I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book after reading some mixed reviews. I am a big fan of The Farseer trilogy, and the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb, and although I enjoyed The Liveship Traders trilogy, it took me a long time to get into it. Quite a bit of time actually, the end of book two was where I really started to enjoy it.
The reason I mention The Liveship Traders trilogy is because The Dragon Keeper is set in Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, two locations we first discover in The Liveship Traders. It also features some characters we know and love from the previous books.
I really enjoyed reading this book, despite the mixed reviews I read beforehand. The problem I had with The Liveship Traders was that it felt like it took so long to get to the exciting part of the story. There was a lot of build up. But I loved the characters, and the general setting and story. This book solves that problem in the sense that I already knew about Bingtown and the politics there, as well as the Rain Wilds and its history. That meant that I could just jump into The Dragon Keeper without needing too much explanation.
There are some subtle references in this book to events that happened in The Tawny Man trilogy also, which I thought was a nice touch. In the previous books we had followed the sea serpents, making the difficult journey to the Rain Wilds to cocoon and become dragons. This book picks up straight from there, at a time when the serpents are about to hatch into dragons. We follow a character called Thymara. She is young and naive, and has lived a fairly sheltered life but when the opportunity comes up for her to become a dragon keeper and help to move the dragons to a new location, she decides that it is something she must do. I like Thymara as a character, and it is interesting to see her develop as the story goes on.
We also follow the rather sad life of Alise Kincarron, a scholar from Bingtown studying dragons and elderlings. This book follows her life in Bingtown, and then follows with a journey to the Rain Wilds to study the dragons. Alise is one of the more interesting characters, and it is great to watch her discover more about herself as the story unfolds.
For the most part, I couldn’t put this book down. It kept me wanting to know what happened next and I read it in no time. It’s not my favourite of the Robin Hobb books, but if you really enjoyed Liveship Traders then I think this book will be for you. I’m looking forward to starting the next one soon!