It’s a story of a world with many of the priorities and interests of Victorian Britain, but in which all players are dragons. Utterly engrossing and absolutely brilliant (definitely a keeper), but … yeah … odd. Book Swap wins again!Įnter your e-mail address to follow Shelf Love and receive notifications of new posts by e-mail.This has got to be the oddest thing I’ve read in a while. I still think the Small Change trilogy is the best thing I’ve read by Walton, but this was great entertainment.

(How did I not understand what the Yarge were? Was I just not paying attention?) The religion, the infrastructure, the class structure, the law - all are presented as if to a dragonish audience, so we never get too much, and never quite enough. Walton’s world-building is clever - so clever, indeed, that I didn’t make some connections until the very end of the book. Making the actions of the characters part of their biology, not part of their morality, makes the dilemmas much plainer. If Selandra can no longer blush, she cannot marry. This becomes a pressing issue when Selendra is wooed by the boyishly irresponsible Sher, who, of course, stands to gain a considerable inheritance once he settles down. A potion provided by a loyal servant restores Selendra’s maidenly coloration, but it is feared that she may never again be able to blush naturally. The family at first insists on a marriage to the buffoonish Blessed Frelt. This very misfortune befalls Penn’s sister Selendra. A problem arises if an unwanted suitor, in an accidentally unchaperoned situation, barges into a maiden’s personal space and causes her to blush unwillingly (a rather mild metaphor for rape or other dishonor a scarlet mark that cannot be hidden).

One example of the way Walton makes this work is with the clever device of virgin dragons’ scales coloring. While an attractive maiden dragon’s scales are a burnished gold, physical proximity of a suitor turns her scales a blushing bridal pink. Whether it’s arguing over an inheritance or arguing over who gets to eat the largest share of the dead father’s body, Victorian social mores are on display. Certainly, with both books entangled in several proposals, confessions, and questions of class, gender, and gentility, the comparison is easy to make: Trollope understood the dragons of his own society rather well, and so does Walton. Walton mentions in her introduction that the book leans heavily on Trollope’s Framley Parsonage. Her review of it sums it up so perfectly that I feel odd doing any sort of summary: go and read it, and come back for a few of my thoughts. Teresa asked me to read Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw - essentially a Victorian novel in which all the characters are dragons - in this year’s book swap, after she read it herself in 2013.

Jo walton's tooth and claw