Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles

Esther Schindler

Oh my, oh my. Another winner from a reliable author.

"There are a few fiction authors whose writing is so unrelentingly wonderful that all I have to see is his or her name on a book I don't own... and I walk it right to the checkout counter, without even looking at the description. Robin Hobb long ago earned a place on that list, for me (along with Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Peters, Barbara Hambly, Laurie R. King, and Steven Brust -- in case your tastes jibes with mine and you want to expand your reading list). If you want to know just how excited I was to see a new Hobb novel... I was offered a free copy through Amazon Vine and decided instead to pay for the hardback with my own money because I wanted "the real thing." Yeah. She's that good. This new series is set in the same world as Hobb's Assassin series and in the same part of the world as her Rainwild Chronicles/Liveship Traders. If you haven't read either of those, please don't start with this book. There's way too much "what has gone before" for you to figure things out. Instead, start with Ship of Magic (which won't be any hardship, I assure you). Dragon Keeper starts a few years after we last saw the characters from the Rain Wilds Chronicles, and some of them have bit parts. The central part of the action in this first volume is the dragons who Tintaglia so earnestly insisted that Our Previous Heros had to protect and nurture... except that, unlike the dragons you might envision from Pern, these don't all emerge as perfect specimens. In fact, *none* of the new batch of dragons are quite-right, and all are incapable of flight. As a result, they need humans to take care of them... until the dragons decide to take fate into their own hands. Sort of. The book starts out in a herky-jerky manner because Hobb has so many characters to introduce. It's as though she has to set up the chessboard with all the pieces before she can get the tale truly underway. But I don't mind, really, because -- as usual -- she creates characters whom I care about, even when they may be at odds to one another. She has invented a world that is consistent within its own physics and is, I suspect, infinitely discoverable. I also really enjoyed Hobb's underlying premise, that things don't always work out quite right, such as dragons who can't fly but have all the arrogance of those who do. And I was charmed by the conversation between the people who send messenger-birds back-and-forth; there's quite a bit of humor here, as well. The book ends without any major resolution; you will want the next book in the series in your hands NOW (at least I did) and it won't be out for a few more months. But oh! This is the sort of Fantasy novel I love. If you like either of the earlier series, I think you'll devour this book with the same enthusiasm I did. ["

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February 17, 2010 Verified Purchase

The Happy Reader

A surprising new take on dragons

"Love the adventure and the different characters, each with deep and developed backstories. I especially love the lore surrounding the dragons, dragon spawning, and how it all felt very real. Almost as though I might run into a worm cocoon on the beach somewhere! I felt the female character's storyline was a bit dated, but that's more a sign of the times than anything. Parts of the book were slower than others and I really had to force myself to get through a couple sections. 4 out of five stars for pacing. ["

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May 11, 2026 Verified Purchase

Ardella Crawford

Wait until the next volume comes out....

"I am a huge fan of Robin Hobb's books, and I think this is a worthy sequel to the first nine books (starting w/ the Farseer trilogy and ending with the Tawny Man trilogy). I have rarely felt so frustrated, though, at the end of a book. It just stops--and leaves the reader in an agony of suspense on several fronts. Hence the title of my review: wait until the next volume comes out in May to read it. I disagree with a lot of the comments in reviews already posted here. This book has many themes, and Robin Hobb is taking her time to develop them. I suppose that is what occasioned the complaints about the "slow pace." It certainly didn't strike me that way--I galloped through it way too fast and could hardly put it down. I thought Hobb's first trilogy (Farseer) was an exploration of what it means to be a man, and I thought the Liveship trilogy similarly explored what it means to be a woman. This book seems to me to be about relationships between men and women and how sexuality is dangerous and complicated. It's a story first, of course, but I think Hobbs's books are profound, with many levels of meaning. If you really get what she's writing about here, I don't see how you could find any of the scenes cliched or meaningless. She's up to her usual method: dumping a collection of characters into certain circumstances in life and then seeing how they cope with reality. I have never seen an author so obsessed with reality. And yes, it's bleak sometimes. A lot of the time, just like real life. Her characters find out whether they're man enough or woman enough to get through it and become what they were meant to be--just like real life. And I could NEVER be "on the fence" about whether I will read the next book or not. Clearly the book was cut in half, and to confirm it, go to [...] and read the interview there with Robin Hobb. The second volume apparently completes the story (see Robin Hobb's blog at [...]), so at least that's a relief--we won't have to go through this again! At least not with this book. Finally, I don't find the various love interests in the book to be unrealistic. Someone complained about Captain Leftrin's falling in love like a boy. Late love is like measles--older people get it worse--and sometimes aren't as level-headed as they would be if they were 20 years younger. Hobb portrays an attitude toward love and sex that is, in some ways, more 19th century than it is 20th or 21st, and it's realistic enough for certain times in history, even if not for today. ["

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February 12, 2010 Verified Purchase

Andrea Luhman

I would like to have given this book four stars

"A vividly real read from start to finish. I adore the authors endearing and flawed characters. I would like to have given this book four stars, but the ending or lack of one killed my affection for all of the other very good things found in this book. What I liked: 1) How real the characters are. They are presented with flaws, or make mistakes, and have quirks. The characters are varied, Hobb introduces you to a fairly large cast, but she has made it easy to like and get to know each one. 2) Hobb has a gift for creating a new and vividly real world. You get to see life in a city nestled high in the canopy of the rain forest. The life of another city nestled on dry land, and then the life in cities excavating ancient cities below them. We see the brilliant idea of a “living ship” and witness life aboard a river barge. She takes you into a dragon’s point of view. You feel the exhaustion from a serpent migration, the taste of mud as she built an encasement, and then the exhausting hunger as she emerged to a new life as a dragon. There are social rules, history, and culture that effect and add contrast to this story. 3) I like how the author kept me guessing about which of the keepers Thymara might eventually have a romantic connection to. How she see’s each of her three prospects differently. Feeling jealousy over one, comfort from another, and strange desire from one she doesn’t really like. It was a wonderful way to mix both plot and characterization into the unfolding action of the book. What I did not like: 1) No more back-stories Ms. Hobb. Cease and desist from writing anymore sad childhood memories, and recollections from the past. These would have had more impact if used sparingly. The dragons memories were needed to provide understanding of this world. Alise’s established her character, and Leftrin’s successfully added drama by way of hidden secrets. However the rest could have been edited out. Sedric’s was especially annoying, where it was placed in the book made the story drag, read as redundant, and provided little to no new information. I just don’t know why the author thought it was needed because I felt she did well establishing Sedric and Hest in a devoted relationship. I was hoping for more drama when their big secret was revealed. While these memories told us for certain our suspicions were correct, they told us nothing more we did not already know. I would rather have the depth of the Hest/Sedric relationship confirmed in a scene between Sedric and Alise. I also think every scene from Hest’s point of view could have been eliminated. He would have been a better bad guy without them, and the drama of Alise’s failed marriage would have increased. 2) Did I mention redundancy? If I didn’t, or if you the reader are not keeping up let me mention it again, there’s redundancy in the book. Yes this is a fantasy fiction book and many authors build redundant descriptions into the narrative to teach the audience about this fictional place. However in this book, some of these character and place establishing lead in’s went from annoying to insulting. I wondered about it after awhile. Were these remnants of an old outline that never got cleaned up in the editing process? Did some suggest Hobb restate these basic facts over and over again? Does she really think her target market has this low of an IQ? I would read these and hear myself grumbling, “No kidding, we’re 300 pages in.” 3) The ending was a disappointment. Not only was the main plot not resolved, but none of sub plots were either. The ending of this book is not an ending. This ending was not even something I would classify as a cliffhanger. To me the book just stops mid story, as if the author was only allocated so many words by her publisher, or this was the best place to stop according to her editor. This did not throw me too much. I have the next two books in my pile of “to-read’s” at home. However I caution anyone who needs resolution from their books, to have the next book on hand. ["

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June 29, 2014 Verified Purchase

Patrick Shepherd

Dragons Grounded in the Mud

"I'm afraid that this book has been done a great injustice by its publisher, who apparently decided that the work was just too long to print in one volume, and split it into two. This might not be so bad if both volumes were printed at the same time, but it appears that we have to wait till May till the other half will be published. Which means that this volume, which just stops with no resolution to its various plots and conflicts, will be left hanging until then. For those who have read the prior books set in this universe (the Assassin, Live Ship, and Golden Fool sets - and I highly recommend reading these prior to this book, though it is not entirely necessary to understand what happens in this book), the opening of this book will come as no surprise, as we follow the tribulations of a group of sea snakes up the Rain Wild river to their dimly remembered cocooning grounds. What does come as a surprise is an entirely new cast of characters, with only a couple of nods to some of the major players of the prior books. Here we find Alise, a Bingtown woman enticed into a marriage of convenience with Hest, scion of a major Trader family, Sedric, Hest's personal secretary, Thymara, a Rain Wilds child so visibly marked by the Rain Wild physical 'abnormalities' that she would have been left to die at birth without the intervention of her father, Leftrin, captain of a Live Ship barge(!?), and Sintara, a newly hatched dragon. It's the status of the newly hatched dragons that form the core of this book, as when the sea snakes of the opening finally do hatch, they are all deformed in some manner, runty, weak, and unable to fly or hunt for themselves. As they grow, the demands they make on the humans to feed them becomes a severe problem, till finally a proposal is made for the dragons to attempt a trek up the Rain Wild river to find their ancient and only partially remembered home of Kelsingra, accompanied by a group of 'keepers', a few hunters to provide provisions, and Captain Leftrin and his barge. Alise, as a scholar of dragon lore, comes along, with Sedric assigned as her chaperon. While the plot ostensibly is all about this trek through the wilderness, it's really about how each of the characters changes over the course of this challenge. Because of this, the book's pacing is quite slow; there are few major 'action' type events, and quite a bit of introspective looking inside each character. Those looking for slam-bam action should look elsewhere; those who enjoy fully developed characters and world building should find much to enjoy here. The envisioned world truly is remarkable, fully detailed but with just enough left hazy to make you hungry for more details, and far away from standard fantasy settings. Sexual relationships form a major theme throughout this, including some same-gender ones, along with how and why rules of society that address such relationships come to be and when they are still applicable (or not) in a new group separated from the old society. I was, however, a little unhappy about Alise continuing to be such a blockhead about such matters, when the clues were all around her, finding it a little difficult to believe that someone could really be that naïve. The other characters I found to be very well constructed, each with their own foibles, lacks, and problems. The other major theme is one of the status of women and those who are handicapped in some way in society, as shown by the problems each of the female characters (including dragons) here endure, and which I thought was very effectively handled. The major problem with this work, as I indicated before, is that it just stops. All the characters and their problems that were so carefully set up are just left hanging. Obviously, the resolution for all this will have to wait for the 'sequel'. If you can hold your breath for a couple more months, this is ok. If you can't, I'm afraid you will feel unsatisfied with this book. ---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat) ["

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April 3, 2010 Verified Purchase