Jane, a young human changeling, decides to escape servitude in a factory manufacturing enormous flying dragon-machines and undertakes to obtain necessary artifacts and a mastery of her abilities. By the author of Stations of the Tide. Reprint. NYT.
A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner! A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized 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 haint politician, meets his one true love–a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.
A 2020 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST AND KIRKUS BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OF 2019 Award-winning author Michael Swanwick returns to the gritty, post-industrial faerie world of his New York Times Notable Book The Iron Dragon’s Daughter with the standalone adventure fantasy The Iron Dragon’s Mother. Caitlin of House Sans Merci is the young half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon. Returning from her first soul-stealing raid, she discovers an unwanted hitchhiker. When Caitlin is framed for the murder of her brother, to save herself she must disappear into Industrialized Faerie, looking for the one person who can clear her. Unfortunately, the stakes are higher than she knows. Her deeds will change her world forever.