I just finished Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton -- aka "Jane Austen Does Dragons. (Walton's own comparison would be "Anthony Trollope Does Dragons", but I've never read any Trollope!)
It was fun in concept, and had a most excellent choice of narrators (John Lee, a very cultured, very proper, very well-known narrator who also does books like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers). But it was somewhat -- excuse the term -- ponderous in execution, and I was especially bothered by the pervasive problems of size. You see, first off, dragons are very large creatures -- yet we had desks, ballrooms, offices, and so on that, in practice, would have been so vast as to be nearly impossible to construct. Added to those problems, adult dragons vary tremendously in size, from a mere 7 feet to 70 feet, depending on social station and diet -- yet all these different sizes of dragons interacted regularly and used the same tables, desks, doors, and so on. Obviously, that would never work in real life, and it niggled at me constantly.
So, not perfect. But it was amusing to see the intersection of nature red in tooth and claw with erstwhile genteel society red in tooth and claw, even though the execution was somewhat lacking and most of the plot points were rather predictable. And, of course, the eventual unveiling of the mysterious "Yarg" (sp?) could be seen coming from several miles off, but I don't think anyone really expected to be surprised by that one.
Over all, even though this one won the WFA a few years back, I'm only giving it about 3 stars. Entertaining enough, but not outstanding.
