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99 of 106 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Up the river without a paddle, November 23, 2009
This review is from: Dragon Keeper (Rain Wilds Chronicles, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
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Usually when there are dragons reintroduced into a fantasy world, they end up being strong, smart, beautiful, and all the rest of it. But Robin Hobb examines a different idea: what if something hadn't gone quite right with the forming dragons? "Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds" is a slow-moving, richly detailed book that builds on the past events of her last two trilogies, but introduces a rather different dilemma and radically different characters. Five years ago, the dragon Tintaglia led a number of exhausted, half starved sea serpents to the Rain Wilds, and oversaw them going into their cocoons. But when they emerged, these new dragons were deformed and stunted in mind and body. Now Tintaglia has gone off with her new mate, leaving the hungry flightless dragons to be fed by the Rain Wilds people who are uncovering Cassarick -- and both dragons and humans are rapidly getting sick of this miserable arrangement. So the dragons trick the humans into agreeing to take them to the ancient Elderling city of Kelsingra, along with several human keepers. Among those on the journey are the deformed locals including a girl named Thymara, and with an unhappily-married scholar named Alise. But can the strong personalities among the embittered dragons and their equally deformed keepers avoid clashes -- and who will make it up the river? As dragoncentric books go, "Dragon Keeper" is pretty lacking in glamour. The dragons are stunted, petty, flea-bitten, muddy and fed on spoiled meat, and they live in a rainforesty region full of mud and acid rivers. Fun. The biggest problem is that "Dragon Keeper" goes SLOWLY -- it feels like somebody split one massive book in half, and that this is the first part before the plot really gets moving. And the main plot is basically made of three big subplots that merge together about halfway through, as Thymara becomes a dragon-keeper and Alise joins the expedition. Fortunately if you can take the slowness, Hobb's imagined world is an engaging and complex one. Her writing is sumptuously detailed and full of atmosphere, whether it's the pleasant cultured Bingtown, the rough and deadly rivers, or the damp treetops of the Rain Wilds. She also sculpts the plot around three main female characters, all mired in horrible situations. There's the haughty Sintara, reborn as a stunted wingless dragon who loathes herself and her fellows; Alise, a young woman devoted to studying ancient dragon history and lore, but unhappy in her marriage to a cruel, snotty playboy; and Thymara, who has had claws and scales since she was born and is marked as an outcast among the Rain Wilds folk (and loathed by her own mother). And Hobb does an excellent job sketching out the supporting characters -- the dragons who seem to blossom under the keepers' care, the gaggle of outcast kids, and the rough, amiable Captain Letrin. Tats is a likable young boy determined not to let prejudice bog him down, while the whiny Sedric seems at first to be Alise's love interest (but who is more interested in her husband). "Dragon Keeper" is a solid fantasy book that expands Robin Hobbs' longrunning fantasy world into a messier, cruder part of the world -- the only problem is that it's slow as a sleepy dragon.
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58 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Solid work from a fine writer...but I have mixed feelings, December 26, 2009
This review is from: Dragon Keeper (Rain Wilds Chronicles, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
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I've read several other books by Robin Hobbs, and I've found her work hit and miss for me. This one has me sort of on the fence. I DID like it. Quite a bit, actually. Her world building is unique, interesting, and fraught with all sorts of problems--acid rivers, ancient volcanic eruptions, humans who are being changed into pseudo reptiles over teh generations in the Rain Wilds. Oh, and there are dragons with fertility problems and their offspring, who were born damaged. (How could you not like dragons, right?) It's compelling stuff, and her characters are also well drafted and very human in their foibles, fancies and troubles. The author displays her ability to handle complex plots and character growth issues while telling a story well. It's a solid start to a series. My problem with it is perhaps only my personal preference, but I didn't like any of the characters except for Captain Leftrin and Alise...and she began to grate on me, too, near the end. The portrayal of the characters whose eyes we see through is realistically done, and they are extremely believable, even though I didn't like them. We have Hest, Alise's jerk of a husband; the arrogant-to-extreme dragon Sintara; Alise the abused wife finally out from under her husband's thumb; Captain Leftrin, who isn't a saint but is a real guy's guy and nice to boot; Thymara the Rain Wilds girl; and Sedric, the 'friend' accompanying Alise who is so shallow, selfish and two-faced I barely could stand reading his viewpoint. But I had a difficult time reading much of them, they were mostly so unlikeable to me, no matter how well written the story was. And my final difficulty had to do with the pace. This book is SLOW MOVING. I like me some slow world building, where the world unfolds and is revealed like a flower opening its petals to show even more glorious colors as it does. But...sometimes it can be too slow. The first hundred pages were perhaps great for adding depth and understanding, but I could have done without all of Alise's backstory and the worm migration that led to the dragon problem. Perhaps the book needed them; the author no doubt had her reasons and I won't argue her ability to determine what a story needs. But for me, it was just too much and too slow, as nothing much happened. The one thing I really actively did not like was the stuff about pigeons. There are some really dumb interludes that consist of messages sent from one pigeon tender to another, and the notes are used to transition between sections when time has passed, and allow the reader to see how much time has passed. I hated those and quit reading them except for a cursory scan to see if something critical were there. (Never found anything that I had to have there.) So, I found myself liking the book yet not liking it. I thought it was well written but had to force myself to keep reading it instead of putting it aside. And, now that it's done, all I can feel is relief and some disappointment...but a lingering sense that I'd like to know how the story finishes. It's mixed feelings for me. And I might read the sequel. On the fence on that.
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73 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I was hoping for, November 29, 2009
This review is from: Dragon Keeper (Rain Wilds Chronicles, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
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Ms. Hobb is a very talented fantasy writer. I would never dispute that, nor would I really disagree with anyone who wanted to give this book a four- or five-star review. The plot is solid, as are the characters, and the setting is well-imagined and beautifully described. It just happens that I found most of the novel intensely exasperating and couldn't wait for it to be over. So I'm rating it at the same level I gave her Soldier Son trilogy, rather than her vastly superior Assassin/Tawny Man trilogies. (Minor spoilers follow.) The best way I can describe what aggravated me so badly about this book is to say that if they turned it into a film, they'd have to show it on the Lifetime channel, as one of its endless parade of "women gamely holding up under the stress of sexism/chauvinism/male violence" movies. One of the reasons I love fantasy is its ability to take me out of this world; this topic does exactly the opposite, and reading almost 500 pages of this stuff was torture. The two protagonists, Alise and Thymara, do of course run into guys who aren't creeps, but most of the tension and suspense in the book is generated through their conflicts with the various male control freaks in their lives. Alise's husband is a horrible human being, and her male chaperone on her journey up the river is a duplicitous worm who deserves to be stepped on by a dragon. Thymara, the Rain Wilds girl, has similar problems with a controlling jerk who makes her feel like sexual prey (for good reason, from what I can tell) every time she turns around. Yuck yuck yuck. I suppose I'd recommend this book, but in a qualified way. As fantasy, I don't think it succeeds all that well; as a depiction of women struggling to make their way in a man's world, it works fine. If that's really what you're looking for.
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