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Dragon Keeper (Rain Wilds Chronicles, Vol. 1) Hardcover – Deckle Edge, January 26, 2010
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“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.”
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Voyager
- Publication dateJanuary 26, 2010
- Dimensions6 x 1.17 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100061561622
- ISBN-13978-0061561627
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Review
“In a novel as good as it is massive, the first of two Rain Wilds Chronicles...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.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Hobb does an admirable job of creating a complex and engaging medieval fantasy world …with originality and subtlety [she handles] such traditional fantasy elements as dragons and magical items…A nicely imagined fantasy setting that will engage readers and raise anticipation for the second installment. — Kirkus Reviews
“Hobb’s meticulously realized fantasy tale is a welcome addition to contemporary dragon lore.” — Publishers Weekly
From the Back Cover
Enter the spellbinding world of dragons . . . and those who tend them
One of the most gifted fantasy authors writing today, New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb has dazzled readers with brilliantly imaginative, emotionally resonant, and compulsively readable tales set in far-flung realms not unlike our own. In this enthralling new novel, she returns to the territory of her beloved Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies with a story of dragons and humans, return and rebirth, and the search for meaning, belonging, and home.
For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea—to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh.
But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage—or die along the river's acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons' uncertain ancestral memories.
To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader's wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the dragons: Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them.
Embarking on an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, the band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River—an extraordinary odyssey that will teach them lessons about themselves and one another, as they experience hardships, betrayals, and joys beyond their wildest dreams.
About the Author
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Voyager; 1st edition (January 26, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061561622
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061561627
- Item Weight : 1.45 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.17 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #605,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,613 in Folklore (Books)
- #16,237 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- #23,502 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Robin Hobb is a New York Times best-selling fantasy author. She is published in English in the US, UK and Australia, and her works have been widely translated. Her short stories have been finalists for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, as well as winning the Asimov's Readers Award. Her best known series is The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest.)
Robin Hobb was born in Oakland California, but grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has spent her life mostly in the Pacific Nortwest region of the US, and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington State, with her husband Fred. They have four grown offspring, and six grandchildren.
Robin Hobb is a pen name for Margaret Ogden. She has also written under the name Megan Lindholm.
She published her first short story for children when she was 18,and for some years wrote as a journalist and children's writer. Her stories for children were published in magazines such as Humpty Dumpty's Magazine for Little Children, Jack & Jill and Highlights for Children. She also created educational reading material for children for a programmed reading series by SRA (Science Research Associates.) She received a grant award from the Alaska State Council on the arts for her short story "The Poaching", published in Finding Our Boundaries in 1980.
Fantasy and Science Fiction had always been her two favorite genres, and in the late 70's she began to write in them. Her initial works were published in small press 'fanzines' such as Space and Time (editor Gordon Linzner). Her first professionally published story was "Bones for Dulath" that appeared in the Ace anthology AMAZONS!, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in 1979. A short time later, a second Ki and Vandien story entitled The Small One was published in FANTASTIC in 1980.
During that time period, she and her family had moved from Alaska to Hawaii, and subsequently to Washington State, where they settled. She had various money making occupations (waitress, salesperson, etc.) while striving with her writing. Her husband Fred continued to fish Alaskan waters and was home only about 3 months out of every year. The family lived on a small farm in rural Roy where they raised lots of vegetables, chickens, ducks, geese and other small livestock.
In 1983, her first novel, Harpy's Flight, was published by Ace under the pen name Megan Lindholm. Her later titles under that name included Wizard of the Pigeons, Alien Earth, Luck of the Wheels, and Cloven Hooves.
In 1995, she launched her best selling series of books set in the Realm of the Elderlings. At that time, she began writing as Robin Hobb. Her first trilogy of books were about her popular characters, FitzChivalry Farseer and the Fool. The Farseer Trilogy is comprised of Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest. These books were followed by The Liveship Traders trilogy, set in the same world. The Tawny Man trilogy returned to the tale of Fitz and the Fool. Most recently, the four volumes of the Rain Wilds Chronicles were published: Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, City of Dragons and Blood of Dragons.
In 2013, it was announced that she would return to her best-loved characters with a new trilogy, The Fitz and the Fool trilogy. The first volume, Fool's Assassin, will be published in August of 2014.
Other works as Robin Hobb include The Soldier Son trilogy and short stories published in various anthologies. A collection of her shorter works as both Lindholm and Hobb is available in The Inheritance.
She continues to reside in Tacoma, Washington, with frequent visits to the pocket farm in Roy.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2017
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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)
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_.
Top reviews from other countries

Despite brief appearances by Malta Althea, Brashen and Paragon from the Liveship Traders series, this almost feels like a completely separate set of books. It may also be because I’ve been so deep in Fitz’s world for his books where all of the action is seen through his eyes, that returning to a multiple perspective book feels a bit of a jolt.
Here we are more focused on the dragons who aren’t dragons, those that we last saw as serpents, or at least the few surviving members of the tangle who made it out of their casings to emerge as weakened versions of the awesome Tintaglia and Icefyre.
The human characters are a pack of young Rain Wilders more marked by that harsh environment than most of their families and chosen to guide the heavily dependent dragon young upriver to try and find a mythical Elderling city. It’s well done, with a deepening lore, and I’m sure that once I feel more engaged with these characters I will enjoy the remaining section of this trilogy just as much as I’ve enjoyed the previous ones. I’m certainly moving straight on to the sequel.

If you like reading about angsty women very slowly and tediously throwing off their oppression with a few dragons plodding along for company then you will probably give this series 5 stars. It bored the tits off me. Don't buy all 4 books at once, make sure you enjoy book 1 first.

The book is very high quality and I love the cover art. The book arrived fast and in good condition. These books help to answer more questions from the series about the Elderlings and Dragons, and I'm thoroughly enjoying this series and finding out more history of the lore of the Elderlings world! But if you're thinking of buying these, please read the three previous trilogies first (you can find the reading order on Google).

