his female consort, the aspect of the goddess or her representative, the other two are the Dragon and Jane herself. Needle who serves in part as JAne's love interest - the boy she cannot save, but is forever attempting to, starts out fairly repugnant, and ends up as attractive to the extreme. The child version is crippled and obnoxious, teasing and cruel, yet also kind. The teen version helpful, yet a bad boy, vulnerable, yet a loser. The post-adolescent, a theif, a smuggler, a dealer, a flirt. And the adult - a pilot of an iron dragon, distant, helpful, quiet, secure. The magic in the book is sexual. Jane is useful to dragon as a child only if she remains a virgin, later her sex magic fuels the dragon - along with her ability to steal the names of every man she beds, stealing with it their souls, their identity. Once the dragon has all the power it needs, she flies it to break through the fabric of reality, destroying it in the process along with all who follow in her wake. She alone survives, finding herself in a white room that soon becomes filled with city streets, then forests, with trees that grab and eye her with reproach. She walks the pathways with her guide, an elf that has popped up in various aspects, some horrifying some less so, throughout her journey. They reach the Goddess - who takes on many aspects, that of a child and that of her scientist mother in a labortory.
Jane rails at the Goddess - asking it the same question all humans ask the gods they worship and project a human aspect upon, why do you allow pain and suffering and violence and bloodshed. And like all gods, she remains silent, until Jane is tired of screaming. Tired of asking why the Goddess creates imperfect beings.
Finally, in her labortory, the goddess laughs at Jane and says, such imperfect beings, some days I think I should scrap the whole thing and start fresh, but I love you too much and am far to curious to see what you do, to do it.
The work is to a degree a rambling discourse on the meaning of life or lack thereof.
It is filled with metaphors, more than most novels of its kind. Some that I found to be rather offensive, others, rather apt. The celtic mythos is no different than what you may find in the Mabinogi, or within the works of Tom Tyron, or Guy Kaverial - the Wandering Gyre. And the themes are really no different than the ones we find within Christian, Greek, Roman, and Jewish myth - the theme of ritual sacrifice. A life for a life. The son who is perpetually crucifying himself in the arms of the mother as an act of love. The daughter who is perpetually descending to the bowles of hell to rescue the son, only to leave empty handed. Or the woman who takes on the mother's crown and burns under her gaze before she can become the crone, the wicker woman of the harvest, the wicker man who is her consort. I studied this in college and the stories, no matter how many I read or what culture, do not change. The thread is the same. We die for our gods, we become our gods, we are our gods. And yet we aren't. Birth, life, death, rebirth. The snake eating its own tale.
Each religion swears that it does not condone human sacrifice - yet at the center of the stories, there lies human sacrifice. Mostly metaphorical in nature, not necessarily literal. Any more than it is here in Swanick's work.
Swanick's Jane journeys through her own mind, in attempt to congueor what lies inside. But she never quite does, escaping from it, more or less the same as she entered. She doesn't change. She doesn't evolve. She doesn't learn. The story folds in on itself. Acting more like an allegory in some respects than an actual tale. And I think therein lies it's failing. It is hard to care about a character that never learns, never changes, is doomed to repeat. You are left feeling a bit empty and tired at the end. The sex that occurs is nihilistic in nature and somewhat perverse. The learned environment pointless. And the goddess, a flaky parent with an incoherent message. While humans persist on a materialistic and nihilistic course, unable to find meaning elsewhere.
At least that was what I was left with. Not a book I feel much love for, but one that I remain haunted by all the same. You don't forget Iron Dragon's Daughter after reading it.
The images stay ingrained on your retinas long after the fact. Whether you like it or not.