It's funny how you find out about authors. I don't remember how I first stumbled across papersky's journal, but the entry was interesting, so I added her to my reading list. Then I read several of her thoughtful reviews over on tor.com. All in all, I decided I would not be sorry if I picked up some of her books, and I haven't been. I read Farthing and Ha'penny first, and am now working my way through her backlist.

Tooth and Claw is very different from the Small Change series, and indeed, from any other book I've read. In the introduction, Walton acknowledges a debt to Trollope's Framley Parsonage. I haven't read much Trollope (shame!) so I was reminded more of Austen. (Frelt in particular reminded me of Mr. Collins.) Some of the themes are familiar to Austen: class differences are obstacles to romance, financial concerns weigh heavily upon marriages, inheritances are up in the air. However, all the characters are dragons.

The book opens on a death. Bon Agornin, patriarch of the Agornin family, is close to death and concerned with leaving adequate provision for his family. His two elder children are well established and have no need for much in the way of an inheritance: Penn is a pastor with a wife and two children, while Berend has married well, to the Illustrious Daverak. These two are to have a token rememberence from his hoard and leave the rest to the three younger children, who need it more. Selendra and Haner, the two maidens, are to be separated upon their father'd death, while their brother Avan will return to his life in the city. Daverak shocks the family when he accedes to the division of the gold, but takes more than his fair share of the remainder of their inheritance: Bon Agornin's body.

Dragons only grow larger, and thus increase in social status, when they feed on their dead. Weak dragons are culled and eaten by the lord of their domain; lower-class dragons can go throughout life without ever tasting dragon flesh. Upper-class dragons, however, leave their bodies to their families (minus the eyes, which go to the parson,) so that they may increase in both size and social standing, as they will not on beef and fruit alone. Daverak gives Bon's liver to his children, and then greedily consumes more than his share of the rest of the body, stinting the younger dragons. Incensed, Avan brings a law suit against his brother-in-law, and from there, the book tracks the rise and fall in fortune of the individual members of the family as they seek justice and adjust to their new statuses in the aftermath of their father's death.

Walton excels at making the draconic society vivid and believable, with biological reasons for their mores to parallel those of Victorian England. The juxtaposition of the concern with matrimony and inheritance with the brutal and cannibalistic dragon society is startling and engrossing. She drops in background gracefully, so that as the story unfurls, so does the reader's understanding of the consequences of the characters' actions. The story concludes with rewards and punishments appropriate to each character's arc, just as the reader gets a wider glimpse of changes ahead for dragon society. I don't know that Walton has any intention of returning to this world -- the book doesn't feel like the beginning of a series -- but I'd be delighted if she did.