The dragons of old have all but disappeared, and only the mighty Tintaglia remains to save her race. As the last queen, it is her duty to ensure that dragons survive in the world and she knows that she must help the diminishing handful of serpents to reach their cocooning grounds before the last of them perishes into memory. But even with the help of the rain wilders—mutated humans that live in acidic swamplands—she knows that the serpents have little change of emerging as dragons. They are too old, having spent far too long in the oceans where their bodies have grown weak and their minds have become warped.
And so, when the young dragons emerge from their cocoons with monstrous deformities, they are abandoned by Tintaglia and the rainwilders must devise their own plan to deal with them. They know that they cannot hunt to sate the appetites of a pack of hungry dragons for long, and soon reach the decision to chaperone them to their fabled city of Kelsingra. It is hoped that here, the dragons will be safe and more of the lost secrets of the fabled Elderlings will be found.
The Good
One of the main things that impressed me about The Dragon Keeper was how realistic its characters were. And, after reading the book, I would say that Robin Hobb has a remarkable talent for developing characters in a very short space of time. This meant that before long, the people I was reading about began to feel like old friends in my imagination and I was really able to identify with them. Obviously, this greatly added to my enjoyment of the book and Hobb has certainly avoided the trap that many authors fall into where they mar a perfectly good story by creating a cast of bland characters.
Another thing that I thought was great about the book was Hobb’s novel take on dragons. Rather than conforming to the standardised mythology of fire-breathing lizards, Hobb has altered her dragons to effectively create a new animal. Hobb’s dragons actually spit acid instead of fire, and have a complex life-cycle that involves them being born in the ocean as serpents and then metamorphosing into dragons like caterpillars do into butterflies. In addition to this, Hobb has also given her dragons a complex culture and bold personalities that really helps to bring their species/characters to life.
The Bad
Although The Dragon Keeper is light-hearted and very well written, I was surprised by how little actually happened in it in terms of events. At 553 pages, the book is not unusually long for fantasy, but much of the prose is just scene-setting and discussions that develop Trader culture. Don’t get me wrong, this is interesting to a degree and Hobb does an excellent job of using it to create a diverse world, but it slows the pace of the book down and much of the first half of the novel is actually pretty unnecessary. In my opinion, The Dragon Keeper could have lived up to its potential in terms of excitement much more if Hobb had condensed the waffle—leaving a book that is still culturally rich, but is much more exciting too.
Another problem with The Dragon Keeper, which I guess is linked to its rather unnecessary length, is that it does not make for light reading. In fact, I frequently had to make sure that I had plenty of free time ahead of me before I even dared to open its pages! This is largely due to how Hobb writes—using very long chapters with few line breaks. In fact, the 553 pages of the book are split into just 17 chapters! Though I understand that, in all fairness, this criticism might just be me being overly fussy, I like to stop reading a book in natural breaks rather than putting it down midway through a passage like I often had to do!
My Thoughts
Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Dragon Keeper and will certainly be continuing to read The Rain Wild Chronicles with Dragon Haven (its next instalment). The book is unarguably very imaginative and has a ‘fresh’ air about it that many works of fantasty lack. Due to this, I would certainly recommend it to any fan of the genre. (Although to be frank, I can see some ‘die hard’ dragon fans having an issue with Hobb’s interpretation of the animals that might put you off the book).
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