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Tooth And Claw by Jo Walton check out website: www.tor.com
The family consists of the father - Dignified Bon Agornin, his daughter - Berand; her wealthy landowner husband - Illustrious Daverak; Bon's sons, Penn, a parson in the church and Avan, an up-and-coming young civil servant and Bon's maiden daughters, Selendra and Haner.
All of this is set against an almost Victorian background of a changing society: new, dirty, industrial money infiltrating the established land-owning aristocracy, all of whom are sitting atop the massed poor. The twist with this story is that everyone in it is a dragon. Due to this and a couple of little quirks of her dragons' physiology, Walton can take this quasi-Victorian setting and twist it up a bit: To truly grow large, the dragons must eat dragonflesh regularly - thus the rich and strong are perfectly placed to exploit the small and permanently weak poor. This is a good book. Lots of different storylines weaving in and out to keep your interest. The Victorian angle is quite good too and I liked the tone of the book. It's all written in the third person with chapter titles like 'The Importance Of Hats' or 'The Narrator Is Forced To Confess To Having Lost Count Of Both Proposals And Confessions'. A bit old fashioned but the whole concept of the book is old-fashioned with a little fantasy twist, not for everybody maybe but I liked it. Rachel Broome
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OTHER REVIEWS - March 2004
Chasing Science by Frederick Pohl Wolves Of The Calla by Stephen King and illustrated by Bernie Wrighton The Mammoth Book Of Native Americans edited by Jon E. Lewis Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin Red Star Rising: More Chronicles Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg Buffy: Seven Crows by John Vornholt The Dragon Of Despair by Jane Lindsjold Gunpowder Empire by Harry Turtledove Barry Trotter And The Unnecessary Sequel by Michael Gerber Fitcher’s Brides by Gregory Frost Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror 2003 The Moon’s Shadow by Catherine Asaro Which Way To The Future: Selected Essays From Analog by Stanley Schmidt
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This
story concerns the Agornin family: their lives and loves, losses
and struggles in the period just before and the year following their
father's death. 
This
story has family feuds with one son going to the law for his inheritance,
daughters falling in love and discovering political radicalism,
religious dogma and sacrifice. 
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