What happened?
Robin Hobb is held by many as a fantastic author of the fantasy genre. Her first three trilogies are constantly given high marks in most circles, and are easily recommended to newer readers of the genre. We recommend starting with ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE, it's a great read. However, her fourth trilogy--The Soldier Son Trilogy--was met with much poorer reviews (and rightfully so). So, when we saw that Hobb had released another novel in the UK, we got our expectations up hoping she would return to form.
Disappointment just doesn't seem to cover how we felt.
THE DRAGON KEEPER marks a return to the Liveship universe Hobb created, and the result is terrible. In fact, it is quite possibly the worst novel we have read all year (and remember, we just read Goodkind). There is no climax. At all. The repetitive book is really, really repetitive (See what we did there? Yeah, it was that bad at times). Do you, dear readers, want to know what bothers us more than anything? Predictability. We hate reading a conversation that spans twenty pages, and have the culmination be obvious from the very first sentence we read. Now imagine this happening ten or fifteen times over the course of a novel. What? You can forgive that? (You detect the sarcasm here right?) OK, well how about every character being a predictable cliche? You know, the outcast girl whose mom is embarrassed by her, but whose father loves her even though (and because) she is physically "different." Oh yeah, and she finds herself drawn to crippled dragons. Surprised? We were--that is, we were surprised Hobb would stoop to such a terrible character cliche. Not enough? How about the apparent "homely" woman who marries for convenience...and then is still shocked that her husband doesn't value her. Don't worry, she meets a coarse, sailor-type man who is instantly infatuated with her. Shockingly, she becomes infatuated with him as well. Will they? Won't they? Nick is fanning himself in anticipation. Once again, sarcasm...it's the only way we made it through the novel. See what we do for you? Remember, Sainthood.
There came a moment when Steve was reading that he thought, "This is horrid. What's next? A random scene of homosexuality?" Guess what? The next chapter included a random scene of homosexuality. Is this a bad thing in itself? Not necessarily. If there was a motive for it, or if it had been used to explain certain characters more fully, then we could see it being OK to include. However in this case it felt like it was thrown in for shock-value, and for the express purpose of creating some sort of false stir in an otherwise coma-inducing novel.
What's that? You want to know about the pacing? OK, there is one pace in THE DRAGON KEEPER. Snail's-pace slow. There is no action. None. There is no real political intrigue. There is no real character development--they are the same from page one until the end. In an effort to understand why Hobb would write something so terrible, we scoured the internets and found that this is just the first half of a novel. It was so long, it was decided to cut it in half. Reviewers all over are cutting her slack for this, and giving her amazing reviews. Why! Why would they do that!?! If the novel is terrible, it is terrible. It doesn't matter if it is really only the first half of a bigger novel. All that means is the first half of the novel was absolutely pointless...just skip to the section of the novel worth writing and publish that. Don't waste our time and money by publishing an incomplete novel. A poor industry standard is being set here. Hobb tried to follow Patrick Rothfuss' example from NAME OF THE WIND, and she failed on an epic scale.
One last thing (yeah, and we could keep going). Chapter leads can be very entertaining. They can be used to cause misdirection, give additional info/history, or they can even further the plot of the novel. The leads in THE DRAGON KEEPER were beyond idiotic. They lent NOTHING to the novel. In all honesty, they were the worst leads were have EVER read, and they should never have been allowed to be published. They had no humor, plotting, historic, world-building, or story purpose. Completely. Pointless.
Don't read this novel. Ever. It doesn't matter if you are a Hobb enthusiast. The book is awful. It's bad enough that we read it. Our worry now is that the next book we read will incorrectly seem amazing when compared to this one. Be glad this book isn't available in the US for several months yet.
If we weren't so elite, this book could have caused us to give up fantasy forever.
Recommended Age: If you read this, you will literally die of boredom regardless of your age.
Language: A few words. We are surprised Hobb didn't resort to more just to get more shock-value to keep people reading.
Violence...make that Excitement: None. Not even a hint.
Sex: Two scenes that weren't needed. If you are going to include this in your novel, give it some semblance of importance.
The Dragon Keeper
3:00 AM
Nikki
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