The Dragons of Babel

A lot to say about this book. It returns to the world of The Iron Dragon's Daughter. This is a happy thing for me, since that is and remains one of my favorite fantasy novels. I wish I had more adjectives to convey "dark" and "original". Those words are overused, aren't they? But they apply here, both of them. The story, as is usual for Swanwick, weaves together a number of plot threads. Think of it more as a rope with many strands than as a single clear plot line. There's something about power and how it corrupts, and something else about the pros and cons of terrorism. There are magical creatures of many kinds, all inventive and lovingly detailed. There's a lost king plot too-- but I would wager it is different than you have seen that old chestnut cooked before. A lot of humor here too, tossed in for good measure. I will admit to some chaos with all these elements cooked together. I didn't mind it at all-- I was carried along by the energy of the book itself. If you like your fantasy very neat and simple, this may not appeal to you. Also be aware that the only "young" part of this book is the original age of the main character-- I would not mistake either this or The Iron Dragon's Daughter for young adult reading. At least not typical young adult reading; I suspect that there would be rather too much adult for many parents here.

In the typical urban fantasy, beneath the "real" world of human science and rationality there hides a secret world of magical creatures and arcane magical practices. By contrast, in THE DRAGONS OF BABEL, the "real" world is a magical one inhabited by fairies, elves, boggarts, kobolds, and dragons who cast spells and glamors as a matter of routine. However, it is also a technological world where magical creatures listen to jazz, carry cell phones, ride motorcycles, conduct crooked ward-based machine politics, and keep Soyuz capsules in their royal collections. (It's not clearly spelled out whether anybody in this world is human, although our protagonist Will might be half-human, and I'm guessing that Duke Ellington and Mohammad Ali who are mentioned in passing are also meant to be human.) The results of this tweak of a familiar genre are often surprising an delightful. I don't have much to say about the plot (which is fine, but described in detail by others), except that (a) it's an episodic, picaresque coming of age adventure story, not terribly different in form from zillions of others, and (b) while a single dragon we encounter at the beginning deeply influences the path that Will, our protagonist, follows, this book is NOT about dragons. Swanwick's writing style is always vivid and fluent, but the language he uses varies from classic fairy tale "thee and thou" to contemporary urban slang. Images from classical mythology and mother goose rhymes are deliberately short-circuited or deflated (or probably reinflated -- since the Victorian era we've stripped away much of the rawness of myth and legend) with crude sexual innuendos and silly anachronisms. While this type of writing could easily become labored or tedious, I think that Swanwick pulls it off quite well. If you're looking for a conventional swords and sorcery fantasy, look elsewhere. If you'd rather not read about sexual situations, like a hermaphrodite masturbating on stage in a club (briefly, in a scene), look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, an urban fantasy/classical mythology/sci-fi pastiche written with intelligence, wit, and a satirical eye might appeal to you, pick up THE DRAGONS OF BABEL.

Swanwick is certinly one of the most original fantasists working today, and _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ was perhaps his best (even though the evangelicals loudly denounced it). This one, while not actually a sequel, is set in the same world, which is a mish-mash of modern America and Faerie. You know you're there when the centaurs carry assault weapons, a high elf rides a Vespa, the haints play reggae, the royal palace includes rooms designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Cabinet of Curiosities displays both a stuffed capricorn and a Soyuz spacecraft. Will Le Fey is a young orphan subsisting in a rural village which is just trying to keep its collective head down while the endless war between East and West rages on. Then a war dragon (sentient, but with a half-human pilot) crashes and takes over the village for its own survival -- and appoints Will its lieutenant. When the dragon is killed (more or less), Will is forced out . . . and so begins a series of adventures in the classic pauper-to-prince picaresque tradition, from refugee camp to the tutelage of a master con man (keep an eye on him), to a period as an underground rebel leader, to his attempt to pass himself off as the lost heir of His Absent Majesty. (And, of course, there's more to the scam than he knows.) For all his occasional naivete, Will has innate cunning -- although when he tries to win the heart and hand of his True Love, who happens to be one of the ruling elite in the towering city of Babel (or maybe Babylon), the reader knows it won't be a sure thing. Swanwick's patented tongue-in-cheek cynicism and ability to make even temporary secondary characters interesting will keep you reading far into the night.

He's just a country boy, living in a small village after his parents are killed by the war. But when a dragon crashes nearby and decides to make himself king of the village, Will Le Fey gets drafted as the voice of the dragon. That role gives him a certain amount of power, but it also earns him the hatred of everyone in town--and when his best friend decides to lead a resistance movement, Will finds himself in a no-win situation. When war extends across the land, Will and many others become refugees, finally making his way to Babel, the center of the Empire. There he falls in with confidence men and dreamers--and becomes the catspaw for a clever scheme to take advantage of the absent king and place him in the position of pretender--with all of the financial benefits that might create. Author Michael Swanwick creates a powerful world, where technology and magic coexist, where pointless war is waged over forgotten slights, and where the ruling elite parties, indulges in casual sin, and where both the mob and the elite dream of a return of the absent king--for very different reasons. It's hard not to draw parallels between Swanwick's fantasy world and the world in which we live (Babel's library has stone lions out front, and Will dreams of crashing dragons into the great tower of Babel), and piecing through the clues to figure out exactly what Swanwick is saying about our current situation is half the fun of the story. Will has vowed revenge for the casual destruction the forces of Babel called down on his home, but the world seems uninterested in his vows, conspiring to defeat his dreams at the same time as it showers new opportunities on him. Clearly Will is being manipulated. Exactly who, or what is doing that manipulation is less obvious--partly because so many forces seem intent on doing that. There are some loose ends to the story--a long section in the middle where Will serves as an underground (literally) warrior champion seems poorly integrated with the story and I expected to see more of a resolution of the issues involving ex-friend No-name, the dragon, and Esme. Still, THE DRAGONS OF BABEL has a real power to it--the story sucked me in, made me think, and held my interest. It's a different kind of story, but it's hard to put down.

In a tiny village east of Avalon and on the edge of the Old Forest, young orphan Will le Fey and others saw the war dragons with their riders soaring in the sky. Whereas the others fled to the safety of their village from either side of the war as the basilisk are as nasty to the innocent civilians as the dragons and their half mortal riders; Will stayed to watch although an explosion warped time. Not long afterward, a wingless crippled dragon with holes in his fuselage crawled out of the Old Forest and collapsed in the village. The villagers assume he belongs to Will, instead this feral beast made of flesh and metal owns the lad and declares he is the king of this area From that point forward, every evening, the somewhat healing dragon uses the boy to learn of any insurrections until the locals exile Will. The patrol capture him as no wanders the land and take him to a refugee camp run more like a prison. However, conmander Nat Whilk frees Will whose odyssey continues below the food chain at the sewerage and stinking tunnels beneath the Dread Tower of Babel as he learns the key lesson of the politically powerful to get what they want regardless of the costs to others such as the use of war as a mechanism to stay in power. This hardcore fantasy uses mythological characters to tell a coming of age saga of a young man who learns that Lord Acton was right as power corrupts. Politicians including are skewed by Michael Swanwick through the lessons learned by the hero as he climbs the stairwell up the Tower Of Babel until he can achieve his objective winning the hand of the Elven woman he loves, but was too far above him in social class. Readers who appreciate a hardcore fantasy satire will enjoy Mr. Swanick's version of New York City as THE DRAGONS OF BABEL will never give up power willingly risking the lives of patriots who are someone else's offspring. Harriet Klausner