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    Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
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    Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
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    Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
    Ebook653 pages11 hours

    Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles

    By Robin Hobb

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “Robin Hobb is one of our very best fantasy writers.”
    New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson

    With Dragon Keeper, Robin Hobb, critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling “master fantasist” (Baltimore Sun), begins a breathtaking  new series about the resurgence of dragons in a world that both needs and fears them—the world Hobb’s readers most recently visited in her immensely popular “Tawny Man” trilogy. Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles, Dragon Keeper is yet another magnificent adventure from the author of  The Soldier Son and Farseer Trilogies, confirming the Contra Costa Times of California’s assessment of Hobb as “one of the most important writers in 21st century fantasy.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 26, 2010
    ISBN9780061966149
    Author

    Robin Hobb

    Robin Hobb was born in California but grew up in Alaska. It was there that she learned to love the forest and the wilderness. She has lived most of her life in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of five critically acclaimed fantasy series: The Rain Wilds Chronicles (Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons, Blood of Dragons), The Soldier Son Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Farseer Trilogy. Under the name Megan Lindholm she is the author of The Wizard of the Pigeons, Windsingers, and Cloven Hooves. The Inheritance, a collection of stories, was published under both names. Her short fiction has won the Asimov's Readers' Award and she has been a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards.

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    Reviews for Dragon Keeper

    4/5

    117 ratings53 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was okay, but not quite up there with the Liveships or Fitz books for me. There's definitely some promise in the overarching plot, and I quite like the POV characters of Thymara and Alise. However, the book is lacking some of the magic of Hobb's other novels from the Realm of the Elderlings. Hopefully things will pick up in the rest of the quartet!
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this story as the "world building" was both unique and believable. The setting was similar to a rain forest but with some interesting twists. The characters were both people and dragons with some interesting hints of cross-fertilization, of a sort, to come. The characters were, in the words of a friend of mine, quite tortured but also in turn lovable and irritating. Even the "evil" people had some redeeming qualities which I enjoyed as this reflects real life. I was disappointed that the novel did not happily stand alone. It really really makes you want to read the next in the series....and you know it! Not yet published. Coming out soon....in hard back. money money money
    • 2/5
      *****I just wanted to say that I have finished the second book, Dragon Haven. The improvement from the first book is almost miraculous. So, though I stand by my low rating and negative review of Dragon Keeper, I would recommend you push through it and read the rest of the series, because I adored the second book.*****


      I'm only about a quarter through this book, but it is frustrating me so much that I have to vent my feelings. This is a good story, but the writing does it absolutely no justice. I adored the Farseer & Tawny Man series from Hobb, and her writing style was perfectly fine in those. And her wide variety of characters, and in particular her representations of women, were excellent. I think her Liveship series was somewhere in between the others and this book in quality.
      The story is ridiculously overwritten. 211 pages in, and I cannot recall any ordinary conversations- they are all super long, almost formal, and seem to talk about the same town issues/ over and over again, with no distinct differences in the perspective from different characters. The speech between one character and the next is almost identical sometimes, and conversation tends to repeat another character's thoughts from a mere one page earlier. I cannot believe an editor was so lax as to approve this! I can ignore bad writing for the sake of a good story, but repetitive, uncreative writing just jars me from the story, and bores and frustrates me.
      As for the female characters- why are they so downtrodden? I get that Hobb might want to talk about the struggles of women in a less-developed, slightly oppressive environment, but she has gone overboard. In this, and the Liveship series, no women seem to be free from oppression of some sort, which makes for a boring story and stunts their characters. And I am a strong feminist, so normally I wouldn't make that kind of argument. But Hobb could show the struggles of oppressed women, and even show a few of their perspectives, without repeating the same story over and over again. Yes, fantasy should explore social issues. But it should also be entertaining, and all the oppression just makes me depressed. And the series are completely uncreative in their oppression. They constantly use rape, abuse, or threat of them, as a plotline. Use some imagination for god's sake! Show some more subtle forms of oppression. In the Farseer & Tawny Man series- the women had their troubles, most even faced sexism and oppression, but it was only one facet of their experiences, which made for well-rounded, interesting characters. Free your women, give them more chance to LIVE!
      The Farseer & Tawny Man series are about a royal bastard (the born out of wedlock kind, not the jerk kind). The equivalent of this in those stories would be if Hobb had written in an extra five characters facing the troubles of being a bastard in a conservative society, and instead of making their experiences unique, she merely repeated the storyline of the first character with slight differences, over and over again, until their bastardhood overshadowed everything else about them and their experiences.
      I sincerely hope this story will improve as it goes along. If just baffles my mind that Hobb could write such amazing, beloved stories, and then turn around and write this disaster.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of two (maybe three) set in the same world as the Assasin's Apprentice, Tawny Man and Liveship Traders trilogies. It focuses on the Rain Wilds, and the dragons, and is set, time-wise, at the end of The Tawny Man trilogy. There are no common characters from there (unless you count mention of the dragon Tintaglia), but I believe there are common characters from the Liveship series (I haven't read those yet).It was a very addictive read - one I couldn't put down. It follows about four or five different character threads which eventually join up, and the characters are very well written. You feel for them all. I think the one that most gripped me, emotionally, was Alise's story, although others are equally gripping in different ways. For me it was easy to put myself in her place and to want her to take control of her life.
    • 3/5
      The story was okay and a bit slow sometimes. I felt it hard to like or empathize with any of the characters for the whole book, and parts of it reminded me of the Lord of the Flies. I also didn't like the repeated descriptions of parasites living on the dragons and of how tasty the dragons thought fresh entrails were.
    • 4/5
      Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb is the first in a new series. As is the norm for Robin Hobb it is a great fantasy story. It is well written and makes you not want to wait for the following parts of the trilogy.
    • 4/5
      Not her best but still great. Takes a bit of time to get going - it's only when all the different characters are brought together that it really starts getting interesting. Looking forward to reading the rest.
    • 4/5
      (Wow, this took me a whole week. I thought I'd finish it sooner than that...)

      I must admit that I'm suffering from Hobb withdrawal after having finished Fool's Fate. With that and a desire to read about arrogant dragons, I chose this book. Hobb excelled at most of what she set out to accomplish, which is why this book receives four stars. However, she left some things in an unsatisfactory condition.

      I should liken Hest's behavior to Kyle, Wintrow's father in the Liveship series. Both are utterly unlikable and both will or have undoubtedly received their just desserts. However, I feel that Hest is more repugnant than Kyle, possibly because of how he purports himself in his marriage. Kyle might have abused the crap out of poor Wintrow, tattooed him, and generally turned him into a human puppet for Vivicia, but Hest is worst in that his behavior is complicit with Sedric. Kyle acted on his own cruel ways without much help from anyone else. Hest and Sedric, by helping along the sham marriage, and Sedric for instigating it, are arguably worse.

      And this leaves me in an uncomfortable position, because, for all that Kyle (and the Piebalds and everyone else lumped in that category) are utterly unlikable characters, they weren't POV characters. To have Sedric take on a POV and be aware of everything that he's putting Alise through is abhorrent to me. I don't care what your inclinations are. Be a decent human.

      If Hest is a horrible human being, in some ways Sedric complements him exactly. The evil that he's done, at the end of the book, has repercussions that I hope he suffers from for a very long time. I could handle Sedric (and possibly Hest) if Sedric weren't a POV character. I don't want inside his head, thanks.

      Moving on from that...there were a few typos here and there, things I would have thought fixed by the paperback edition but evidently not. In some ways, Greft's behavior toward Thymara is reminiscent of Hest toward Sedric and Alise, because he seeks to control the situation. Greft is manipulative, selfish, and cold. While this builds tension, it just adds to the overwhelming amount of negative characters in this book.

      It's odd to note how much the serpents have changed personality-wise since their transformation. Maulkin is almost the same (I love you, Mercor!), but Sintara has become almost a mini Tintanglia. I think it's impressive that the dragons have such strong personalities, although the fact that they're all disabled in some way or another sickens me. Maulkin fought so hard to have them hatch as dragons and for naught, it seems.

      It's good to see familiar faces again, speaking of Maulkin. I cheered when Alise and Sedric climbed aboard Paragon and was glad to see Althea, Brashen, and Malta again. However, their appearances are more like cameos than anything really noteworthy.

      I'm hoping for more impressive character development in the next book. Reportedly, this was intended to be one book, Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven. It might have been better suited as one long book. Since Hobb has done long books in the past, I'm not entirely certain why she changed her mind here. It ended rather abruptly here and more character exposition would have been nice.

      This is not to say there aren't sympathetic characters. There are. I just feel like the sympathetic characters are overshadowed by the cruelty of the antagonists. Also...can I just say this, "OMFG SEDRIC GIVE IT A REST."

      Ahem. This is longer than I'd intended, so I think I'll stop here before I ramble too much.
    • 4/5
      When I picked up Dragon Keeper, a novel by Robin Hobb, it was specifically to have a nice, mindless read during my several hours of sitting in airports. I assumed it would be, like most novels with the word “Dragon” in the title, a cheaper knock-off of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight series. I’ve read others, by Mercedes Lackey and others: a big scary dragons meets a girl who falls in love with the creature. Basically, I expected My Friend Flicka with scales and wings. I’m here to report that I was pleasantly surprised about Dragon Keeper.The novel is situated in an acid-filled swampland called The Rain Wilds, where dragons have all but died out and people have moved to the rain forest canopy to survive. Fifteen hatchlings were all the dragons that survived of the last clutch, and each of them born malformed and sometimes mentally deficient. They have all the attitude, and memories, of millenia of their race, but are confined to a muddy swampland, unable to fly or hunt for themselves. The dragons are huge, horribly-tempered, and largely arrogant. Their crippled condition causes them to depend on the kindness of the local humans to survive. The local community’s patience is wearing thin and is looking for a way to get rid of the dragon problem once and for all.Humans are also slowly transforming in this harsh swamp environment. Many are born with scales, and black fingernails, or with ridges on their skin. When the deformities are too severe, the human infants are left to die.The setting is engaging, but where Hobb shines is in the interactions between the characters who populate her novel. The internal conflict is what moves the work from chapter to chapter, and causes us to enjoy the setting, and the arrogant dragons. Hobb seems to intuitively comprehend this, and it was a pleasure to read her work. I occasionally, if rarely, struggled with her sense of time. A few times, if a reader misses a cue, they will be taken back to a scene that occured years before, and which makes no sense. Generally the plot is linear, although it is told from the perspective of four or five characters. It was probably my fault: if I weren’t reading with a bad cold, on an uncomfortable airplane seat, the temporal motion of the plot probably wouldn’t have stymied me.The novel ends at a point where I was sorry I left the second novel of the series on the shelf at home. I was surprised to find that I’d jumped into the middle of a relatively well-defined world. Hobb has written several series (perhaps 15 titles?) that take place in the Realm of the Elderlings. What she accomplished remarkably well is never once giving me the impression that I should have read several novels *before* this one. The only component lacking, I thought, was a map, to allow me to keep track of where these people and dragons were. I was pleased to discover it and a looking forward to reading more.
    • 4/5
      I delightful book.. all about some poor crippled dragons who want to soar and the people that care for them.. Part 0f a series and I can't wait to read the second one :)
    • 4/5
      I grew up on a toxic waste dump. I realize that sounds melodramatic, but technically it's accurate. My childhood home was ringed by no fewer than five Superfund sites - and, as we like to say, those are just the spots they've cleaned.

      When I was a kid people weren't so concerned about the pollution. Arsenic was in the dust we kicked up on the playgrounds, on the berries we picked in the woods, in the small ponds where nothing lived and no birds ever stopped. The waterways were lined with gray heaps of slag from the copper smelter, in some spots enlivened by oil-slick rainbow stains made by unknown chemicals seeping out from the rocks. We were told not to fish or swim in the bay, which seemed to us kids to be hilarious: looking down off the docks into the still, metallic depths, we couldn't picture fish living down there at all, let alone anything you'd think of eating. And that was just the water. I still don't know what the mills were belching into the air, or what they're still churning out - sometimes, when the wind is right, you can both smell and taste the air: a sulphuric grit which stings your eyes and irritates your throat.

      Now it's been spruced up. They sealed off the slag heaps and built fancy condos on top of them, planted new grass along the edges, dug up people's lawns and replaced them with new, cleaner topsoil. The smelter company offered a cash settlement to the people living closest to the plant, and they took it, even though the surveys hadn't been completed. They worked hard to restore the bay, and now when you stroll through the new grass and out along the docks you can look down to see bright colonies of starfish and sea anemones clinging to the piers, and deeper down, the quick dark shapes of fish.

      Later, of course, we learned that the pollution went farther and deeper than the smelter operators had admitted to. Too late for the people who had settled, and too late for all of us who grew up splashing in that water and breathing that air. Statistics are readily available about disease rates in my hometown, telling us that you're much more likely to die of obscure cancers or get heart or lung disease there. I haven't seen anything on autoimmune disease, except that it's a hotspot for diabetes. I'm curious mostly because everyone I know, just about, has something crazy and unlikely wrong with them. Lupus, MS, celiac disease, autism, Crohn's disease, asthma - you name it. We're a sickly bunch.

      We're not alone. All over the planet, people grow up in the shadow of industrial toxins, watch their kids and their friends get sick and die, watch their own bodies with wary concern. What can you do? You go on. Sometimes your pain and your poison can be transmuted into something beautiful, into art, into action, into something meaningful. Sometimes you just have to learn to accept your limitations and endure the pain.

      And so this is a story for us. Here is a world where profit has trumped issues of morality and health, where generations grow up living with the legacy of pollution. It's sort of a counterpoint to the sunny ending of the Liveship books, where dragons and men are reunited and the deformed people of the Rain Wilds are transformed into something better. In this new series, we meet the people who were left behind, still deformed, without the hope that some magical intervention will save them from themselves. How they go on, and how they learn to transform themselves, is nothing short of inspirational.

      This is what fantasy is best at, and this is why it's necessary.
    • 2/5
      The first half of the book, I didn't mind that it was so slow and fairly repetitive. I was still intrigued and considering picking up the second book because I found the characters interesting enough. But that feeling didn't last. [Minimal spoilers] The main characters don't even meet each other or the dragons until 300 pages in to a 500 page book. For a book that claims to be about misfits on a journey with dragons, that did not bode well. Then, they don't even leave for their journey for another hundred pages. So we get about 1/5 of the book being about the promised journey - and it's not even that satisfying because it's just the beginning part where they don't fully trust each other yet. The book ends on an incomplete note. It's almost like Robin Hobb had the sequel included as the rest of the book, but someone told her it was getting too long, so she just chopped out the rest. Sigh.
    • 4/5
      A very good fantasy with lots of YA crossover appeal. It apparently is set in a fantasy world the author has built in others of her books, but I haven't read those and it didn't matter much. It features a small group of dragons, born deformed in a rain forest land called Rain Wilds, where humans have mostly forgotten dragons and are themselves sometimes born with a touch of reptilian mutations like scales and claws that make them outcasts and sometimes left to die at birth, if the mutations are too severe. An agreement with one of the last full dragons meant that the Rain Wilds tribes are required to feed these deformed, some mentally challenged, flightless young dragons, an arrangement that all parties soon grow sick of. The dragons eat a lot, perhaps including humans if they get hungry enough, and the rain forest is a miserable place for them to live. All decide that the dragons need to be relocated to the mythical land of the Elderlings, Kelsingra. Their shepherds are a small group of teenagers with a few too many mutations for the tribes' comfort level, a boat captain and his crew, Alise, a young woman and dragon scholar who is temporarily escaping a very unhappy marriage, and weak Sedric, Alise's friend and her husband's lover (unbeknownst to Alise). it's going to be a tough journey but an adventure, to be continued in later books.
    • 4/5
      Read this last night. I was not very tired and uh, stayed up until the wee hours reading this book. I haven't read any of Robin Hobbs' books in a while so I had forgotten alot about things in that 'verse. It ended too soon. When I got to the end - it really did feel like the end of the beginning rather than the end of a story. Which figures- given that it's the first book in a planned trilogy. (I understand that book two came out earlier this summer.)
    • 3/5
      The first in a new series about the dragons of the Rain Wilds, sequel to the Liveship Traders series. I had grown increasingly tired of the previous books and found myself not caring about this one. I didn't bother to finish it.
    • 2/5
      I got half way through the book and could not force myself to finish it. I tried, I really did.
    • 4/5
      Yay! The Rain Wilds are back!
      This book takes up the story following the Liveship Traders trilogy.
      I have to say, the introduction to the story was done masterfully. You know how some authors start a series, and the first chapter or so is an awkward reiteration of "what already happened?"
      Well, this does that - and it needs it, because, seriously, it's been twelve years since the Liveship Traders trilogy finished (!), and I could use the reminder. But it doesn't feel forced or awkward at all. I was impressed.
      The story focuses on the return of the endangered dragons to the Rain Wilds, and a number of people who are caught up with the dragons' fate. The reality of the dragons is not the glorious thing that many hoped it would be: politics and finance play a significant role.
      Among the main characters: Alise, a smart but naive young woman who finds herself in a loveless marriage (as to why it's loveless: duh, is anyone that naive!?) and focuses her energy on scholarship - anything to do with dragons. Thymara: a young girl, physically mutated. According to Rain Wilds custom, she should have been exposed at birth, but her loving father saved her. Leftrin: a barge captain, who steals the now-forbidden wizardwood for his liveship...
      Overall, the book is really good. It's not the best in this lengthy epic, and it takes a little bit to get going, but it's very enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable beginning to this new series by Robin Hobb. I've been waiting to read it when the whole thing is published. This is the set up and introduction to the characters. I enjoyed it greatly and went straight on to the next book.
    • 4/5
      The Dragon Keeper is the second book I've ever read by Robin Hobb, the first being Assassin's Apprentice, book one of the Farseer trilogy. My first thought after reading that one was that I liked it well enough; Robin Hobb is great storyteller, and Assassin's Apprentice was quite enjoyable. Still, while I was definitely on board to read the rest of the series, nothing about it excited me enough to make me want to drop everything and rush out for the sequel, if you know what I mean. In fact, it's been almost two years since I read the first book, and I still haven't gotten around to Royal Assassin. Shameful, I know.Now, I realize I should really make the effort to finish up young Fitz's story first, but then The Dragon Keeper landed on my lap. This first book of the Rain Wild Chronicles has gotten rave reviews from many of my fantasy-book-loving friends, so I admit I've always been curious about the series. That, and it's hard to resist the prospect of a good story about dragons.The book begins with a group of sea serpents journeying upriver to cocoon themselves so that they might hatch into dragons. They are overseen by Tintaglia, the last known dragon. It is her hope that their efforts would reintroduce their kind to the world, with the help of humans on the Rain Wild Council. We are then introduced to our key characters: Thymara, a young girl marked by a birth defect that gave her scales and clawed fingers; Leftrin, captain of the wizardwood liveship called Tarman; Alise Kincarrion, a woman who weds a successful local Trader named Hest Finbok in a marriage of convenience for both of them; and Sintara, a dragon who has hatched from one of the cocoons mentioned at the beginning of the book. Their stories all come together when a group of human keepers must set out on a quest to escort a party of dragons to find the legendary city of Kelsingra.I have to be honest; I found the first half or so of this book really slow, and it took me a while to figure out why. In the end, I determined it was the characters. While they each come from fascinating backgrounds and unique circumstances, I failed to drum up much interest for their personalities. Thymara, for example, came across to me as rather bland. Normally, Rain Wild babies with birth defects like hers would have been left for dead immediately after they were born, but she was rescued from that fate by her softhearted father. As a result, most people look upon her as a mistake that never should have happened. Don't get me wrong; while these little details about Thymara gave me insight into her character and I certainly enjoyed reading about them, the issue was that I found little else to set her apart from most young outcast protagonists in a lot of the other fantasy books I've read.I felt much the same about Alise. Her story, however, was much more interesting to me. Her relationship with Hest is pretty sad, with him being a cold and emotionally abusive ass. To Hest, their marriage is just another business contract; Alise is only useful to him for her ability to bear him an heir, and in exchange he has offered his considerable assets for her to fund her dragon research. As it turns out, there's more to the reasons why he is incapable of ever returning Alise's attempts at affection, which made my heart go out to her. And yet, her personality was so unexceptional that I found it hard to truly root for her.I think some of this stems from the dialogue. For instance, in the book is a minor character named Greft, a young dragon keeper who very swiftly and efficiently sways the others around him to set himself up as the leader of their crew. Often in his manipulations, he says things along the lines of "Surely, you must see this is the way..." or "I am sure you can understand..." I mean, do people really fall for patronizing verbiage like that? It all just sounds so forced and over the top. I know it's a minor gripe, but I didn't like how instead of actually giving the character a charismatic personality, the writing often falls back on dialogue choices like that.Now, the dragons, on the other hand. Not magnificent and noble creatures, these. Robin Hobb's dragons in the Rain Wild Chronicles are weak, malformed and unable to take care of themselves, relying on humans to hunt for them and clean them. From what I read of them, they also seemed petty and squabbly, and Sintara annoyed me to no end with her arrogance and posturing. But still, the dragons here felt fresh and different for me, and I liked them a lot for that.While the beginning was slow to pick up, the positive news is that once the characters were all set up and the adventure got going, the book just got better and better. In fact, I was quite irked when it ended, just as things were at their most interesting. It was actually pretty abrupt.I have to say that in general I don't mind cliffhangers, not if they're executed deftly and with panache. Unfortunately, I can't claim that this was one of those endings. There was no real conclusion, no cooldown, not even any real attempt to wrap things up nicely. Without warning at all, everything just comes to a screeching halt.However, to the book's credit, the way it ended was still very effective. I already have the next book on hold at my library. And that, at least, is more than what I did for the Farseer trilogy.
    • 3/5
      Robin Hobb's characters are very real. They have strengths and failings and the ability to overcome their failings with effort.

      Dealing with dragons is difficult at the best of times. But when they are misformed and need help that they are resentful for, it makes life even more difficult for those contracted to take care of them.

      I enjoyed reading this book. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more had I read the sets of series in their intended order rather than starting with this one, but I'll go back and read the others in her series when I can.
    • 3/5
      Nice start to a unique fantasy series.
    • 4/5
      The book started out slow and even a little boring. I almost turned it aside unfinished. However, Robin Hobb is known (to me) for slow beginning and brilliant endings so I persevered.Once the place markers were set and the characters introduced, the pace picked up and I found myself entertained and thoroughly immersed in this world of dragons.Thymara, touched by the Rain Wilds and born with claws and scales, should have been disposed of at birth, but her father could not allow that to happen and went against his wife’s wishes by keeping her. Alise, almost an old maid when she finally marries, had already set her mind to the study of dragons and refuses to let her new husband stop her studies. Lethrin, captain of a Live Ship, will do anything for money…and love. These three people are thrown together when the council are persuaded to move the young dragons to a place more suited to their needs. The problem is … none of them are expected to return to civilisation, as it’s a dangerous journey.The three main characters are complimented by a great cast of secondary characters. Their individual stories are complex and real. This is compounded by external conflicts and danger. In my opinion, what the author lacks in being able to get straight into the story, she makes up for in character and world development.This is a brilliant book, once you get past the first 50 or so pages. However, the story ended without resolution. Smack bang in the middle of the tension…it finished! To be continued in book 2. As my definition of a story is that it must have a beginning, a middle and an ending this was a great disappointment for me.
    • 3/5
      Unfortunately this author committed on of my greatest pet peeves ensuring it's unlikely I will by their books in the future. The crime? Not crafting the each part of a trilogy as a freestanding COMPLETE story. Dragon Keeper just suddenly drops off with no resolution to any of the story threads, most annoying. In general it's a slow story though it is interesting enough to keep you reading. Would I recommend it? Probably not, certainly not without a warning that the story is incomplete.
    • 3/5
      It was ok, I guess. The story really didn't get going until the last 3rd and it ends on kind of a cliffhanger and the second book isn't due out til May. But it was diverting enough. The thing is, most of the world building was already done in previous books, so it needed some a really great story or exceptional characters to give it a wow factor. Didn't really have either, imo. Although the last chapter did make me want to read on.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the latest book from Robin Hobb but found it took me until about half way through to really be pulled into the narrative. Likely, this was due to the common technique of cycling through the viewpoints of characters in different locations until eventualy they meet up and the story continues from there.When I got to the end I was engaged and curious about what would happen next but realised not a whole lot had actually happened, and it was really just a set up for the rest of the series.
    • 2/5
      I quit reading about a quarter of the way into it. Neither the characters nor the plot was grabbing me and making me want to read more. It was reading more like a soap opera than a fantasy novel.
    • 4/5
      I had high expectations for this book because of the author, but it took me a while to get invested in it. It has a slow start, but very interesting characters. This book, and its sequal, are really character studies. I recommend this to those who love character-driven novels.
    • 4/5
      It's always a pleasure to return to Robin Hobb's Bingtown and Rainwild settings, which are once more in the throes of change. This time, she presents us with the outcasts of human and dragon society, and the text is really a passionate argument for their worth and that society should allow them to become everything they can be, while at the same time never becoming sentimental about them and allowing them to be flawed and sometimes unworthy beings. True to form, things will never be easy for them; Hobb delights in putting obstacles in her characters' paths, and one of the things that I appreciate most in her writing is that the road to maturity and self-knowledge is frequently painful and uncomfortable (for both characters and readers). It was also a pleasure to see how life is treating characters from the Liveship books: we get to spend brief but significant time with some old favourites. Cunningly, they're also used to illuminate the choices our new main characters are making - in particularly, they present Alise with a new range of possibilities, outside of her sheltered experience.The Dragon Keeper is not as epic in scope as Hobb's other works, and suffers a little from an overly-luxurious pace (although when the trade-off is extra time spent on characterisation, as it often is with Hobb, I seldom mind). As others have mentioned, the ending is somewhat abrupt, almost cliff-hangerish, and I'm keen to read the next book soon. One final caveat: here, Hobb is dealing more directly with male homosexuality (though not explicitly) than she ever has before. Unfortunately, both of the homosexual characters are quite unsympathetic. However, I do have faith in her ability to grow and change her characters (think of Malta in the Liveship books!), and even when they're being thoroughly unlikeable, she's always careful to present their motivations in such a way that the reader can understand them (e.g. Kennitt), and I don't consider this a real criticism (yet :-).
    • 1/5
      I was two-thirds of the way through when my library loan came to an end, and I didn't renew it. The world was richly detailed, but the pace was excruciatingly slow. Looks like the book was essentially the preface for the rest of the series.
    • 4/5
      A string beginning to the series. Well-developed characters, interesting interactions. The villains for the next book are set up. Thymara and Alise are getting stronger. Travel may bring them freedom.