Tooth and Claw

Bon Agornin is dying, and his family gathers at Agornin to hear his last confession and, when it is over, to divide and eat him, since a dragon's strength comes from the flesh of dragons and an inheritance is measured in pounds. His elder daughter Berend has married the powerful Illustrious Daverak, who takes rather more of the body than his share and feeds a good deal of it to his own children. Bon's son Penn, a parson bound by the rules of his office, cannot say what he heard in the confession. His brother Avan, a civil servant in the capital, decides to sue. The unmarried sisters Haner and Selendra are dispatched to separate households, where the question of whether a maiden dragon has blushed pink in the presence of a male becomes as consequential as any settlement in Trollope. Walton's conceit is executed with complete seriousness: the Victorian novel's assumptions about primogeniture, female chastity, clerical duty and the consumption of the weak are all literally true here, because these are dragons. It is very funny, entirely coherent, and rather more pointed about its source material than a pastiche would be.