With its acid waters and impenetrable forest, it is a hard place for any to survive. Guided by the great blue dragon Tintaglia, they came from the sea: a Tangle of serpents fighting their way up the Rain Wilds River, the first to make the perilous journey to the cocooning grounds in generations. But for right now, I honestly cannot recommend The Dragon Keeper to anyone.Īn intriguing, albeit slower paced, return to the Realm of the Elderlings in this much-anticipated new fantasy from one of our greatest fantasy authors. Whether I have to push on, whether I am being too harsh. I’m waiting for other readers to let me know what they think. I had held so much hope for the series, which in and of itself might be a problem and why I didn’t enjoy it, and was so disappointed with the flat and uninteresting story being told. I made it about halfway through the book before it went back into the bookshelf.
DRAGON KEEPER SERIES
The characters are two-dimensional and boring and the story is half-hearted at best, as if Hobb had realized how much money she had made off the series and was forcing herself to return. We are introduced about a year after the Traders finished, and the dragons are about to be hatching. Hobb returns us to the Rainwilds, a location from the Liveship Traders series we didn’t spend a whole heap of time in. So to find this book so truly disappointing was, truly, disappointing. Her Liveship Traders series ranks as one of our best ever. I took the sticky note out of Robin Hobb’s The Dragon Keeper recently.Īnd, putting aside the fact that I don’t like not finishing a book, it was by one of my favourite authors! One need only spend a little time at the site to realize how much we love Robin Hobb. If, after all that time, I really don’t want to go back to it, then I take out the sticky note. If it goes too long I’ll swap out the bookmark and put in a sticky note. Sometimes a book might not capture me, and I’ll put a bookmark in it and put it back on the shelf. Think about it, I made it through Brisingr!īut I have a method as well. And really, it has to be a poor book to put me off from being able to push through. Even if I don’t like the book, I’ll try and finish it in case I miss something. I can count on one hand the amount of books that have failed to see me make it to the last page. Rarely will I not make it through a book. I’ll be picking up ‘Dragon Haven’ within moments, and am looking forward to returning to the world of the Rain Wild Chronicles. So, here I publically announce my complete reversal of my unworthy and unjustified dismissal of Robin Hobb’s writing and sincerely beg her forgiveness for any wrongs done.
The world of the Rain Wilds is fascinating and the promise of returning to Kelsingra is tantalising. The dragons are interesting in their malformed and retarded states and their keepers even more so. The Dragon Keeper is by no means in the same league as Hobb’s ‘Liveship Traders’ trilogy, nor even in either ‘The Farseer’ and ‘Tawny Man’ trilogies. There are reviews across the internet that decry her slow pacing and lousy characters, and both of these may have been the cause of my righteous indignation: in all honesty, I do believe that the pacing of this book is a little too slow to be comfortable, and the characters verging on two-dimensional.īut considering that it took me maybe six hours to finally finish the book which had been sitting on my shelf with a sticky note reminding me of its failure, I can’t quite figure what shook me so hard as to give up entirely on the author. I say ‘for some reason’ because, sitting here at the beginning of 2013, I’m quite truly lost as to what it was that put me off the book. But for some reason, The Dragon Keeper ticked me off.
I was enamoured with the whole of her ‘Realm of the Elderlings’ work, and even enjoyed ‘Soldier Son’. I received ‘The Dragon Keeper’ by Robin Hobb back in 2009, and got halfway through the book before I put it down in a huff and refused to ever read anything Hobb would ever write. In a past review I happened to mention my souring love for Robin Hobb, which subsequently cued the recommendation-instincts of my editor here at FBR, Lee, who mentioned in an email that I should give Robin Hobb another shot like a lover once spurned given a second chance at redemption. I have found it very sensible to always listen when my editors speak.
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