Dragon Haven

This is the second book in The Rain Wild series. DRAGON HAVEN draws us ever deeper into the lives of the dragon keepers, their charges and the crew of the liveship Tarman. Robin Hobbs is the mistress of the intricate, well-told fantasy. As we move up the river, we enter deeply into the private wildernesses of her diverse cast of characters. Much happens externally: earthquake, floods of acid water, conflict within the group--even murder. The dragons become stronger, more confident and exert their glamor over their keepers. When the flood comes, they help the humans survive but they also develop a taste for human flesh...which the humans must deal with. In the earthquake and following flood much equipment and supplies are lost testing the humans to the limits of their capacity to survive. Tensions within the group are heightened. The passion Captain Leftrin feels for Alise Finbok is requited. She struggles to remain true to her distant husband, Hest, even as the liveship Tarman begins invading her dreams. Her friend and husband's secretary, Sedric, undergoes dramatic changes emotionally and physically as a result of a secret sip of dragon's blood. He thought to steal a little blood from the dying copper dragon but that action has unintended consequences. It might kill him...or it might be his salvation. Thymara, Sintara's keeper, comes to open conflict with her dragon. The two distrust one another and quarrel openly. The bond between them seems brittle and yet both seem to draw strength from the struggle with each other. Thymara is pressured to pair off by Greft, the eldest keeper. Greft is the self-appointed leader of the keepers. He has paired off with the pretty, promiscuous Jerd and tries to force Thymara to choose from the unattached male keepers even though she's terrified of getting pregnant like Jerd. The author continues using the correspondence between the keepers of the messenger birds as a method of keeping the reader informed about developments back in the cities of Trehaug (where the expedition was launched) and Bingtown (where Alise and Sedric are from). These one-page notes between chapters suddenly blossom into an independent narrative of their own as it is revealed that Detozi of Trehaug is a single young woman and Erek of Bingtown a single young man. This author complicates everything! All her characters attain life and solidity and I'm now waiting eagerly for the third book to see if all achieve the endings, happy and bad, that they seem to be earning!

This is my first Robin Hobb book, so I have a little disadvantage over the other reviewers. I have no prior knowledge of this world of dragons and wilderness and traders and emerging civilization. It's kind of hard to jump into a fantasy story in the middle. I think that would apply to any fantasy story by any author. But I have to give this author credit. She grabbed my interest and held it. I enjoyed the characters as I got to know them, and I loved the story. I will definitely be looking for more books by this author. If you are a Robin Hobb fan, I think you will not be disappointed by this latest offering. If you are new to Robin Hobb, I suggest you start with one of her earlier books, perhaps the first one in this series. I definitely recommend this author to fans of fantasy books. She is very good.

The first thing you should know is that the story doesn't end here. This book, the sequel to "Dragon Keeper" and the conclusion of the Rain Wilds Chronicles, is not the end of the story. Things remain unresolved on the last page, and some of the most interesting possible story lines remain open; I can only hope that Robin Hobb will see fit to continue the tale in subsequent works. Because this one's a beaut. The first book (DEFINITELY required reading; this is a single story in two volumes, not separate novels in a sequence.) tells several parallel stories: the story of Alise Fincarron and her marriage of convenience (and perhaps love, but perhaps not) to the dashing and wealthy Hest Finbok, who is the best evidence in these books that despite Robin Hobb's brilliance as a storyteller and creator of genuine, full-color and deep-hearted characters, she has trouble thinking up good names; the story of Thymara, child of the Rain Wilds whose deformities (claws instead of fingers and scales instead of skin, in some places) should have led to her being exposed and abandoned at birth; the story of Leftrin, captain of the livebarge Tarman, oldest and perhaps wisest of the Liveships; and, of course, the story of the newborn dragons, the transformed remnants of Maulkin's tangle from Hobb's Liveship series. All of these people (and dragons, who are not, as this book points out, either people or animals, but something else entirely) have serious troubles in their lives, and some don't even realize how serious those troubles are. They come together when the Traders' Council of Trehaug, the ruling body of the Rain Wilds, sends the dragons, for whom they cannot properly care, up the Rain Wild River to find the lost (and perhaps vanished) city of Kelsingra, where the Elderlings of old once made a home for the dragons they loved and served and perhaps even worshipped. They don't make it to Kelsingra in the first book, and for nine-tenths of this book, the party is still traveling up the Rain Wild River. They do reach a destination at the end, or at least an end of their journeying; I won't say more to avoid spoiling the ending, which is quite nice, despite leaving room for much more story. In this book, most (but not all) of the interpersonal frictions are resolved. Secrets are finally revealed, some voluntarily and some not; arguments are brought from a long, slow simmer to a raging boil (most of them involving either Thymara, or her dragon Sintara, or both -- fitting for the two most defensive, combative, and snarling-stubborn queens of the group), and all of the dragons, and the people, begin to find either their true potential -- or the clearing at the end of the path, if I may quote the Gunslinger. (Stephen King. Dark Tower series. You should read those, too.) The book is long, but never slow; some of the characters bog down slightly as they try to work through painful and difficult issues, which quite naturally takes time, and might seem repe