Dragon Keeper (Rain Wilds Chronicles, Vol. 1) [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Robin Hobb (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 26, 2010

“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.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here be dragons—but debilitated, deformed, damaged dragons, hatched too soon, sick and starving, into a world that has mostly forgotten them. The first of Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles, an absorbing extension of her Liveship and Tawny Man trilogies, introduces 15 young dragons who struggle to survive with the grudging help of mutant Rain Wilders. Eventually driven out by the Traders Council, the hatchlings decide to seek Kelsingra, their ancient home. Caught up by the dragons' plight and longing to escape unhappy families and the stifling Rain Wild culture, self-taught dragon scholar Alise Kincannon and teenage tree-dwelling mutant Thymara volunteer to accompany them on the quest, with the help of magnetic liveship captain Leftrin and a host of colorful characters. Hobb's meticulously realized fantasy tale is a welcome addition to contemporary dragon lore. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a novel as good as it is massive, the first of two Rain Wilds Chronicles, Hobb returns to the dragons of the Rain Wilds forests, first met in her Liveship Traders trilogy. They have survived but aren’t thriving. Weak and sick, they must be cared for by the forest’s inhabitants. The only way to save them is to send them back up the Rain Wilds river, lest they run amok and destroy the more civilized peoples who don’t want the responsibility of caring for them. On the perilous journey to do just that, a rich merchant’s wife from Bingtown and a 16-year-old girl from the Rain Wilds tribes meet. They initially have nothing whatsoever in common except wanting to help the dragons, but that is enough for a bond between them to be eventually established as they fight natural and man-made hazards. The scenes on the water will remind readers of the Liveship Traders, as will the good characterizations and the lush forest settings. Hobb continues to occupy a perch at or near the top among contemporary fantasists. This book is imaginative, literate, and compassionate from first page to last. --Roland Green

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager; 1 edition (January 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061561622
• ISBN-13: 978-0061561627
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (214 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robin Hobb lives and writes in Tacoma, Washington. Robin is best known as the author of the Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest.) Other works include The Liveship Traders Trilogy, the Tawny Man Trilogy, and the Soldier Son trilogy. The Rain Wilds Chronicles is now complete, published as Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven. A story collection, The Inheritance, showcases my work as both Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm. In April of 2012, City of Dragons was published as the 3rd volume in the Rain Wilds Chronicles. That tale will conclude in April 2013 with the publication of the final volume, Blood of Dragons. Robin Hobb also writes as Megan Lindholm.

A short story, Words Like Coin, is available as an illustrated e-book from Subterranean Books. Soon, a Six Duchies novella, The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince, will also be published by Subterranean.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#31 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#40 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy

#54 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#31 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#40 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy

#54 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 122 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Up the river without a paddle November 23, 2009

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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. Read more ›

68 of 73 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

By DF VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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. Read more ›

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars the first half of a fantasy novel April 27, 2010

By T. Simons TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book has great character writing, novel and interesting fantasy concepts, and what might be half of a plot. It's the first half of a "duology" set in the same world as Robin Hobb's Liveship and Tawny Man novels (with enough independence that it's intelligible to new readers like myself, and enough cameos and references to entertain readers of her prior books). Unfortunately, it reads like it's merely half a story, not one story out of a pair.

The basic tale, as billed on the jacket, is that a (flock? herd?) of baby dragons have hatched near a human city, but due to environmental pollution and other factors they are all disabled in one way or another, and when they start to present a danger to the city, a small group of humans is enlisted to help the dragons relocate to a more remote location. The first problem is that in a 470 page book, the first substantive meeting between the dragons and either one of the two major female protagonists comes on page 292. This book isn't the story of a journey; it's the story that starts the journey. Presumably, everyone will get somewhere in the second volume. Call me old-fashioned, but I liked it more when fantasy series made sure that each volume had a plot arc all its own -- this book felt more like the publisher had arbitrarily split an 800-page novel in the middle to maximize sales, rather than like one single 400-page story conceived and written as half of a pair.

That might not be a critical flaw, though, if you're reading for something other than plot. I'd never read Robin Hobb's novels before now, but had always heard they were excellently written, with strong and interesting characters and novel concepts. On those points, this book does deliver.... Some elements of the book are pretty painfully generic (telepathic dragon babies), but parts of it are strikingly original (the dragons have a life cycle similar to that of salmon, and a combination of environmental catastrophes, some at least the fault of Man, have resulted in a herd of, well, baby dragons with disabilities, and aspects of the plot mirror modern wildlife relocation efforts). The two central human characters, a young outcast mutant girl and a "wealthy, educated, and deeply unsatisfied Bingtown Trader's Wife," are extraordinarily well drawn, and their interactions with the various minor characters are treated with an incredibly perceptive eye for human psychology.

There are a few other issues (for example,the main villain is homosexual, which inevitably raises the spectre of homophobia, however unfair) but on the whole, the main problem I had with the book was just that very little happens in it. I hate to pigeonhole, but given the book's pacing and narrative style, I think it will appeal far more to fans of Austen or books like "The Mists of Avalon" than to fans of more typical fantasy bestsellers -- as it stands right now, this is a set of interesting character studies, not a story, and my four-star rating is a compromise between what this book might be the first half of and what it is now. I haven't read the second volume yet, so that could change, and this could be the foundation of a five-star work. But by the last page of this one, I still found it falling significantly short of a full story.

In the meanwhile, I'd only recommend this book if you're already a fan of Robin Hobb and want an additional window into the world of her prior books, or if you're the type of reader who's far more interested in characterization than in plot. If it sounds like this might interest you, then, as a free Kindle download, it's definitely worth it. If you're at all plot-oriented, though, wait until they put out a single-volume edition of this one and its sequel together -- and hope that something happens in the second act.

A note on editions: this review is primarily based on the print text of the book. After downloading and examining this "free edition with bonus material," it appears to be essentially the same text; the "bonus material" appears to just be the first chapter of the second half, _Dragon Haven_. Read more ›