Life in the jungle filled Rain Wilds is tough. Whether you live in half-ruined Bingtown, recently rebuilding from a war with a long time adversary, or if you live deeper in the Rain Wilds, where buildings are built into the trees, and social position is based on how low to the ground you can manage to live, its a tough life. The fact that the river itself is somewhat acidic and inimical adds to the dangerous ground.

To this dangerous environment, add Dragons, hatched from Sea Serpent eggs, and protected by a bargain the egg layer has made with the Rain Wilds folk to care for the creatures. Mix in the fact that these dragons are stunted, malformed and some of them are nearly feral. These are far from your typical fantasy dragons!

Set in (as you might already have guessed) Hobb's Farseer world, Dragon Keeper is the story of these malformed dragons, offspring of the true dragon Tintaglia (who featured prominently in the Liveship Traders series). Malformed and stunted as they are, they are not the creatures anyone expects, and are a burden on the Rain Wilders. The Dragons seize a chance to get the Rain Wilders to get them out of each other's hair by sending them, with their keepers, upriver, in search of a legendary city from the prior Elderling civilization.

Dragon Keeper is also the story of two young and very different women. Thymara has the mutations and markings that make her a semi-outcast even amongst her people, and it is no wonder that she leaps at the chance to escape her home environment and join that expedition to repatriate the dragons further upriver. By comparison, Alise is a sheltered young woman, bound in a marriage that is literally only in name, whose study of scrolls and documents makes her, improbably, the foremost theoretical expert on Dragons and their former world. She, too, with both hands, leaps at the chance to escape her home life and join the expedition.

There are a small flock of secondary characters as well that mainly serve as relief and contrast to Alise and Thymara (although compared to many authors, they serve very well as defined characters).Sedric, secretary to Hest, and unwilling companion to Alise on her journey, is close as they come to being a third main character in the novel.

I've read a few of Hobb's novels before (and under her pen name Megan Lindholm as well). Like those previous novels, she provides solid characters, a well fleshed out and thought out world, and has captured the magic of "one more page, one more chapter" in her writing style, leading the reader on to continue the journey. In addition to cutting between the two main characters, the chapters also have the text of messages sent between bird keepers, which provides a third, objective view of some events and helps flesh out the world as really extending beyond the words on the page.

While I think reading some of the previous Farseer books (especially the Liveship Traders--there are Liveships in this novel, naturally) might be useful for understanding some events, since most of this book is set in the isolated backcountry, I think this book can serve as a gateway book to Hobb's work.

The only weakness to the book, and its endemic to a lot of fantasy these days, is that this is an unfinished story.This is the first in a duology and even as such, this first novel does not stand alone.

However, given the richness of the book, I will *definitely* be looking to getting and reading the second book when it comes out. I also need to fill in the backlog of books of Hobbs in the Farseer world I haven't read--Dragon Keeper helped remind me of the skill and craft in her worldbuilding and characters.

If you are looking for a low magic fantasy world with a different take on dragons, or if you are a previous fan of Hobb's Farseer world, I recommend Dragon Keeper to you. ( )

I enjoyed the latest book from Robin Hobb but found it took me until about half way through to really be pulled into the narrative.

Likely, this was due to the common technique of cycling through the viewpoints of characters in different locations until eventualy they meet up and the story continues from there.

When I got to the end I was engaged and curious about what would happen next but realised not a whole lot had actually happened, and it was really just a set up for the rest of the series. ( )

Robin Hobb is in fine form, as per usual, with book one in the new Rain Wild Chronicles.

The Dragon Keeper is book one of the 'Rain Wild Chronicles'. We're back in Fitzworld after the somewhat disappointing Soldier's Son Trilogy, and it's a welcome return. The story revolves around the last of the serpents that played a major part in the Liveship Trilogy. The dragon Tintaglia assists the serpents to cocoon on the shores of the Rain Wild river. They've now hatched – but they are malformed and weak, with a not-very-bright future. Tintaglia brokers a deal with the Rain Wild Council to protect them in return for her protection against the aggressive Chalcedeans. However, the surprise appearance of a mate for Tintaglia distracts her from her side of the deal; and the young dragons are causing trouble for the Council. Survival of the fittest is the paramount orthodoxy in this world, and the Rain Wild Council is keen to use this as an excuse to be rid of the troublesome and very costly dragons. The Council decide that the pack must be relocated. Meanwhile, the dragons themselves are recovering ancient memories of the mythical Elderling city of Kelsingra and they decide it is time to break free of the restrictions placed on them by the Council and to go there. And the Rain Wild Council is more than happy to send 'em on their way and they begin to recruit their most expendable citizens to tend the beasts and escort them upriver.
Hobb once again uses a multiple point of view, third person narrative, format for this story and the (human) point of view characters are all new. There's Leftrin, the somewhat dodgy captain of the liveship Tarman; Thymara, the heavily Rain Wilds marked teenager who escapes an unhappy relationship with her mother to become a dragon keeper; Alise, the Trader's daughter who is a self-proclaimed "scholar of dragons" from Bingtown, and is involved in an emotionally damaging and abusive marriage with the bully Herst; Alise’s chaperon, Sedric, who is her husband’s long-time lover; and also the diverse dragon keepers, including Tats, Rapskal and Greft. All these have their own secrets and desires. There are also cameos from a number of characters we already know, which adds a nice link to the backstory.

I have to admit that these characters have not yet grown on me as much as the Liveship Trilogy people. Alice is extremely neurotic, insecure and actually a bit of a whacko, and she walks a thin line between being endearing and extremely annoying. Leftrin seemed interesting at first, but by the end of the book he was infatuated with Alise and had lost his edge. Sedric gets more and more sooky as the story progresses – he has potential, and I hope he smartens his act up in the next instalment. Thymara is more interesting, as are her fellow dragon keepers, especially the mysterious and manipulative Greft. There are all sorts of undercurrents in the dragon keepers’ relationships – and this looks likely to provide some excitement in book 2. We also have the self-obsessed dragon, Sintara, and the other dragons who are all developing personalities that will no doubt set actions in train in the next instalment.

Plot-wise, not a lot happens for the first two thirds of the novel until all our main characters converge and begin their journey. This is to be expected due to the original plan of this being a standalone novel. Hobb found she wrote too much, and decided to split the book in two. I expect the action to heat up in the sequel, Dragon Haven; the last chapter had some interesting twists that hooked me on book two already.

Much of the story deals with the restrictions in society imposes on the relationships amongst the characters. Themes such as marriages of convenience, suppressed homosexuality and taboos regarding the physical disfigurements causes by the Rain Wilds environment are strong in this world. Like in the Liveship Traders books, it seems the dragons are a catalyst for social change rather than the focus of the book Hobb handles the fantasty elements in her books extremely well. Dragons are a fantasy cliché, a popular theme that needs to be handled carefully if they are not to overshadow the story. The focus in this tale is the characters, and the dragons provide supporting colour and movement, rather than being the main focus. ).
Overall, whilst there are predictable plot turns and some under-developed characters, this is a very welcome return to a setting we all know and love. I can’t wait for the next instalment. ( )

After writing thee books in a different setting Hobb returns to the realm of the Elderings in Dragon Keeper, book one of the Rain Wilds Chronicles. The book connects to the Liveship Traders trilogy mostly but events in the other two trilogies set in this world play a part in the story as well. She intended this book to be a single volume but the first draft was considered too lengthy so the decision was made to spit the book. Reviewing this book is not going to be easy. We only get half the story, Hobb leaves us with something of a cliffhanger. This book weighs in at 553 pages, I guess it would have been enormous if they had published the whole story at once (even if we take the rewriting to make it two books into account) but I for one wouldn't have minded reading on after this first serving.

The book opens some time after the ending of Ship of Destiny. The sea serpents have reached their cocooning grounds in the Rain Wilds and are ready to begin the transformation to dragons. They are in poor condition though, malnourished and too old to survive the process. They have also arrived to late in the season to be ready to emerge the next spring. The dragon Tintaglia is worried and her fears turn out to be justified when the next summer the young Dragons emerge. They are small, unhealthy and not fully formed. Many die quickly. In true dragon spirit Tintaglia abandons the creatures who are in her opinion not fit to live.

Tintaglia leaves the Trades with the problem on deciding what to do next. They made a bargain with Tintaglia, one that forces them to take care of the creature. Several years later less than twenty of the creatures remain. They have become restless and a heavy burden on the Rain Wild community. Hidden agenda's and manipulation abound as a relocation is proposed. An expedition mounted to find a lost city in the Rain Wilds, one that the dragons remember vaguely in their ancestral memories. An unlikely collection of people gathers to take part in this ill advised expedition and guide the dragons to their destination.

Like the Liveship Traders books Hobb uses a multiple point of view, third person narrative for this story. That may well be the reason that the book turned out as long as it did, there are quite a few point of views in this book. There's river barge captain Leftrin, the dragon Sintara, the heavily Rain Wilds marked Thymara, the Trader's daughter and dragon scholar Alise and her chaperone Sedric. All with their own secrets and desires. Set in the conservative and in some ways repressive Trader milieu, Hobb managed to create a cast with enough potential for drama to fill a Jane Austin novel. Pride and Prejudice with Dragons. She may be on to something here.

Much of the novel deals with the restrictions in society imposes on their relationship. Themes such as marriage of convenience, suppressed homosexuality and taboos regarding the physical disfigurements causes by the Rain Wilds environment are strong themes in the books. Like in the Liveship Traders books it looks like the dragons are a catalyst for social change rather than the focus of the book. I always liked the way Hobb handles the fantastic elements in her books. Carefully dosed they never overshadow the character development in the books. Her well drawn characters are the strength of Hobb's writing. Dragons are a fantasy cliché, a popular theme that needs to be handled carefully the novel stand out. They are much more present in this book than the the Liveship Traders trilogy but not so much so that the book turns into a Pern novel (can't help it, I don't like those).

There is an awful lot of back story for this book. I suppose you'd understand the story well enough without having read the previous volumes but you'd miss a lot of references to events in earlier books. I wouldn't recommend readers for starting here, the actions of the dragon Tintaglia wouldn't make much sense if you did, just to name one example. Hobb's Elderling books are best read in order of publication. For established Hobb readers this is a book that will most certainly create a hunger for more however. In Dragon Keeper Hobb begins to answer one of the major questions the reader is left with after Ship of Destiny and she does so in style. Yes, it is half a story and there will be quite a wait for the next part. I understand Voyager has Dragon Haven scheduled for a spring 2010 release. If you can stand the wait for the conclusion however, Dragon Keeper is a great read. I don't think they handled the splitting of the books in two parts very gracefully, it felt rather abrupt, but based on the story presented in Dragon Keeper things certainly look promising for Dragon Haven.

Want to comment on this review? Go here. ( )

It's nice to return to the world of 'The Six Duchies' and continue the story of the dragon’s restoration into that world. I enjoyed this story and am looking forward to book two.

This book seems to take a similar route as the Soldier Son Trilogy and 'The Dragon Keeper' being book one sets up the main characters, their backgrounds and motivations and then ends as the 'Quest to find the Elderling city of Kelsingra' begins.

There are some compelling characters and a few nasty ones as well. A theme which runs through this book seems to be how the various female characters deal with and try to overcome the male bullies who have through various means manipulate their lives.

Not too gritty but sometimes a little disturbing. ( )