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I liked this more while I was reading it than when I thought about it in retrospect. Given how much of the total text is set-up, it moves along at deceptively rapid-seeming clip.
This is a sequel to three different trilogies, but involves different characters and has lots of catch-up exposition, so it probably stands on its own.
After three trilogies of stuff happening, some dragons (previously extinct) have hatched in the Rain Wilds, a mysterious place with an acidic river. Humans who live there mutate into beings who vaguely resemble the extinct dragons, or maybe the extinct Elderlings.
The dragons, unfortunately, are weak and pathetic and can't fly, and are a financial drag on the locals as well as potentially dangerous to them. So the dragons, along with a bunch of misfits and troublemakers, are shipped off, along with a bluestocking scholar of dragon lore and her abusive husband's secretary (actually her husband's secret lover) and a jolly captain, ostensibly to seek the lost city of the dragons but really to get rid of them all in one fell swoop.
That is where the book ends. A sequel is forthcoming shortly.
There are a lot of potentially interesting ideas here, and as I said the book is very readable, but it suffers from bloat and pacing problems: all set up and no pay-off. This is a chronic problem for Hobb, though oddly enough is not a problem in any of her shorter novels under her real name, Megan Lindholm. Even more problematically, most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable, including the dragons, who take out their misery on everyone around them. It's seemingly meant as a take-down of the animal companion genre, but it's quite unpleasant to read. There's a reason why the animal companion genre appeals, and it's not because people like reading about sentient animals who hate you.
There are two gay characters, one of whom is a sociopathic abuser and rapist, and the other of whom, his secret lover, a pathetic loser who, in the very last pages, commits an absolutely horrifying act of violence for personal gain. Character development is what Hobb is all about so the loser will probably reform (the abuser probably won't) but without any non-evil gay characters and with the (probable) character development pushed into the next book, this book comes across as really homophobic.
That being said, there is a fantastic epistolatory subplot involving two of the few likable characters, a pair of carrier pigeon-keepers who append personal messages to their official ones. And I'm curious to see how it will all come out. My bet is that the well of silvery water in the lost city which the old dragons drank is what's needed to allow them to fly, and also what makes the river an acidic mutagen.
Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles
This is a sequel to three different trilogies, but involves different characters and has lots of catch-up exposition, so it probably stands on its own.
After three trilogies of stuff happening, some dragons (previously extinct) have hatched in the Rain Wilds, a mysterious place with an acidic river. Humans who live there mutate into beings who vaguely resemble the extinct dragons, or maybe the extinct Elderlings.
The dragons, unfortunately, are weak and pathetic and can't fly, and are a financial drag on the locals as well as potentially dangerous to them. So the dragons, along with a bunch of misfits and troublemakers, are shipped off, along with a bluestocking scholar of dragon lore and her abusive husband's secretary (actually her husband's secret lover) and a jolly captain, ostensibly to seek the lost city of the dragons but really to get rid of them all in one fell swoop.
That is where the book ends. A sequel is forthcoming shortly.
There are a lot of potentially interesting ideas here, and as I said the book is very readable, but it suffers from bloat and pacing problems: all set up and no pay-off. This is a chronic problem for Hobb, though oddly enough is not a problem in any of her shorter novels under her real name, Megan Lindholm. Even more problematically, most of the characters are thoroughly unlikable, including the dragons, who take out their misery on everyone around them. It's seemingly meant as a take-down of the animal companion genre, but it's quite unpleasant to read. There's a reason why the animal companion genre appeals, and it's not because people like reading about sentient animals who hate you.
There are two gay characters, one of whom is a sociopathic abuser and rapist, and the other of whom, his secret lover, a pathetic loser who, in the very last pages, commits an absolutely horrifying act of violence for personal gain. Character development is what Hobb is all about so the loser will probably reform (the abuser probably won't) but without any non-evil gay characters and with the (probable) character development pushed into the next book, this book comes across as really homophobic.
That being said, there is a fantastic epistolatory subplot involving two of the few likable characters, a pair of carrier pigeon-keepers who append personal messages to their official ones. And I'm curious to see how it will all come out. My bet is that the well of silvery water in the lost city which the old dragons drank is what's needed to allow them to fly, and also what makes the river an acidic mutagen.
Dragon Keeper: Volume One of the Rain Wilds Chronicles