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The Iron Dragon's Daughter Series

This series plunges readers into a unique world where gritty industrial reality clashes with wild magic and ancient secrets. Follow the journey of characters caught between worlds, enslaved by the creation of terrible war machines, who uncover the sentience of these beasts and escape into a life of thievery and outsider status. It's a story of rebellion, self-discovery, and finding power in an unexpected blend of sharp-edged technology and untamed magic. Prepare for an adventure that subverts conventional fantasy tropes with its dark humor and inventive world-building.

The Iron Dragon's Mother
The Dragons of Babel
The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Recommended Reading Order

  1. The Iron Dragon's Daughter

    • 352 pages
    • 13 hours of reading

    Part classic fantasy, part Charles Dickens, The Iron Dragon's Daughter is one of the most unique novels in the genre. Jane is a changeling child, enslaved in a factory that makes the iron dragons - terrible engines of war - until she discovers the secret of the dragons' sentience and is able to use one of the beasts to escape. Then, her adventures as a thief and an outsider take her into a reality rich in wild magic and sharp-edged technology, a world where Time and shopping malls have a strange relationship and gryphons have a low capacity for alcohol. A surprising and brilliant novel that undercuts the easy escapism of more conventional fantasy.

    The Iron Dragon's Daughter1
    3.4

  2. The Dragons of Babel

    • 368 pages
    • 13 hours of reading

    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.

    The Dragons of Babel2
    3.4

  3. The Iron Dragon's Mother

    • 368 pages
    • 13 hours of reading

    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.

    The Iron Dragon's Mother3
    4.2