It kept me reading, and it didn’t drag on.
Eh? Eh? No?
Well piss off then.
The Dragon Keeper is the first Robin Hobb novel I’ve read and, come to think of it, the first fantasy novel I’ve actually read this year. So far, I’ve only known Hobb through reputation, but after reading The Dragon Keeper it seems that this reputation is well deserved.
I enjoyed the novel’s main premise simply because of the way it plays with traditional fantasy tropes concerning dragons; having hatched after a period of cocoon-based gestation, a large clutch of what seem to be the last dragons in the world have emerged malformed and badly weakened, unable to hunt and completely dependent on human help. As the people tending the dragons grow tired of their burden, they recruit a group of dragon keepers from the dregs of society to take the dragons on a do-or-die mission to the mythical lost city of Kelsingra.
In a lot of ways, the dragons in The Dragon Keeper are similar to the dragons that have populated fantasy literature since Tolkien’s Smaug; they are proud, manipulative, cunning and ruthless, but thanks to their deformities are also completely dependent on humans to survive. It makes for an interesting new approach on creatures that have been a staple of the genre since its foundation, and on one hand while they veer close to being clichéd their disabilities add a fascinating element to them. Sintara, the main dragon character, is one of the book’s more interesting leads, with her pride playing against her frustration at the conditions she lives in and her inability to fly. The book also present the dragons with a unique life-cycle, one that alternates between them living as dragon and sea-serpents; at the very beginning of the book there is a riveting scene when Sintara, in her sea-serpent form, forges upriver with the rest of the serpents for cocooning, a scene strongly reminiscent of a salmon run but with colossal monsters instead of largely inoffensive, tasty fish.
The world, a setting called The Cursed Shores, also deserves praise for how well Hobb builds it. Opting for what I can only call ‘complete immersion’, readers are plunged into the setting head first without much in the way of exposition or detailed explanation. Instead, information about the setting comes from character actions and dialogue, and it’s packed with interesting details that make the fantastical elements feel grounded and realistic. It’s a setting with a definite feeling of either being in decline, or possibly beginning a recovering after a little-detailed calamity; while I wouldn’t call it post-apocalyptic, it certainly has the sense of having suffered some mysterious disaster in its past. One of the more interesting ideas is of a river that flows with acidic water of varying pH levels, but while it was a cool concept Hobb’s attempts to try and make the ecosystem built around it look plausible instead felt somewhat forced.
While the worldbuilding is good, however, the book’s greatest strength lies in its characters. They’re complex, well-rounded and their interactions are realistic and fascinating. Arguments feel real and the antagonists are both plausible and intimidating. I do feel that it was a shame that the book’s best antagonist, the manipulative, charismatic and sadistic trader Hest Finbok, appears only in the first half of the book and then is relegated to the sidelines and flashbacks as the focus of the novel moves away from him; he had the presence to dominate every scene without being melodramatic, and while a later antagonistic character, Greft, seems to have some in common with him he doesn’t quite manage to have the same sense of menace and barely-controlled violence Hest imparted.
The pacing may be rather slow for some readers, with the novel not really getting going until it hits the halfway point, but this is spent getting to know the characters and so by the time things get going proper I was already well invested in the book. The ending did have a slightly weak ‘to be continued’ feel to it as well, and while I can appreciate that this is book one for an entire series it left almost all plot threads open with very little in the way of resolution. I suppose that this is to get readers to want to get the next novel, but honestly I was involved enough in the book at that point that I’m planning on getting its sequel anyway.
The Dragon Keeper is an excellent book, one that I was compelled to read through in just under a week despite its rather hefty pagecount. It’s moving, well-written and intelligent, and the best fantasy novel I’ve read since Aliette De Boddard’s Obsidian and Blood trilogy. In all likelihood, I’m going to be scouring the shelves of my local bookshop to find its sequel as soon as I can.
Satisfying and enjoyable as the gameplay is, my favourite part of Loadout is the weapon customisation. The game has four basic weapon classes; rifle, launcher, pulse and beam. Each one of them can be extensively modified by the player by adding on new components which alter their stats and the way they play. Want to snipe enemy players? Just add a sniper scope, sniper barrel and a bolt-action magazine onto the basic rifle. Sure, you’ll be firing slowly but you’ll hit like a ton of bricks from long distance. Alternatively, if you want to take out lots of enemies at once, just spec up a launcher to fire clusters of missiles across large areas. Weapons can also have more unusual features, such as healing allied players or doing damage over time with incendiary ammunition. Typically, most players seem to find a pair of weapons they like and stick with them; my two mainstays are ‘The Piecemaker’, a shotgun, backed up by a raygun going by the name ‘Nikola’s Revenge!’.
The main F2P elements come from SpaceBux, an ingame currency that can be bought at a rough rate of 600SB for $1. These provide purely cosmetic upgrades for the game’s three, pleasantly inclusive, character avatars, and don’t actually have a tangible effect on gameplay. The prices on the avatar upgrades do seem rather steep, meaning that if you want to personalise them you might have to shell out a fair amount of money.
Verbal Fisticuffs 