The Dragons of Babel

Locus Award nominee 2009.

"In The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Michael Swanwick created what was virtually a new genre of imaginative fiction. The Dragons of Babel is a brilliant sequel to that book. Well written, beautifully conceived, it is one of the very few fantasy novels I can unreservedly recommend. I love everything about this book." – Michael Moorcock

"Michael Swanwick is one of the most intellectually astute SF writers of his generation." – The Washington Post Book World

Michael Swanwick has been nominated for the Hugo Award for his writing fourteen times in the last ten years and has won five of them. He is one of the most important and respected living writers of fantasy and science fiction. Until now, his most famous fantasy has been the ground-breaking novel The Iron Dragon's Daughter. And now Swanwick returns to the world of that novel to tell a new story in The Dragons of Babel.

A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a postindustrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think.

Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal.

Evacuated to the Tower of Babel – infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City – Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his true love – a high-elven woman to whom he dare not aspire.

Swanwick is a master of storytelling, memorable imagery, striking characterization and sheer surprise. It is an excellent year in fantasy when one novel this good appears.