Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

Started: 24 Sept 2012
Finished: 3 Oct 2012
Pages: 292

Tooth and Claw is "Jane Austen with dragons".  No, not a pastiche of classic fiction, like "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" or "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"   Tooth and Claw is a mannered romantic tale where all of the parts are played by dragons.

Books like this are generally a part of a separate sub-genre of fantasy/speculative fiction.  Depending on its tone,  you'd expect Tooth and Claw's readers to be either people who will read anything and everything about vampires or dragons or zombies or <insert favourite trope here>,  or, if the tone is arch rather than twee, to be people who enjoy satire.

But Tooth and Claw is simply a well-written regency-style romance that explores an interesting idea or two about what kind of society might be established by dragons, and what kind of role might be played by women (dragons) within that society.  It won the World Fantasy Award in 2004, which gives you an idea that the writing and plotting are well above average.

I'd previously read two of Walton's later books:  Farthing and Half-penny.  Be warned.  In the same way that a reader of To Say Nothing of the Dog might be surprised by the Domesday Book, a reader of Tooth and Claw might be a little taken aback by some of her later work.  Farthing and Half-penny take place in an alternative history where British fascists gain the ascendancy and Britain abstains from the Second World War.   The first book (Farthing) perfectly captured the zeitgeist of George Bush's America....a world in which certainties about logic, justice, and decency are heartbreakingly false.  Recommended, but not exactly something to curl up with with a cup of tea and a cat -- unlike Tooth and Claw.