Cannibalism is more than just a normalized custom, it also represents a special physiological need for the dragons consuming the flesh of a fellow dragon-especially one that is particularly large and strong-heals, restores, and allows one to take a part of their strength. Indeed, in the world of Tooth and Claw, a death in the family isn’t only a time for grief and mourning, it’s also the occasion to feast on said family member’s remains. Of course, in this world, the patriarch is a 300-year-old dragon and the inheritance in question is none other than his own seventy feet long body. However unconventional the synopsis might sound, the story itself begins in a rather quintessential Victorian way we follow the death of a rich family’s patriarch and the inevitable bickering that ensues over the much sought-after inheritance. In Jo Walton’s 2003 novel, Tooth and Claw, the celebrated fantasy author reimagines an alternate version of 19th century England where the world is now run by a society of anthropomorphic dragons who nonetheless still live by the moral and social standards of a Victorian era novel.

You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw.I can hardly remember the last time where I was so enticed to pick up a book just to be able to confirm whether or not it measures up to its own irresistible premise. In which society's high-and-mighty members avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby. Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses.in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. Now Walton returns with a very different kind of fantasy story: the tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, of a son who goes to law for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father's deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.Įxcept that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw. Jo Walton burst onto the fantasy scene with The King's Peace, acclaimed by writers as diverse as Poul Anderson, Robin Hobb, and Ken MacLeod. Now in a new pocket-sized hardcover edition, the World Fantasy Award-winning tale of contention over love and money―among dragons.

Tooth and claw by jo walton