BOOK KLUB. · 3:57am Oct 16th, 2018
I like to read.
A lot.
You should too! At least, I'm assuming you do, if you're hanging out on a fanfic-based community. And you should read. Read things other than fanfic, even!
Because sometimes, reading non-fanfic offers an opportunity to make your fanfic better. Which brings us to Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw.
It's a rather generic (if fitting) title, for an obscure book ... that honestly every pony fanfic writer should go read at some point. I ... honestly probably should have brought this up some years ago before the show's final season was staring us in the face, but eh.
Still! Better late than never, right? Plus this is my way of telling myself I did something productive with my evening in lieu of writing a new pony story which I'll get around to eventually honest. Ehehm.
But yeah, back to the matter at hand. Tooth and Claw is a brilliant book, and honestly should be required reading for pony fic authors. Why is this, do you ask? Quite simple, really-- Tooth and Claw tells a very human story ... with inhuman characters. Basically, it's got a plot along the lines of a Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope novel, except all the characters are dragons. So you've got siblings and stepchildren bickering over inheritance, for example ... only in dragon society, part of one's inheritance is consuming the corpse of the deceased. (This is part of a really fun thing Walton does where 'sociology equals biology' as she puts it, in which the metaphor is poured on pretty thick as the upper classes literally eat the lower).
The central conceit of Victorian manners with draconian savagery is a delicious one-- and one that can offer a lot for a potential pony-story writer. Not for the blood and guts and stuff, but rather, for the thought that Jo Walton puts into a non-human society, and how it operates. Just something to keep in mind that ponies may be people, but they're not human. Unless you cheat and write an Equestria Girls story or something, but I digress.
Still, Walton does a lot of cool stuff. For example, for whatever reason in the novel, lady dragons have more dexterous claw-hands than gentledrakes, so lady dragons tend towards certain kinds of work-- including writing and clerical stuff. Also, as a sidenote, all the dragons in Tooth and Claw wear hats as their primary expressions of fashion, which is a freaking great image that I now wish I'd included in Octavia's Eleven now that I think of it.
But yeah. TL;DR: Jo Walton wrote a great novel without any humans in it and you should read it to figure out how to do the same.
Or really you should read Tooth and Claw 'cause it's a great book anyway. Even without my recommendation.
Oh, and there's an unpublished, incomplete sequel bouncing around the internets: Those Who Favor Fire. I haven't read it yet, but I probably should.
This definitely goes on my list!
Ooh, that's already on my list! :O I wonder where I heard about it...
Sold
I must point out, however:
That the novel does have humans in it. They're just foreigners hardly ever mentioned in polite society--we only get to see one in the next to last scene--though they've had a profound effect on dragon culture. I especially love the way Walton manages to work out an analogue to the whole "Catholic/Protestant" thing that was so big in British literature at the time: Anthony Trollope's mother apparently wrote a couple of popular anti-Catholic novels back when that was a genre. I've enjoyed the other books by Walton that I've read, but I'd never come across this one before. Thanks for spotlighting it!
Mike
Hey, just wanted to say thanks a bunch for the heads up on this book. Just finished it last night, and it's as you said...a very good, entertaining, and unique read! Different than my usual fare, but still very satisfying.
Might I suggest the Firebringer trilogy to you, if you haven't read it already? Written by Meridith Ann Pierce.