"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" has been published in the Fantasy Masterwork series and very deservedly so. It's an excellent novel, with a powerful, almost brutal vision and quality of writing transcending the confines of the genre. It starts so: "The changeling's decision to steal a dragon and escape was born, though she did not know it then, the night the children met to plot the death of their supervisor". This sentence immediately gives the reader initial clues (changelings, dragons - fantasy; slave children labour - dark tones) and provides a brilliant hook: wouldn't you want to know what happens next? Don't you like the rhythm and the ...  Read the complete review

I must confess that fantasy literature is something that I lost the taste for many years ago, having found it increasingly cliched becoming almost a parody of itself. Maybe I was reading the wrong books but everything I read seemed to contain the same elements, rag to riches heroes, powerful mages, a quasi-medieval European backdrop, dramatic landscapes of the type that New Zealand provided for the LOTR films, wily thieves and mischievous halflings (must n’t say hobbits ™) enchantments, clear cut good and evil and all the usual trappings. After finding myself short of something to read I found amongst a pile of books, probably belonging to an ex-lodger (its one of those .  Read the complete review