Margaret Taylor (Author of The Confederacy of Heaven)

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The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick

I’d read some reviews of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter on Goodreads, so I was forewarned that the author pulls a nasty trick on us around page 80. Tha... Read more of this blog post »

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Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1)
by Dan Simmons

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The Iron Dragon's Daughter
by Michael Swanwick

read in May, 2013

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I’d read some of the other reviews of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter on Goodreads, so I was forewarned that the author pulls a nasty trick on us around page 80. That still didn’t prepare me for how angry this book was going to make me.

I picked up this bo...more I’d read some of the other reviews of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter on Goodreads, so I was forewarned that the author pulls a nasty trick on us around page 80. That still didn’t prepare me for how angry this book was going to make me.

I picked up this book because it’s noteworthy for deconstructing a lot of stock fantasy tropes. It was published in 1993, when fantasy was deep in the ghetto of Tolkien knockoffs. A few years later, A Game of Thrones would start pulling the genre out of Tolkien’s shadow, and then Harry Potter would really get fantasy going again. But The Iron Dragon’s Daughter was a start. For one thing, this book has technology – at a time when most people had not heard of the word “steampunk.”

Jane is a young human who’s been kidnapped by the Unseelie Court and forced to live in Fairyland. She works as a child laborer in a robot dragon factory (they work like sentient fighter jets). One day, one of the dragons begins speaking to her. It offers to help her escape if she repairs it. This dragon is quite evil, but they strike an uneasy bargain and they get out.

At this point, you’d expect the story to be about Jane trying to get home while trying to cope with this dragon she can’t trust. You would be wrong. Over the course of a page or two, Jane becomes a miserable little crook bent on cheating, stealing, and fornicating* her way to the top of Unseelie society. She manipulates people. She lets her friends die to save herself. All of this would make for a fascinating villain if only there were any heroes in the story. There aren’t. All of the other characters are loathesome except for this one dude who keeps dying over and over and over again.

It’s not bad writing. In fact, it’s quite good (Swanwick has won awards for some of his other works). What we have here is a talented writer who is deliberately trolling his readers. The theme of the book is that life is pointless and meaningless, though it stops to poke some cruel humor at yuppie culture along the way.

I skipped ahead to see if Jane ever winds up in jail, which she so richly deserves. She does not.

Swanwick, you don’t have to be like this. You don’t have to rip your subject to bloody shreds to write effective satire. Take Terry Pratchett, for example. This guy pokes holes in everything, literally everything. He’s done dwarves quaffing mead in taverns to lost heirs to the throne to the post office to image compression algorithms to Robocop. But no matter where the books go, they always circle back to two main messages: 1. You will die eventually. 2. The human spirit (or dwarven or vampire or what have you) is worth something.

And frankly, that’s the sort of satire I’d rather read.

* Sex magic. She doesn’t care for her partners, but she does use them to acquire power.(less)

Margaret Taylor added

Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden

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It's Cinderella in Japan!

Seriously, though, one of the fascinating things about reading this book was its blending of West and East. Author Arthur Golden has clearly done his homework here and he does an excellent job of transporting us to the world...more

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Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

read in April, 2013

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Tik-Tok of Oz
by L. Frank Baum

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Or, what happens when you take a book that you vaguely remember from your early childhood and re-read it as an adult.

When I was a little kid, I remember going to Grandma’s house to look at her shelves of first-edition Oz books. A lot of people don’t...more Or, what happens when you take a book that you vaguely remember from your early childhood and re-read it as an adult.

When I was a little kid, I remember going to Grandma’s house to look at her shelves of first-edition Oz books. A lot of people don’t realize that Oz was a series – there was way more to in than The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. They had these fabric bindings that were falling apart at the edges and these wacky lineart illustrations. We kids would get stern injunctions from the adults around to handle the books carefully, but if we did, we could pick some out to take home for read-aloud.

I don’t remember a whole lot of the plot of these books, except that there was a Jack Pumpkinhead and a creature made out of a sofa and a bunch of palm fronds. Fast-forward to 2013 and I have this handy-dandy Kindle, and I think to myself, why not download the e-text of Tik-Tok of Oz from Project Gutenberg?

That’s exactly what I did, and whoa.

The plot of Tik-Tok of Oz isn’t all that important. In a nutshell, Betsy Bobbin shipwrecks on the shores of the land of the Nome King and there she meets a variety of fantastical creatures, including a Shaggy Man, a Rose Princess, Polychrome the Rainbow Princess, Tik-Tok the mechanical man, and Queen Ann of Oogaboo and her army (it consists of sixteen officers and one soldier). Together they all go to rescue Shaggy Man’s brother from the Nome King. What got me, though, is that there are things going on in the text that I would never have picked up on as a little kid. I cannot help reading this as a liberal arts college graduate now. For example:

* All the women of Oogaboo appear to be shrews. Betsy Bobbin is all right, but Polychrome and the Rose Princess are completely helpless. The Empress Ozma is a strong and just leader, but she’s still a total female stereotype. Is Tik-Tok of Oz feminist or not??
* Come to think of it, why are there so many beautiful princesses here? Did Baum have a thing for that?
* The other characters casually treat Tik-Tok as almost as good as a human being. But not quite. What’s Baum trying to say here?
* Glinda has a magic mirror that she can use to spy on anybody in the realm of Oz. Anybody. Whoa, you could abuse that.
* Shaggy Man has a Love Magnet that he can show to people and force them to love him. He uses it as a weapon repeatedly. And he’s supposed to be one of the good guys.
* Speaking of abuses of power, hasn’t anybody around here heard of a representative elected government?
* Empress Ozma has a magic mirror with a radium frame. Gaa! Unclean! Somebody get that thing into a lead box and bury it!

I don’t know if my childhood memory has been ruined or suddenly gained greater depth. I’m going to go with depth, though, because I thoroughly enjoyed having my eyes opened.(less)

Margaret Taylor added

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
by Deborah Blum

read in January, 2013

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I have to admit I felt a little weird about leaving this book lying out on my kitchen table.

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum isn't a how-to guide (no, honestly). Rather, it's an investigation into one of the most toxic eras of U.S. history: th...more

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

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(Note: this review contains spoilers.)

I have to write my book review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with mixed feelings because it is a book with a schtick. I don't ordinarily like books with schticks, and I don't ordinarily lik...more (Note: this review contains spoilers.)

I have to write my book review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with mixed feelings because it is a book with a schtick. I don't ordinarily like books with schticks, and I don't ordinarily like mysteries, but I liked this book. Here's the schtick: the whole story is told from the point of view of an autistic boy, Christopher Boone. One evening Christopher discovers his neighbor's dog impaled on a garden fork, so he sets about trying to discover who the killer was.

What I didn't like about the book is that Christopher is a poster boy of high-functioning autism. He has all of the symptoms and all of them have a classical presentation. If you want to get a good idea of Christopher's personality, WebMD's entry on Aspberger's disorder (which is part of the autism spectrum) sums him up a little bit too neatly. I think I know why Haddon is doing this, too. He has an agenda to write the Great Autistic Novel. It's a perfectly laudable agenda, since people need to be made more aware of this condition and raising awareness through story is a good way to do it. But as a result, I had a hard time believing Christopher as a person and not just a collection of symptoms.

The thing is, though... The thing is, it works. Mark Haddon has written the Great Autistic Novel. Damn it, Haddon, you're breaking my heart with the end of that book. Christopher's struggling to do something he's never done before and to do it independently, and all the while he's putting his parents through emotional turmoil and he's oblivious to it. Christopher wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. By the ending, you still don't know whether he gets to be one, but Christopher does have this to say about it to his school psychologist:

He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot. But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

Recommended. But have a box of tissues handy.(less)

Margaret Taylor has challenged herself to read 14 books in the 2013 Reading Challenge

She has read 3 books toward her goal of 14 books.

3 of 14 (21%)

Create your own 2013 Reading Challenge »

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	The Confederacy of Heaven 3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2010	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Grizelda 3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Margaret Taylor wrote a new blog post The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick I’d read some reviews of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter on Goodreads, so I was forewarned that the author pulls a nasty trick on us around page 80. Tha... Read more of this blog post »
May 20, 2013 03:17am · like
Margaret Taylor is currently reading Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) by Dan Simmons	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 18, 2013 09:16am
Margaret Taylor rated a book 1 of 5 stars The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick read in May, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I’d read some of the other reviews of The Iron Dragon’s Daughter on Goodreads, so I was forewarned that the author pulls a nasty trick on us around page 80. That still didn’t prepare me for how angry this book was going to make me. I picked up this bo...more
May 18, 2013 09:12am · see review
Margaret Taylor added Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It's Cinderella in Japan! Seriously, though, one of the fascinating things about reading this book was its blending of West and East. Author Arthur Golden has clearly done his homework here and he does an excellent job of transporting us to the world...more
May 02, 2013 06:14pm · see review
Margaret Taylor added Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury read in April, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Apr 28, 2013 11:39am
Margaret Taylor added Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Or, what happens when you take a book that you vaguely remember from your early childhood and re-read it as an adult. When I was a little kid, I remember going to Grandma’s house to look at her shelves of first-edition Oz books. A lot of people don’t...more
Mar 03, 2013 02:35pm · see review
Margaret Taylor added The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum read in January, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I have to admit I felt a little weird about leaving this book lying out on my kitchen table. The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum isn't a how-to guide (no, honestly). Rather, it's an investigation into one of the most toxic eras of U.S. history: th...more
Jan 27, 2013 11:38am · see review
Margaret Taylor added The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
(Note: this review contains spoilers.) I have to write my book review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with mixed feelings because it is a book with a schtick. I don't ordinarily like books with schticks, and I don't ordinarily lik...more
Jan 13, 2013 10:40am · see review
Margaret Taylor has challenged herself to read 14 books in the 2013 Reading Challenge She has read 3 books toward her goal of 14 books. 3 of 14 (21%) Create your own 2013 Reading Challenge »
Jan 05, 2013 04:40am · like · view books

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