Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
- ISBN13: 9780061561627
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
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… More >>
Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
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Anonymous said :
March 10, 2010 at 2:54 am
Once I had picked this book up I was trapped by a vivid story of the serpemts/dragons demise and the intricate story of different races and interactions. The only slightly odd aside within the story was the pigeon post between towns that I found to be slightly destractimg and totally un-needed as far as the story line went. I hadn’t realised it was the first of a trilogy and not a story with a satisfactory ending as it left you at the start of a Dragons journy. Now I need the next book before i’ve forgotten the imtracasies of the first. Come on Robin when is it due!
Rating: 4 / 5
Valerie Matteson said :
March 10, 2010 at 5:33 am
This tale of dragons is fascinating. It begins where the Rain Wild Council, Bingtown Traders’ Council and the Dragon Tintaglia make an agreement for the councils to help the sea serpents travel up the river to their hatching / cocooning grounds. The river is blocked and/or not deep enough in some places to boats are sent to try to help clear the way. It has been many, many years since any new dragons hatched so everyone is excited.
The reader meets the serpent, Sisarqua, who is making her covering by eating a mixture of mud and gravel. She is surrounded by many other serpents although some of their number did not make the journey upriver. It took them so long to travel to the area that they have arrived in the winter instead of warm summer so it is harder to make the gravel mixture from the cold partially frozen river and cold ground. The Dragon Tintaglia comes to help her.
Next we meet, Leftrin, captain of his living barge Tarman. He is a fairly young captain in his thirties who works hard and looks for honest ways to earn more money. He helped get the sea serpents from the ocean to the hatching grounds up the river. He finds a wizardwood log which is extremely valuable and hides it away so he can sell it a small piece at a time and become wealthy.
As spring comes and time for the dragons to hatch, many in the Rain Wild are worried due to the flooding and other weather issues that have destroyed many of the cocoons. We meet Thymara, Rain Wild child who is different and lives with her family as all the Rain Wild people do up in the trees. We also meet a young woman named Alise who is being courted by a very handsome, wealthy young trader. She is rather plain and not self-confident.
How all these parties eventually meet and what happens to them and the new dragons is a great adventure. I look forward to the concluding novel!
Rating: 5 / 5
Ardella Crawford said :
March 10, 2010 at 8:10 am
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
jwr53 said :
March 10, 2010 at 10:49 am
Yes, I still gave it four stars, because I liked it, but it was much shorter and less complex than her previous works. The Kindle formatting was pretty bad, too.
Rating: 4 / 5
King said :
March 10, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Robin Hobb continues her streak of excellent books with Dragon Keeper.
Set in the same world as her Assassin’s Apprentice series, I was excited to read this.
No spoilers here, but the book starts slow (as a lot of her books do) but gets better as you get further along.
If you like Assassin’s Apprentice or the Soldier’s son trilogy, then I would strongly recommend this book to you.
Rating: 4 / 5