The three younger dragons – who have already lost their father, their home and who have little gold to their name –are now unable to even grow on their expected inheritance. But his expressed wishes are contested by his ambitious son-in-law, who wins the argument and takes a greater portion. There is the matter of an expressed Will in which the bulk of his remains is to be divided between his three youngest children Avan (who lives and works in the city), Selendra and Haner (both young maidens). The novel opens with Bon Agornin’s on his deathbed and his devastated family getting ready to eat his remains.

The “why” is also important: weaklings, sickly and older dragons are eaten so that the race can be bettered (and so that other dragons have enough dragon meat to go on) and dead dragon’s meat is divided between the members of their families according to a Will that stipulates the amount that each family member will devour or depending on – again – social standing. It’s a vicious circle that seems impossible to break. But of course, only dragons who are already significant (in terms of their size and in their social standing) manage to eat other dragons. The bigger the dragon, the stronger it is and the more important in the grander social scheme of things. Dragon meat is not only delicious but so nutritious as to make whoever digests it literally bigger. Tooth and Claw is, after all, more Victorian than Regency.Įating each other is at the centre of this society – it’s what dragons fear the most, and what they most look forward to. On second thought though, although that line does more or less captures the gist of it, it is not quite right. When I first thought about how to I could describe Tooth and Claw in a way that truly conveyed its level of awesomeness, I could only think of: “it’s a Jane Austenesque novel with Dragons. In which the great and the good avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw. One daughter becomes involved in the abolition movement, while another sacrifices herself for her husband.And everyone in the tale is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.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.

Another son agonises over his father’s deathbed confession. A family deals with the death of their father. A tale of love, money, and family conflict–among dragons.

Tooth and claw walton