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Mar 09, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I grew up on a toxic waste dump. I realize that sounds melodramatic, but technically it's accurate. My childhood home was ringed by no fewer than five Superfund sites - and, as we like to say, those are just the spots they've cleaned.

When I was a kid people weren't so concerned about the pollution. Arsenic was in the dust we kicked up on the playgrounds, on the berries we picked in the woods, in the small ponds where nothing lived and no birds ever stopped. The waterways were lined More...

17 comments like (12 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2010

Jackie rated it:

Reading this book was like revisiting a favorite place. And now I am reading the manuscript for Dragon Haven, book 2 and it is even better.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 30, 2011

Margaret rated it:

After the Soldier Son trilogy, which disappointed me (and many others, I think), Hobb returns to the world of the Liveship Traders and the Six Duchies. She picks up from the end of Ship of Destiny; the serpents have reached the Rain Wilds and been encased in the cocoons which will turn them to dragons. When they hatch, though, there's something terribly wrong; many of them have died, and the rest are weak or deformed. The Rain Wilders become tired of taking care of them, and they and the dragons More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2010

Caroline rated it:

I really wanted to love this, especially with it being a follow-up to both the Tawny Man Trilogy and the Liveship Trilogy, and I really tried to love it. I really enjoyed it, but overall it really suffered from having too many perspectives, and not enough focus until too far into the book itself. This really didn't get into the main plot until the last half of the novel, which really was disappointing when the story just suddenly stopped. I'm guessing that Robin Hobb actually wrote the two novel More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Jessica rated it:

The title of this book being: Dragon Keeper: Volume One had me intrigued. I like fantasy stories and dragons obviously piqued my interest. The beginning was good. It was detailing the efforts of Dragon queen Tantaglia and getting the serpents to their nesting grounds so they can coccon and become dragons. Then we start skipping around getting details that aren't very descriptive from other sotry variables. You meet many characters in their seperate environments that in the future will entwine to More...

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May 11, 2011

Coligne rated it:

Esordisco subito dicendo che mi riserbo di modificare la mia opinione in merito a questo libro dopo la lettura del suo seguito, dato che originariamente era inteso come un tutt'uno con DH.

In effetti il libro soffre di un problema inerente proprio la sua suddivisione: non ha una fine, la trama viene tranciata brutalmente, con grande disappunto del lettore.
Poi l'altro difetto che ho riscontrato, l'eccessiva lentezza dello svolgersi della trama è anche correlata al problema sopra esposto. Se lo si More...

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Feb 10, 2012

Adam rated it:

Though I am an avid Fantasy fan, I have long shied away from the types of Fantasy books with talking dragons. Too often they get lumped into the "wise and powerful beyond human comprehension" stereotype that gets very tiresome very quickly. As many authors have said in the past, characters are made interesting by their flaws. So when you have a species of magical beings that are entirely flawless, my eyes start to glaze over into Who Cares Land.

However, Hobb has done somethi More...

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Nov 17, 2011

Shaheen rated it:

Read the full review here.

As usual, Hobb's characterisation is absolutely flawless in this novel. The story is primarily told through Sintara, a dragon who cannot fly, and Thymara, a Rain Wilds girl who was allowed to survive despite being born with scales and claws. Interspersed are the view points of Alisa, a Trader-born woman in an unhappy marriage, her childhood friend Sedric, and the captain who is ferrying them on the Rain Wilds River, Leftrin. These characters are so wonderful More...

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Sep 02, 2011

Věrka rated it:

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't expect much, despite Hobb being one of my currently favourite authors. I've read the Liveship Traders - I liked the books well enough, but compared to the Farseer and Tawny Man books, they just lacked something (not only Fitz, you see).

I knew that that in the Rain Wild Chronicles, there would be: 1. mostly new characters 2. a lot of dragons 3. Rain Wilds. None of that made me look forward to reading it.

Suprisingly, I have to say I f More...

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Aug 03, 2011

Gail rated it:

I tend to like most any book with "dragon" in the title. This one ... was pretty good. It takes place after the great era of dragons, when the land has changed and dragons have been sea serpents for far too long and don't remember much about how to metamorphose into dragons. The one dragon left made a deal with humans to help the sea serpents she's brought up to the riverbank to change. But when the dragons emerge from their cocoons, they're damaged, almost all of them physically, some More...

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May 31, 2011

Felicia rated it:

Robin Hobb wrote a few of my FAVORITE series, Assassin's Apprentice and the Liveship Traders, so I'm always a fan of her books. This one was as well written as the others, but it felt slow to start, and as soon as the story picked up, the book ended! JUST AS I GOT INTO IT!

So, I guess I should be waiting for the next book excitedly to continue the story, but considering the subject matter of the book, I'm a bit reluctant to follow up with the series, for totally squeamish personal rea More...

12 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 28, 2011

John rated it:

I like Robin Hobb. She's very good at writing an epic story where the characters spend most of their thoughts and efforts on non-epic subjects. In most of fantasy, there is a quest to save the world, and most of the time, characters talk about or work on this quest. Robin Hobb's characters spend a lot of their time thinking about who they're with, what their place in a group is, what they have to do right now, and often don't have much of a plan, just like real people. I think it is telling that More...

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Mar 17, 2011

Jacob rated it:

(Original review here: http://drying-ink.blogspot.com/2009/09/r... )
I've always enjoyed Robin Hobb's fantasy - her well-developed characters, signature bittersweet endings, and almost gritty consequences have always made her new books must reads for me. So, it is with disappointment that I must state: The Dragon Keeper fails to live up to her previous superb novels. First off, it's the length. Although weighing in at a relatively lengthy 553 pages, the large typeface makes for a plot half t More...

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Feb 19, 2011

AnEyeSpy rated it:

** "Dragon Keeper" is Robin Hobb's first Rain Wilds story, and hops around shifting focus within the characters, including flesh-gulping, bone-crunching, glowing dragons. She skilfully enlivens senses with the tangled setting and distinguishes individuals. However all relationships are unhappy: dominating Hest accelerating abuse by day, and rape by night until one partner is rejected and the other flees, a jumble of unrequited infatuations, guest appearances from Mad Ship, and ending w More...

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Jan 28, 2011

Clay rated it:

After a three-book detour to write The Soldier Son trilogy, Robin Hobb has returned to the world where nine of her books have been set – and “Dragon Keeper” (Eos, $26.99, 496 pages) picks up where the Liveship Traders trio left off.

Hobb is a wonderful writer, perhaps my favorite on the scene today, and one reason is that her books try to deal with real-world issues in a fantasy setting. In this one, she continues her focus on how environmental changes can affect even the most powerful More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2011

Den rated it:

Trader clans made a deal with the dragon Tintaglia: She helped them defeat their enemies and they will take care of the young dragons as they emerge from their cocoons. Unfortunately, the dragons emerge both physically and mentally deformed. Moreover, Tintaglia appears to have disappeared. Neither the traders nor the young traders are happy with this arrangement. The dragons are draining the resources of the small village and they feel humiliated by their current condition. To resolve the issue, More...

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Jul 06, 2010

Kurtbg rated it:

For a fantasy this book tackles some pretty contemporary social issues.
I have to give the author kudos for that. The story consists of 4 interwoven stories which converge into the quest. An actual quest is the prerequisite for the majority of fantasy plots. For all other fiction genres they're it's called something different - the journey, the goal. etc, the inciting incident.

The outer dance of the quest is a misfit group of humans agree to take a misfit group of dragons to th More...

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Jun 27, 2010

Ole rated it:

Robin Hobb is one of my favourite fantasy authors, and in my opinion her trilogy "The Liveship Traders" is one of the best Fantasy series ever written. So obviously I was excited to hear about this book, and could not wait to get my hands on it and read it, something I did when it came out. I actually re-read it for this review.

The Dragon Keeper's starts out with a retelling of some of the events of Hobb's "The Liveship Traders" from a different perspe More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 26, 2010

Annmarie rated it:

A very good fantasy with lots of YA crossover appeal. It apparently is set in a fantasy world the author has built in others of her books, but I haven't read those and it didn't matter much. It features a small group of dragons, born deformed in a rain forest land called Rain Wilds, where humans have mostly forgotten dragons and are themselves sometimes born with a touch of reptilian mutations like scales and claws that make them outcasts and sometimes left to die at birth, if the mutations are More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 29, 2010

Krud rated it:

I loved the first three Robin Hobb trilogies: The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and The Tawny Man Trilogy. I love the robust and enchanting world she's created for her characters and stories. But for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on, I'd been unable to "get into" the Soldier Son Trilogy. Granted, I never made it past the first book, and perhaps I'd have loved the second and third books. But since I'm not one to read things out of chronology, I won't know unt More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 28, 2010

Sandy rated it:

Despite the character Tats’ communist/socialist rant toward the end of this statement for (or against?) women’s rights, I enjoyed the world development of Robin Hobb’s Dragon Keeper. What’s disturbing about the entire book is its lack of hope—its darkness.

The serpents who have made the arduous journey upriver to their nesting sands have produced handicapped, malformed, and, in some cases, mentally challenged dragons. What’s surprising about this is few of them are sympathetic because More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2010

Robert rated it:

Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper(Eos, 2010)

Back in the days of Hobb's long-running, and wonderful, series about the Six Duchies and the Bingtown Traders (which ended in 2005 with Fool's Fate), I was given to writing in my reviews about how Robin Hobb was simply unable to let a good deed lie. No matter how selfless any given act might seem on its face, there are always nasty unintended consequences in the world of Robin Hobb. Those of you who remember the majestic, glorious end of Fool's Fate, More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2009

Anthony rated it:

I heart Robin Hobb. I really do. This book sat on my bedside table for something in the order of two months before I actually read it, not because I was putting it off, but because I wanted to re-read her 'Liveship Traders' trilogy before embarking upon this, the most recent of her tales set in the Rain Wilds.

I'm so glad I did.

The Dragon Keeper is a brilliant book which is, like all Hobbs' works, almost perfectly plotted and constructed, and with beautifully polished writ More...

1 comment like

Jul 08, 2009

Erin rated it:

I have read the Liveship Traders and the Farseer trilogies. They might be improved in small ways but they were generally really good.

This book sucked. Three quarters of it could be removed and it wouldn't affect the story too much. The things with Sedric and Hess and Alise ... it seemed so cheap, their stories were more worthy of Mills and Boon than a serious author. None of the characters felt very real.

In the other series, the world had a nice haunting feeling of there More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2011

Doreen rated it:

Back to the Liveships world at last, and it's good. I've said elsewhere that I don't like being left up in the air waiting for the sequel to appear, but in this case I'm prepared to put up with it. We have the actors in place, a large cast including some from the earlier trilogy, the plot set out before us, the action just started after over 500 pages, and frankly I can't wait to find out what happens next. This is a trilogy only in the sense that "Lord of the Rings" is a trilogy. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2010

E. rated it:

Volume 1, Rain Wilds Chronicles, continues after the dragon Tintaglia has guided a large tangle of serpents up the Rain Wild River in the hopes of finding a haven where metamorphosis can safely proceed to dragon form. A long-awaited return to the world detailed in the Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies with its fascinating and complex societies and harsh environments. The project so optimistically undertaken by the Traders to care for the cocooned serpents as they develop into dragons so More...

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Oct 07, 2011

Nicole rated it:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as evident that I read it in 3 days. I actually stayed up until 3am last night to finish it so I could get the second of the trilogy for the long weekend. I'm usually hesitant to just grab a novel I know nothing about off the library shelf, especially if it has to do with something as overdone as dragons but I feel that this book was worth my time.

Anyway, the plot is interesting. I always like to see how differently different authors portray dragons. Ro More...

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May 05, 2011

Brandon rated it:

Meandering thoughts so far,

Still neck deep in the book. It's the first Robin Hobb I've read. It is a quality piece of classic dragons and magic fantasy, if that's the right term for it and I'll probably read the rest of the series, but it doesn't strike me with the astounding awesomeness some people get from her work. It could just be a preference thing, but intense world building, or strings of books written in one world... I'm just not very excited about that. I'm not sold on this ob More...

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Jan 30, 2010

Heather rated it:

This book is gripping in all the ways I expect a Robin Hobb book to be.
The world-building is fantastic, the characters have depth and enough problems to show the depth. They wrestle with themselves and show real development, which I'm learning is a hallmark for Hobb's work and one of the reasons I own every book she's ever written, but one. The villains are complex and very far from 2-dimensional. Robin Hobb has done it again. I plowed through it in a day and a half and was glad to do it. More...

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Jan 23, 2012

Kat rated it:

This is a really good book - almost a great book.

The world is rich and deep with history, lore, politics, intrigue, prejudice, customs, barbarisms, willful forgetfulness, shame, love, and danger. The characters are similarly deep. Some grow, some worsen, but all change as circumstance, insight, or oppression drives them. The cast of characters is also diverse not only in species but in character.

Note - this book ends on a cliffhanger. Not like a Lord of the Rings "here More...

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