The Iron Dragon's Daughter
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| Author | Michael Swanwick |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fantasy |
| Publisher | Millennium |
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Publication date
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November 1993 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | x, 424 pp |
| ISBN | |
The Iron Dragon's Daughter is a 1993 novel by writer Michael Swanwick that combines fantasy and science fiction. The story follows Jane, a changeling girl who slaves at a dragon factory in the world of Faerie, building part-magical, part-cybernetic monsters that are used as jet fighters. The plot of her story takes the form of a spiral, with events and characters constantly re-occurring in new settings.
The novel constantly subverts fantasy tropes and archetypes. Swanwick admits having written it both as a homage to J.R.R. Tolkien and in reaction to a handful of writers he claims exploit Tolkien's milieu and the readers' imaginations with derivative, commercial fantasy:
:[...] The recent slew of interchangeable Fantasy trilogies has hit me in much the same way that discovering that the woods I used to play in as a child have been cut down to make way for shoddy housing developments did.
The dragon Melanchthon is named after German theologian Philipp Melanchthon, an associate of Martin Luther. Further references to Lutheranism can be found in Swanwick's novel Jack Faust.
Swanwick has written another book in the same setting, entitled The Dragons of Babel. Excerpts from it have periodically been published as short stories. They include King Dragon, The Word that Sings the Scythe, An Episode of Stardust, A Small Room in Koboldtown and Lord Weary's Empire. Most of these were originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction.
The first portion of the story concerns Jane's childhood in a factory that builds iron dragons. Jane and her close friend Rooster, whose true name is Tetigistus, work in a group of indentured child laborers. Jane steals a grimoire, and after reading it, begins to hear the voice of an iron dragon in her head. Jane is taken to entertain an elderly, silent elf called the Baldwynn, but is told not to return after she witnesses a strange phenomenon. The dragon manipulates Rooster into trying to escape, but Rooster dies in the attempt. A distraught Jane forces the dragon to tell her his true name, Melanchthon. They then flee the factory.
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