Book Review
Nov. 15th, 2023 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariTooth and Claw
by Jo Walton
This fantasy novel was both unusual and delightful. It's more or less a Victorian novel, but all the characters are dragons. It follows the children of the recently deceased minor noble Bon Agornin as they navigate courting and marriage, an inheritance dispute, and the constraints of upper class society. My favorite characters were younger sister Selendra and her brother's wife Felin. They both had strong backbones and caring natures.
Juxtaposing dragons and Victorian society allowed Walton to surface some of the hidden brutalities of an era we all too often think of as being very genteel, refined, and proper. For example, dragons eat their dead, and often their own sickly infants, and the nobility also have the right to eat the weaker infants of their underlings. Since eating dragonflesh makes dragons larger and stronger, these practices mirror the importance of transferring generational wealth, and the exploitation underlying that wealth. Yet this aspect never overwhelmed the story or characterization. It was all very cleverly and deftly done.
by Jo Walton
This fantasy novel was both unusual and delightful. It's more or less a Victorian novel, but all the characters are dragons. It follows the children of the recently deceased minor noble Bon Agornin as they navigate courting and marriage, an inheritance dispute, and the constraints of upper class society. My favorite characters were younger sister Selendra and her brother's wife Felin. They both had strong backbones and caring natures.
Juxtaposing dragons and Victorian society allowed Walton to surface some of the hidden brutalities of an era we all too often think of as being very genteel, refined, and proper. For example, dragons eat their dead, and often their own sickly infants, and the nobility also have the right to eat the weaker infants of their underlings. Since eating dragonflesh makes dragons larger and stronger, these practices mirror the importance of transferring generational wealth, and the exploitation underlying that wealth. Yet this aspect never overwhelmed the story or characterization. It was all very cleverly and deftly done.
