[Luke_B]

Hey Ben, it's a term John Clute used to describe the book because of the way it subverts the common fantasy tropes like elves and dragons. Swanwick was attacking the mainstream fantasy of the time.

[Eventine]

That makes sense. Anti-traditional fantasy would be a better term for me, but it's a bit of a mouthful.
Not having read any Swanwick before, I wonder why he took this route? At least with someone like Moorcock or Mieville we've seen interviews and essays to see some of the grounds for their writing, but I'd be interested in seeing why Swanwick has written what he did.
Has anyone read any of his other offerings? Are they in the same vein? As good?

[Luke_B]

Check out this interview: The Literary Alchemist: An Interview with Michael Swanwick (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intms.htm):

On a deep and involuntary level, it's a bitter critique of what Fantasy has become. I fell in love with Fantasy when I was in high school, and read The Fellowship of the Ring over the course of one long night. I finished my homework at 11 p.m. and flipped it open, thinking to read a chapter or two before sleep, and finished the last page just as the home room bell rang at my high school the next morning. After which I sought out and read all the great fantasists -- E. R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, Fritz Leiber, Hope Mirrlees, Amos Tutuola, and so on. So that 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.

[Rob B]

I read this, oh I don't know, 3 or 4 years ago? Some things still stick with me.

-The atmosphere. I felt like the entire world Swanwick created was very hazy and smoky.

-Jane as a trickster. I found her frustrating at times. I am trying to remember her interaction with the musician, unforunately it isn't all coming back to me, but there was something there I remember being fairly compelling

-I really enjoyed how Swanwick subverted the organic dragon theme into a mechanical beast. Cool. (and now that I think about it, I'm making some connections between this and Rosemary Kirstein's work)

[FicusFan]

I am still reading. I am about 2/3 of the way through. It interests me, so I haven't stopped reading, but it has never developed into riviting.

I find it easy to put down, so I am reading little snippets. It seems that just as Jane gets something going, where she isn't reactive or passive, Swanwick changes the setting, and Jane has to start all over. It might have been part of what Swanwick was trying to say with the story, but it makes for a frustrating read.

I like some of the setting, but I am not all the up on magical creatures, so the way Swanwick/Jane toss off names of types of creatures with no description, I have no idea what most of the people in her world are like. Because I am lacking that info, in my mind they are all human (even though in the story they are not), and so the world seems less strange and exoitc than I am sure Swanwick inteneded.

I really hope to be finished soon.

[FicusFan]

I finally finished the book. I would have to say I was not a happy camper about this one. It seemed to be a way for Swanwick to express ideas about being and existence, and very wordy too. He had poor humanity (Jane) wedged between Nihilism, Random Numbers and a Deity. Then he seemed to throw in Reincarnation and Predestination VS Freewill and mostly he just bored me silly.

I thought the story was disjointed and poor. Some of the characters were done well, and the setting was interesting - but nothing was sustained. He used the setting and the characters for his point, at the expense of the integrity of the story. I thought the ending was a cop out, implying that maybe it had all been in her head, a part of her madness, rather than real experiences.

[Gildor]

Hrmmmm ...

I liked this book, but then I didn't. And i'm still a bit confused.

I think Ficus nailed what turned me off in the end, that ending was poor, it did seem somewhat wastful to just end it like that. Others had mentioned the directionless nature of the book, this didn't really bother me, I was pretty engrossed when I had the time to really get stuck in and read this.

Although generally I appreciated the refusal to adhere to this being a normal book. The brutallity was just that, brutal. And I liked the cyclic nature of Jane's life (Rooster-Rocket-Peter-Puck, etc), the sacrifices and so on, the triad nature of her friends although I did grow to dislike Jane quite alot, I thought she was a very intersting Anti-hero, she was just too cold sometimes.

The setting was very interesting, the Elven Society the Factory, the Small beings the Dragon ensnares were cool, plus the Dragon himself, yet the ending left me a bit jaded and detached from all the previous good work. It reminded a good deal of the theme in the Worm Ourobouros, that sort of repetetive nature of life going through the motions continuously. I think that was a effort to say that the fantasy he feels is derivative and in a contstant loop, compared to the pre 1960 works that he quoted in that interview above as loving.

I think I wanted a bit more than the notion that she had another chance and was absolved, or that she enterd into the same old thing, and the man she liked was doomed to die. The message got in the way a bit too much. Still, I did enjoy the read, it did have it's moments.