Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw

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3.78 of 5 stars 3.78  ·  rating details  ·  1,046 ratings  ·  243 reviews
A tale of love, money, and family conflict--among dragons. A family deals with the death of their father. A son goes to court for his inheritance. Another son agonises over his father's deathbed confession. One daughter becomes involved in the abolition movement, while another sacrifices herself for her husband.And everyone in the tale is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.He...more
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Published December 12th 2004 by Tor Fantasy (first published 2003)
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(showing 1-30 of 2,887)
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Joel
Jo Walton is my new favorite book nerd. She's a huge dork for science-fiction and fantasy, which you know if you read her wonderful retrospective reviews over at Tor.com. She's also clearly a geek for the written word in general, particularly 19th century Victorian-era social novels. And so, in grand "you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter" tradition, she wrote a book that combines them both, recasting a Victorian novel with anthropomorphic dragons.

It's a literary mash-up with the potential...more
Wealhtheow
Mar 06, 2012 Wealhtheow rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of austen, victorian novels, or novak
Shelves: mannerpunk, fantasy
No longer will I sigh that the Victorians didn't write fantasy: Walton has done it for them! When an old dragon patriarch dies, his relatives gather round to split his treasure—-and devour his body. The plot concerns the ensuing law suit, several love affairs and a growing spirit of revolution, yet each of the characters are well drawn and believable. Walton does an excellent job of mixing a familiar romance plot with politics and the occasional alien aspects of dragon society. She says this nov...more
Jeff Miller
I picked this book up since it was on sale for $2.99 as an ebook and the plot of a Victorian age novel with all characters as Dragons intrigued me.

Often a great idea does not meet the execution of it. Not so in this case. A thoroughly enjoyable novel that takes the idea of a Victorian romance with Dragons and, ahem, flies with it. The added ideas of Dragons growing by eating their dead kin and a unique Bridal brush really sells the plot and gives it such dimension. The class consciousness of the...more
Nikki
Tooth and Claw is a Jane Austen-ish tale, of maidens with slightly compromised virtue, inheritances, betrothals, law suits... Except, all those involved? They're dragons. I really enjoyed how Jo Walton handled this aspect: she sets up a whole culture for the dragons, with plenty of history in the background -- not detailed so that it drags down the plot, which is very much about the present, but enough to feel real.

I have to confess, when I first started reading it, I didn't get into it very muc...more
Julie
I have no real issue with the characters in this book being dragons, but the fact that some of them were described as 60 feet long yet they still went about in carriages (more than one dragon per carriage!) and sat at dinner tables kept causing pretty significant difficulties for my imagination.

It wasn't really helped when they wore hats.

A different species would probably have improved the book. Less cannibalism would have been preferable, too.
Virginia
Once you get past the utterly boring first 40 pages or so, this story takes flight. Like Sense and Sensibility but with dragons! I found myself far more interested than I initially thought I would be. Definitely different.
Stefan
Bon Agornin, patriarch of a well-off family, is on his death bed. His family has gathered around him, including his oldest son Penn, who is a country parson, and Avan, the younger brother who is making his way up in the bureaucracy of the capital city. Also there are his unmarried daughters Haner and Selendra, and oldest daughter Berend, who is married to Daverak, a young nobleman. When Daverak claims a large part of Bon's wealth, a complex family drama starts, involving an inheritance battle an...more
xenu01
Let me just start by saying that I really, really hate it when people compare things to Jane Austen novels. I think we always do this because 1)she's the only nineteenth century manners novelist we can think of 2)there are very few women considered "classic" novelists.

That said, I was reminded, while reading this book (only the tiniest, tiniest bit) of Miss Austen, in an allusive sense. Of course, Austen would have written a much longer novel than this slim volume, and would have tied off far mo...more
Ryandake
so... a comedy of manners with--umm-dragons.

dragons with really, really gross table manners. sometimes it's harder to say which is more gross, how they're eating or who they're eating.

i don't think Walton set out to write A Book Full of Deep Thoughts here, but she does get in some funny ones. her world-building is thorough, sometimes down the cliche level (by which i mean, she uses expressions that are clearly cliches, but written to be appropriate to her world).

it'a world of romance and wooing...more
Benjamin
Tooth and Claw is the Victorian comedy of manners... with dragons! (Oh, when will someone write the Victorian comedy of manners... in space!)

I started this a month ago or so--whenever I finished Trollope's Framley Parsonage, which is the foundation novel of this--but soon put it down as unsatisfying in some way. Was it because the plot seemed so similar to Trollope's? Yes, in part (more fool me for reading the Trollope first), though what actually sunk it at first for me was that the characters...more
Suzanne
After having read a handful of reviews, I feel that I must shout, "IT'S NOT JANE AUSTEN. IT'S TROLLOPE. IT'S NOT REGENCY. IT'S VICTORIAN." Now that's out of the way . . .
I'm giving this book 4 stars because it is well-written (although the author does need to learn to use the word "whom" if she is going to be writing in the 19th century style) and does what it sets out to do, which is to write a sci-fi novel in the style of Trollope, with dragons as main characters.
I'd only give it 3 stars for...more
James Steele
A review on the back cover calls this book “the Pride and Prejudice of the dragon world”. That scared me. I have read that book, and found it mostly boring but with a charming ending and message.

Tooth and Claw is a Victorian-style story about dragons living much the way Victorian Europe did. It’s complete with thick narration, characters saying a lot but never actually talking to each other (etiquette it’s called), marriage being the be all and end all of life, and lots and lots of family relati...more
Eva
Bon Agornin made his fortune in trade and bought his way into polite society in a Victorian-like era where status and wealth are the difference between life and death. He nearly bankrupted himself dowering his eldest daughter to a minor lord and now, dying, is distraught that his younger daughters will be without his protection and without large dowries.

His sons agree to his request to divide his assets among their younger sisters, taking only a token to remember him by. His son-in-law demands m...more
K.C. Shaw
The author never describes the dragons, so I started with a mental image of a typical fantasy-type dragon. As the book progressed and little snippets of physical description appeared in the book, I tried to modify my mental image of the dragon to fit what I was reading. But it's not possible. The dragons don't make any sense. They're described as sometimes 70 feet long, but they appear to walk upright. They have ears. They wear hats. They have shoulders. They cry tears. The females don't have cl...more
John
The inside flap of the book read two statements that caught my attention: “A tale of contention over love and money—among dragons” and “You have never read a book like Tooth and Claw”. A quick read of the synopsis made me hesitant to borrow the book from the library, mostly because of the abysmal fetish writings of Alan Troop. The reviews had statements that compared it to Jane Austen, except that all characters were dragons. I enjoy fantasy and 19th century gentle gossip books and so I gave it...more
Jessica
People keep referring to this novel as "Jane Austen with dragons" which is misleading . . . it's not Jane Austen, it's Anthony Trollope, as Walton says in the acknowledgements. The difference? Well, for those of you who haven't read Trollope (myself included) this is a Victorian novel, not Regency. In fact, I thought the whole time that it had strong shades of Charles Dickens in it. Family strife, extreme stress on rank and duty, wives giving up their personal preferences in order to support the...more
Cat
A delightful, well-executed book with an engaging plot and likable characters (and appropriately noxious villains). A diverting read that Walton renders entertaining through her mastery of the arch omniscient narrator of Victorian fiction and insightful through her literalization of predatory social structures. In the society of dragons Walton imagines, the rich literally eat the poor; women do not have claws and must be protected by their male counterparts; the young eat the bodies of their dec...more
Robert
Tooth and Claw is a strange book. I've seen it described as a Jane Austen type tale, where all the characters are dragons. Perhaps that is accurate - I've never read any Jane Austen.

Tooth and Claw is set in a country run by dragons. There are no humans here - after many wars, the "Yarg" (humans) live in neighbouring countries, and despite the odd skirmish, the two nations co-exist side by side and are more or less resigned to their coexistence. In this world, the aristocracy all have titles (Exa...more
Anastasia
This review was originally posted at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog on Jan. 10, 2012.

Like most books I buy, it's been so long since I bought this one-- over a year!-- that all I could remember about Tooth and Claw was that it had dragons. And, well, yeah, it's got dragons. But it's got a lot of other stuff, as well!

The dragon aspect is pretty central, though. If Tooth and Claw starred humans rather than dragons, then it'd be a Victorian-esque historical romance with all the trappings that genres comes...more
Glee
I was truly surprised by this book. I read some serious nonfiction, plenty of fiction (including "literature"), and occaisionally young adult stuff such as Eragon (dragon novel about 16 year old boy-hero). I was expecting this to be an easy-read fantasy about dragons. I was wrong.

This is an amazing book, and I can't categorize it as "young adult" although maybe they would like it for its action. What it really is is an allegory for gender and class politics -- dragons with Victorian sensibilitie...more
TheBookSmugglers
Originally reviewed on The Book Smugglers

REVIEW

Ana's Take

When I first thought about how to I could describe Tooth and Claw in a way that truly conveyed its level of awesomeness, I could only think of: “it’s a Jane Austenesque novel with Dragons. Cannibal Dragons”. On second thought though, although that line does more or less captures the gist of it, it is not quite right. Tooth and Claw is, after all, more Victorian than Regency.

Eating each other is at the centre of this society – it’s what...more
Sara
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Lisa
(4.5 stars)

(originally reviewed on starmetal oak book blog)

Although when it comes to books, I haven't read many Jane Austen's or Victorian novels (I know Jane Austen isn't Victorian), but I do enjoy them and love the type of humor and situations they describe. Anything to do with manners, society, romance. Anyways, this means that on paper this novel would already be enjoyable to me, but the fact that the whole cast of characters are dragons is just icing on the cake. I think this is something...more
El Templo de las Mil Puertas
Bon Agornin, el patriarca de una familia de alta alcurnia, ha fallecido. Ahora sus hijos deben repartirse según su edad la herencia que les ha dejado. Los pequeños, la mayor parte de su oro y de su cuerpo, los mayores, algo simbólico. Y es que en esta curiosa sociedad victoriana, el poder para perpetuar el legado familiar y hacerse más fuertes y más sabios, depende de devorar los cuerpos de los padres en su lecho de muerte. No en vano, los protagonistas de esta original historia... son dragones....more
Victoria
I almost gave up on this book twice - the first few chapters didn't grab me at all. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the second half became one of those can't-put-down stories that you stay up well into the night trying to finish.

It's a very clever experiment - recrafting The Victorian Novel "[as] if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology"... and as if all the characters were, naturally, supposed to be dragons. Unfortunately, the story sometimes gets...more
Colleen
I picked this up because I was caving to sheer inevitability - dragons and historical fiction of middle-class British family dramas, how could I not? Like trying fried pickles. Or biting the jalepeno that comes with your salad.

SO MUCH BETTER THAN A PICKLE OR PEPPER. I was snickering aloud, or curling up in concern, or excitedly telling my patient husband about draconic religious practices and how they mirrored the Anglican church in a way that was still somehow incredibly congruent with a dragon...more
Elizabeth
Take heed when a family of dragons gathers around their dying patriarch, for in this world the dragons gather strength by consuming the bodies of the dead.
The fight that breaks out over how to divvy up the corpse spills over into the family dynamics, where the dragons will enter into things tooth and claw.
Spryng
This was a delight in so many ways. I went into this book with only the assurance that Jo Walton is a brill writer - having been delighted by Among Others previously - and not at all knowing that this was actually a riff on Victorian-era writing, which is not at all my thing. I'm glad I persevered through the first chapter despite my inclinations, though, because the rest was ridiculously wonderful. It caught the tone just right without becoming overly stuffy and there were so many interesting q...more
Zeta Syanthis
I've heard this book described as Pride and Prejudice, but with dragons. Although I've not read that book (not really my thing - or at least I didn't think it was before I read this), this one really resonated with me. It took a more cultural viewpoint from a mere few centuries ago and infused it with a really interesting twist. Not only do the characters act as people of that age would, they also react in uniquely draconic ways that separate their society and culture from what we've come to exp...more
Steph!
Ok, I was pretty skeptical reading the summary of this book, but it had won some awards and i was going for a long plane ride, so I thought "sure." It was SO good. Essentially, it is Pride and Prejudice with dragons. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I promise it is really good if you like a good, satisfying, archetypal love story where the bad guys lose and the good guys win. It's not some paradigm shifting, genre defining piece of literature, it's just a fun, fresh story that any Victorian lite...more
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Jo Walton writes science fiction and fantasy novels and reads a lot and eats great food. It worries her slightly that this is so exactly what she always wanted to do when she grew up. She comes from Wales, but lives in Montreal.
More about Jo Walton...
Among Others Farthing (Small Change, #1) Ha'penny (Small Change, #2) Half a Crown (Small Change, #3) The King's Peace (Tir Tanagiri, #1)

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