Reading books like Jane Eyre or Persuasion (yes, I know, Austen isn't actually Victorian, shut it) require a bit of mental exercise because you have to keep remembering context - the social strictures that bind the women and their reactions to said help define them as characters. It's a literary mash-up with the potential for disaster, but rather than just coming up with a cute idea and shoving it into an old book ( 'Oh hahaha what if Anna Karenina was a robot because 'android' starts with the same sound!'), she reimagined old literary tropes in a new context: what if the social tête-à-têtes that make up the 'action sequences' in Austen or Brönte exist not because people were uptight back then, but due to immutable facts about dragon physiology? 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. She's also clearly a geek for the written word in general, particularly 19th century Victorian-era social novels. She's a huge dork for science-fiction and fantasy, which you know if you read her wonderful retrospective reviews over at Tor.com. You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw.Īt the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied. In which society’s high-and-mighty members avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.

Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses.in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. Now Walton returns with a very different kind of fantasy the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.Įxcept that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw. Jo Walton burst onto the fantasy scene with The King’s Peace, acclaimed by writers as diverse as Poul Anderson, Robin Hobb, and Ken MacLeod.

A tale of contention over love and money-among dragons

Tooth and claw by jo walton