{"id":9233,"date":"2024-05-25T12:39:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T18:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=9233"},"modified":"2024-05-25T12:39:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T18:39:17","slug":"dragon-keeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=9233","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Keeper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It has been a minute<\/a> since I read a Robin Hobb book in that one series with all the Elderlings. So I’m not sure if she is softening as she ages, or if I’m hardening as I age, or what. But the first volume of The Rain Wilds Chronicles<\/u> was not what I expected.<\/p>\n

Dragon Keeper<\/a> returns us to the Bingtown and the Rain Wilds Traders, last seen<\/a> surviving an invasion due to a timely alliance. Now, brief years later, they are chafing under the terms of that alliance, mainly because its principal member got a boyfriend and stopped hanging around. I’d say more about why that’s an added burden, but it would involve pretty big and unexpected spoilers, so I shan’t.<\/p>\n

Our main characters are 1) an unexpectedly married scholar of dragons, 2) a not quite Liveship Trader who has engaged himself in a morally troubling endeavor, and 3) a Rain Wilds teen with no real future, until the option to become eponymous is thrust in front of her. Well, and there’s also a fourth main character who is not strictly human at all as such, although she is<\/em> the subject of scholarly pursuits.<\/p>\n

And here’s the thing I was talking about in the first place: it didn’t feel all that miserable to me? I mean, in the sense that the hallmark of these books to date is how unrelentingly dark they can get, with only occasional flashes of hope and\/or success. Do all of the characters have pretty huge problems to overcome? Yes, for sure. But it’s weird that it kind of feels like they can<\/em>, and maybe even will in some cases.<\/p>\n

A couple more weird things, rattling around at the bottom of the barrel. One is, okay, yeah this is a four book series instead of a three book series. Even still, it felt like this was 85% setup, and then 15%… not payoff like you’d expect, but rather 15% the start of the next book, because she was told she could not just have a book that was all<\/em> setup. Whoever told her that was wrong, because the end we got was weirdly forced and artificial, and the ending we’d have gotten with all setup would have made rather a lot of sense, payoff or no. And two is, at the back of this book, I learned that Robin Hobb also has the pen name Megan Lindholm, which is the same person as a Steven Brust co-author on a book I haven’t yet read but am now much<\/em> more excited to pick up.<\/p>\n

But not, y’know, next. Or indeed anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been a minute since I read a Robin Hobb book in that one series with all the Elderlings. So I’m not sure if she is softening as she ages, or if I’m hardening as I age, or what. But the first volume of The Rain Wilds Chronicles was not what I expected. Dragon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[106,1393],"class_list":["post-9233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-fantasy","tag-the-rain-wilds-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9233"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9241,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233\/revisions\/9241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}