Dragon Keeper (2010) (edit title/settings)

• Rated 4 stars

“Another beginning to a great series. The hardest part is waiting for the next one...”

• Rated 5 stars

“It's a little innapropriate for my age, but it is an adult book after all.
Great book, though. And Robin Hobb is really nice.”

• Rated 5 stars

“A new series by Robin is always a treat. Marginalized teens from the Rain Wilds are sent to accompany badly hatched dragons on a quest upriver. Also on the expedition is the wizardwood barge Tarman, his captain, Leftrin, and two Bingtown twenty somethings (not a couple), and a couple of hunters. With Hobb your heroes (protagonists) have flaws and sometimes make questionable choices and what appear to be villains may have hearts of gold. It's a wonderful ride and you need not have read the Liveship, Assassin, or Tawny Man series to follow it. Adventure, romance, and yes, character development in a story that fits no formula.”

• Rated 0 stars

“If you like complex sci fi, this is a super book. Read Robin Hobb's other books about the Trade Ships too!”

• Rated 0 stars

“This book is so fantastic - enjoyed it much more than her Soldier Son trilogy. Hobb is so good at creating worlds complete with complex political systems and she looks at the nature of societies in which some people have been sidelined - very intelligent writing.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Taking place in the aftermath of both the Liveships books and the Tawny Man books, the book chronicles the adventures of an unusual group of people banded together to help newly-hatched dragons find a mythical city of the Elderlings. It's well written, and has some interesting characters, but ultimately it ends well before anything is resolved. This is too much a "part one of two" as it ends shortly after setting up the overarching story's premise.

Many of the primary characters start off the book as people buffeted by forces around them. Alise, a woman with few prospects, finds herself in a terrible marriage with a man is more interested in his male secretary than his wife. She has made herself into an expert on all things Dragon, and takes a desperate trip to see them before they head off. Tensions mount as she is paired up with her husband's secretary (and lover?) as a chaperone, but he has secret plans of his own.

The other major character is Thymara, a Rain Wilds young woman who is heavily marked by the mutating power of her homeland. She has no prospects for marriage, and though her father loves her, her mother can't stand the sight of her. She volunteers for "Dragon Keeper" duty on the trip, and struggles with teenage social dynamics while trying to understand and help her new charge.

Unfortunately, both of these main characters come across as terribly naive. They are surrounded both by people who will take advantage of them, and people who will help them. Alise and Thymara both seem to have trouble telling which ones to ally with. By the end of this first book, it's pretty obvious to the reader who can be trusted and who can't, but it's likely that the heroines will only be finding out the hard way.

By the end of this book, it felt like the story really had just begun. All of the major pieces are in place now, and the story is ready to build into the inevitable conflicts. It feels as though we're about a third of the way through the story to me. I would have preferred if it had been released as one volume rather than split into two. I'm unsatisfied where this one ended. I hope to be satisfied by the conclusion in book two.

One quibble I have with the book, though, is with the characters of Hest (Alise's husband) and Sedric (her husband's secretary and her reluctant chaperone). In today's culture, they might be considered "gay", yet in this book, Hobb dances around the subject, never really confirming that they are indeed lovers. However, she does dress both of them up in pretty bad stereotypes. Both of them are dandies, dressing in the latest fashions, and keeping themselves immaculately spotless. They affect sophisticated airs yet are internally seething with petty jealousies. Hest is cruel, forcing his "friends" to compete for his affection. When Sedrick stands up to him regarding Hest's cruel treatment of his wive, Hest spurns his secretary and takes up with other young men. While I do welcome the inclusion of people of different orientations in fantasy fiction, I'm not thrilled to find them so offensively stereotypical.
”

• Rated 4 stars

“fun book on "return" of dragon life. If you like dragon books its great.”

• Rated 2 stars

“Ugg... what has happened to Robin Hobb? I loved her early trilogies. I was so excited about this book because I enjoyed the Liveship Trilogy so much, and this book picks up where that trilogy left off... but this book comes no where close to the caliber of that trilogy. If you iked the Soldier Son Trilogy you will like this book.

Is the author so depressed that she has to make such depressing characters- get on some prozac, and stop turning all the characters into either antagonists or victims. They are not enjoyable or fulfilling to read about and quite honestly, I couldn't wait for the book to be over.

Vol. 2 of the Dragon Keeper series... TBD...”

• Rated 3 stars

“The first in the Wild RIver Chronicles, (the second, Dragon Haven, is coming out in May) Dragon Keeper is not a book on his own but the first part. It does a good job in introducing the characters and setting the world and the story but there is no resolution whatsover.
I would recommend waiting until the second book is out.

Check my full review at myshelf.com”