Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #1) by Patricia C. Wrede

 

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede is the first entry in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles quartet. 

I highlighted just one sentence from the book and it was the first sentence. It's just such a great first sentence and it set the tone for the rest of the book.

Linderwall was a large kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were highly respected and the number five was fashionable. (page 1)

I think you should know already if you're going to like this book!

Cimorene is just not a fashionable princess. She wants to learn swordplay, Latin, and how to bake bread. So she runs off to live with a dragon and help the dragon sort her treasure. 

It's charming, sweet, and I love that the main character is a strong girl and her dragon is also female. It was unexpectedly tender, with Cimorene making friends with another princess, saving a sort of helpless prince, and saving the day. It was also great to see how competent Cimorene was in both problem-solving and household chores. 

If you know a young person who likes to read adventure books, this might be just the ticket.

4/5 stars

Valdemar: Mage Wars by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

 

The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon is the first book The Mage Wars, which is the first trilogy in a massive epic saga called Valdemar. Valdemar has a total of 38 books in it (and books are still coming out), so it could be my job for the next two years to read these books if I wanted. You can either read the Valdemar saga in the publication order or you can read them in the internal chronology of the world. I have chosen to read in the internal chronological world and we shall see if I have made a huge mistake in this choice. These books have thousands of reviews on Goodreads and most of them have average star ratings over 4, so I'm quite intrigued by this.

I listened to the audiobook because I ran out of podcasts. Since my job is really, really slow these days, I have way too much time on my hands to walk the dog and do housework and when I'm doing these things, I always listen to audio and my podcast queue is just not long enough. This will change inevitably when I change jobs, but I'm okay with listening to audiobooks in the meantime. Gary Furlong read this book.

Since I have no other knowledge about Valdemar, I can be absolutely straight and say I adored this book. The first chapter or two were not exactly the most riveting ever and for the first half hour or so of the book, I was tempted to quit because this is a book about war (of course it is! the title of the trilogy is The Mage Wars!) and it started with a mini-battle scene and then went to an army camp and I wasn't sure if it was the right fit for me.

But pretty soon the characters won me over and the worldbuilding started to make sense and I was inventing things to do so I could listen to more. You guys, I voluntarily cleaned the shower.  

Skandranon* (Skan) is a gryphon. Can you hear me over here squealing in excitement over magical creatures? Gryphons were created by the mage Urtho and Urtho is leading a fighting force against the evil mage Ma'ar. This book focuses on Skan and his friend Amberdrake, who is a kestra'chern, which is a counselor of sorts that does physical, spiritual, and psychological healing that can (but doesn't have to) include sexual gratification.  Skan meets another brave gryphon named Zhaneel and Amberdrake falls in love with a mage named Winterheart. Those are the characters.  The plot is all about Urtho defeating Ma'ar and magical weapons and battle strategies and boring stuff like that.

There are some legitimate criticisms of this book. Urtho is kind of a bad guy for being the hero we're all following into war. He's keeping information from the gryphons about how they can reproduce, he's got a mentally handicapped gryphon captive in the Tower, and he's not a great military leader because bad harassment is happening under him, but somehow everyone loves him and forgives him. It's ridiculous. I never figured out where that loyalty was coming from. It's pretty black and white, with our good guys having explanations for any bad behavior and our bad guys just being real bad. 

But, and I mean this sincerely, I really enjoyed listening to it. I loved the magical creatures. I loved the worldbuilding. I loved the characters, particularly the gryphons. I enjoyed the narrator's reading of what seem to be quite complex words (kestra'chern, for real!). I have read a bit that the magical creatures don't actually play a huge role in the entire saga, but I guess we'll see how it goes. For a start to what I imagine will be a sprawling enterprise, I have to say I really enjoyed it and can't wait for more.

4.5/5 stars

*Since I listened to this, I had no idea how any of this was spelled, so I had to look up a lot of these words on fan sites. If any of them are misspelled, I apologize, but I don't have a physical copy of the book.

As soon as I was done with The Black Gryphon, I immediately downloaded the audiobook of The White Gryphon onto my phone. Same authors, same narrator. 

I have a lot of questions about this cover, but the most pressing one is why this guy is shirtless. He's not shirtless in the book. As a matter of fact, his fashion sense is an important part of the plot. It's confusing.

In this book, the survivors of Urtho's Tower collapse have founded a city called White Gryphon, named after our friend Skandranon. It's ten years later and Skan is bored with the realities of running a city, out of shape because he never has time to fly or train, and is honestly a little whiny about all the responsibility of being him. But then it turns out that White Gryphon is on the edge of an empire and they have to negotiate with the emperor to maintain their city's progress. So Skan, Zhaneel, Winterheart, and Amberdrake all travel to Haighlei.  (It turns out Amberdrake's mentor from before the War is there, as well, and it's important in this book, but I don't know if it's important overall, so I'm including it here in case I need it later. Her name is Silver Veil.) When they get there, though, murders start happening in the Court and it's clear that whoever is committing these murder is trying to frame the foreigners from White Gryphon.

What a strange divergence from the first book. The first book was all about political maneuvering and strategy and war and this book is a murder mystery. And, to be honest, not a particularly compelling one since we know who did it from the first chapter. I think that the authors would have been better off if they had not introduced the killer until much later, but who am I to make these types of decisions. This book continues in the YA mode of good guys are good and bad guys are bad, too, so if that black and white thinking is a problem for you, be aware.

And boy was Skan a pill in this book. He's so whiny and takes offense at everything. What a weird bird.  

Regardless of these criticisms, I do find this world intriguing and am happy to jump in for more.

3.5/5 stars

No idea who this guy is. What weird covers.

Well, I obviously immediately listened to The Silver Gryphon, same authors, same narrator. 

We speed ahead in time about twelve years. The children are getting older. Amberdrake and Winterheart's daughter, Blade (human), and Scan and Zhaneel's son, Tadrith (gryphon) have trained to be part of the law enforcement arm of society and have been sent on a mission to the furthest outreach in the empire. But on the way there, everything goes awry and Blade and Tad have to survive in the wilderness without magic while they await for help.

The first part of this book was a real slog. Everyone was all woe is me. My children are leaving! My dad is famous! No one understands me! I was less than patient with this. But at about a third of the way through, the journey begins and then it was so much fun. I like reading how they survive in the wilderness and I enjoyed the relationship between Tad and Blade. I also really like this world and am excited to see how it further develops.

4/5 stars

Overall, I ended up really liking this series and will definitely read more of Valdemar.

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey is a collection of all of Gailey's novellas and short stories that make up the River of Teeth world. 

Before I get started, let me just give you a little background. Years ago, I listened to a Longform podcast with Jon Mooallem and he started talking about his article for The Atavist called "American Hippopotamus" and I was absolutely fascinated by it. For a few months, this story was my main small talk talking point. It's a long piece (but worth it!), but if I had to summarize it, I'd just say that in the early 1900s in the United States, the country was suffering a meat shortage. A proposal was put forth to Congress to solve this shortage by using the swamps of the southern US, particularly in Louisiana, to ranch hippos for meat. Hippos! In the United States! This proposal did not go through (sadly? obviously?) and all that's left of this bonkers idea is this Atavist article and my undying obsession with it.

Gailey was inspired by this article to write American Hippo, imagining an alternate world in which the legislation was signed into law and hippos were brought to Louisiana to be ranched. She created a world in which there are cowboy hippo ranchers and people love their hippos the way we love our dogs and horses. Of course, there are unexpected consequences when some hippos are accidentally released into open water and feral hippos become a danger to those who need to use the waterways in the United States. After all, hippos are territorial and aggressive and considered very dangerous.  This novel is about a group of thieves, con artists, and criminals who come together to do a caper an operation to solve this feral hippo issue.

Readers, this was a true delight for me. It's all about our relationships with non-human creatures, found (human) family, and was just a swashbuckling delight. The book includes characters of color, characters from a wide variety of the gender spectrum, and was the gayest cowboy book I've ever read. One Goodreads review read "Came for the hippos. Stayed for the queers." If you like to read narratives about complicated people who do care about each other and their pets, this might be for you. If you like to read about alternative histories with ridiculous premises, this might be for you.

It was most definitely for me.

Line of note:

"I think that's what love is - it's not about forgiving or forgetting right away. It's about deciding to give someone a chance to earn your forgiveness, eventually." (page 249)

5/5 stars

A Natural History of Dragons (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #1) by Marie Brennan

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan is part of me still trying to fill the dragon-sized hole in my heart left by Realm of the Elderlings. I'm not sure how this slipped past my radar, since this is a dragon-based series featuring a female lead, but I was so excited when I checked it out from my local library and the librarian, Eric, told me that it was excellent.  Eric was an excellent hype man.

Isabella grows up surrounded by brothers as the only girl. Her mother is troubled by her interest in the natural and the scrapes she gets into while playing with the boys, but all Isabella wants to know is how birds and insects fly. As she grows up, she tries to blend in and do more ladylike activities, like drawing and riding horses. When she's looking for a husband, her brother takes her to the king's menagerie and she sees dragons for the first time and meets her future husband Jacob Camherst. Soon they are married and off an expedition to study dragons and that's where the real adventure begins.

There is so much to love about this book. Isabella is fabulous - snarky, smart, and not above using men's ignorance to best them. There are dragons! It's an interesting look at a woman in the Victorian era trying to find her place and finding an husband who would allow her the freedom to do things women wouldn't have been allowed to do. It's an utterly charming novel.  

All of that said, this book dragged at places. There was a lot of politics, scheming, and violence that took away the attention from the main point of attraction for me, which was the dragons. We didn't spend nearly enough time watching or being with dragons and that was a real disappointment. However, this is the first of five novels in the series and you best believe I'm going to go ahead and order the next one from the library.

4/5 stars

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is a behemoth of a book (848 pages!). I've read The Bone Season by this same author and didn't love it, but this book is on r/Fantasy's Top Books by Women and I dove right in.

We are introduced to a world divided. The West despises dragons. The East likes some dragons. But the Nameless One, a really bad dragon, is rising again, and will destroy both East and West if something isn't done. We follow several points of view, but let's just say that a Western queen, her handmaiden, and a dragonrider from the East must work together to save the world. 

I'm quite torn on this book. On one hand, I thought The Nine Realms was better, but it was also twice as long. On the other hand, who am I do deny feminist fantasy tales?  

There's a lot to like about this book, but I think I'm going to just say that it wasn't exactly a book that resonated with me. I liked the world building, I liked the dragons, and I liked what the story was trying to say about women in power. However, I thought that we just didn't spend enough time with the characters for me to truly understand them and their motivations. Since I felt slightly removed from all the characters, I just didn't really enjoy the book. I almost wanted this to be longer (maybe two or three 500-page books instead of crammed into one giant book) so I could really spend time with the characters and get to know them. I really felt like all I was doing was reading about people trying to save the world without actually caring much if the world was actually saved.

The Good: The writing, the world, the dragons

The Bad: The superficial characters, not enough of the talking mongoose

Overall: Eh. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

"Sometimes I feel very small, and very dull, as if even the ceilings are more magnificent than I will ever be." (page 37)

Ha ha. How often I feel this way.

How suddenly a life could crumble. (page 46)

It's a truth, I guess, that we're all just one car accident away from an entirely new life.

A portrait of the Saint gazed down from a wall. Sir Galian Berethnet, direct ancestor to Sabran. Raised aloft in his hand was Ascalon, the True Sword, namesake of the capital.
Ead thought he looked a thorough dolt. (page 78)

Ha ha. I liked the juxtaposition of the description of this old artifact and a character's immediate criticism. 

"You have not seen death, my lord. You have only seen the mask we put on it." (page 127)

I think this is one of the main problems with the COVID response in the US. Too many people are removed from what the process of death really looks like.

"Arteloth, we are courtiers. We have no useful instincts."
Loth had no counterstroke. (page 127)

It's like being an academic!

"...I do not fear that which I do not understand." (page 460)

Is this bravery or stupidity?  You decide.

"...Yes, Papa, I'm here. I'm sorry to have left you for so long." She kissed his hand. "Forgive me."
He lifted her chin with one finger.
"Margret," he said, "you are my child. I forgave you all your sins on the first day of your life." (page 580)

I thought this was a charming passage of parental love - there aren't a ton of good parental role models in this book, so it sort of snuck up on me.

"Just because something has always been done does not mean that it ought to be done." (page 604)

Right! Tradition can often lead to terrible things.

"Change the way things are."
"You speak as if nothing was ever easier." Sabran shook her head. "As if custom and tradition have no hold on the world. They are what shapes the world." (page 608)

It's important for leaders to think about how the world will receive their orders, isn't it?

"My mother always said it was best to receive bad news in winter, when everything is already dark. So one can heal for spring," she said...(page 610)

As I read this in the heart of February, all I could think about was how very dark the world is.

This was why Niclays had never understood Jannart's obsession. History was miserable. (page 664)

After just having read How to Be a Victorian, I get this. The past doesn't seem very romantic, does it? 

Things I looked up:

wyverling (page 13, and then a million other times): A young wyvern and a wyvern is a two-legged winged Draconic creature.

Source. 

carcanet (page 35, and then several more times): A jeweled chain or necklace. 
lucent (page 35): Glowing with, or giving off, light.
sanctarian (page 39): I think this is a synonym for sectarian, but a lot of google searches just end up coming back to this book, so my understanding is based mostly on context clues and the existence of the Sanctarian National Times. 
opriment (page 58): A deep-colored orange-yellow arsenic sulfide mineral found around volcanoes and hot springs.
amphiptere (page 71): A type of winged serpent, often found in European heraldry, but actually existing in this book's world. 

Source. 

ophitaur (page 71): A creature that is part bull and part serpent. Maybe it's the creature on the cover of the book?
jaculus (page 71): A small mythical serpent or dragon.
gorbellied (page 72): Corpulent, with a protruding belly.
pomander (page 126): A ball or perforated container of sweet-smelling substances such as herbs and spices, placed in a closet, drawer, or room to perfume the air or carried as a supposed protection against infection.
loach (page 147): A type of fish.
masque (page 171): A form of amateur dramatic entertainment which consists of dancing and acting performed by masked players.
baselard (page 191): A dagger or short sword.
decoction (page 200): The liquor resulting from concentrating the essence of a substance by heating or boiling, especially a medicinal preparation made from a plant.
setwall (page 200); The valerian plant, valued highly for its restorative properties. 
baldachin (page 238): An ornate canopy.
ichneumon (page 256, and then a lot more): A mongoose - the enemy of the dragon in medieval literature.
bodmin (page 289):  A (fictional) wildcat. Its fur is war and expensive. 
clement (page 291): (Of weather) mild. 
armillary sphere (page 303): Known as astrolabe, a model of objects in the sky, consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on the Earth or the Sun.
moil (page 311): work hard
waff (page 311): To wave or flutter or to cause to do so. (Synonym for wafted?)
corncockle (page 314): Plant that is pretty and poisonous. 
swallet (page 314): Underground stream.
quarl (page 353, and then a few more times): A jellyfish.
tabor (page 378): A small drum used to accompany oneself on a pipe or fife.
rutilant (page 420): Glowing or glittering with red or golden light.
calignous (page 439): Misty, dark, obscure, dim.
liana (page 455):  A woody climbing plant that hangs from trees, especially in tropical rainforests.
eldritch (page 463): Weird and sinister or ghostly.
olyphant (page 494): More common spelling is oliphant, meaning elephant or a hunter's horn made from an elephant tusk.
spoor (page 515): The track or scent of an animal.
attifet (page 548): A headdress worn by women that dips in the middle, lending it a heart like shape.

Source. 

charnel garden (page 549): A place where bones are buried, usually attached to a sanctuary. 
perry (page 578): A sweet pear cider. 
inglenook (page 579): A space on either side of a large fireplace.
gyre (page 647): A spiral or vortex.
cicely (page 717): An aromatic white-flowered plant of the parsley family, with fernlike leaves.
mereswine (page 803): A dolphin or a porpoise. 

burbot (page 551): A type of fish.

Dragonquest (Dragonriders of Pern #2) by Anne McCaffery

Dragonflight

Dragonquest is the second novel in the Dragonriders of Pern saga. It takes place immediately after the first book.  Lessa had traveled back in time and gotten a bunch of dragonriders from the past to come into the future to assiste the severely depleted dragonrider population defeat the Threads.  

In this book, the Old Dragonriders butt heads with the New Dragonriders in terms of customs and expectations from commoners. Then these fire lizards show up, small, fire-breathing creatures that can go in between like dragons and they're all causing friction among everyone. There's trouble with weyrwomen, F'nor is all raping a lady who doesn't want it (but it's OKAY, she falls in love with him, OBVIOUSLY), and Threads are falling out of schedule, so there's danger everywhere.  There's just so much.

So why is this book so boring?  There is a lot of action, I promise. The writing is fine. Some of the gender relations is dated (first published in 1971, so I can let some of it slide).  We get to hang out with some of the characters from the first book and we get some new characters.  We get new creatures. We get lots of snarky dragon communication. 

I don't know. Reading it was like doing my homework, though. I think it is all about the characters. I wrote that I would let some of the gender relations stuff slide, but I think I lied about that. It's just manly men being manly men and sweet little ladies who need to be taken care of, except for that one woman who is just a slut and selfish and horrible.  

This series is absolutely beloved. I should love it - dragons, female author, and an immersive world to fall into.  But I don't. I think I'll probably let this series go and move on to reading other McCaffery works. 

Have you ever read Dragonriders of Pern? Did you love it?

Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern #1) by Anne McCaffery

 

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey is the first novel in the very long Dragonriders of Pern series. I have started and stopped reading this book at least a dozen times because it seems like something I should like. Fantasy? Written by a woman? A female main character? Dragons?  I mean.  Doesn't it seem like a perfect match for me?

Well.

Hmmm...

It's just that there's also time travel and I am not a fan.  It's too easy a solution.  

Synopsis: Lessa is pretending to be an ordinary kitchen servant while she's plotting to take back her ancestral keep from its current evil caretaker when she suddenly meets and bonds with a queen dragon and becomes a dragonrider.  The Threads are attacking Pern and Lessa and the very depleted dragon corps must save the world! But how will they do this?  (Hint: see previous paragraph.)

The good: Most of the time I like Lessa. She's sort of a bad ass. And she has a dragon!  F'lar can get brained in the head, though, for a taste of his own medicine.  

Non-time travel issues: This is a book in which the gender relations have not aged well. This was written in 1968 and it really shows. Lessa is pseudo-raped, hits slapped, shook, and hit by her lover/abuser, and *obviously* falls in love with him.  I find this type of romance storyline to be super hard to get through. I know that this was written *in a different time,* but that doesn't mean rape was okay in the 1960s anymore than it is okay today.  

I'm on the fence about whether or not to read any other books in the series, particularly the original trilogy. It's absolutely beloved and I want to understand the hype. On the other hand, there are plenty of other books out there that I presume I would appreciate more.  The next book is available for me to download in ebook form RIGHT NOW and I guess if I run out of books to read on my Kindle, maybe I'll give it a go, but it will not be a priority.  

Darkstalker (Wings of Fire: Legends #1) by Tui T. Sutherland

 Wings of Fire

When I saw my nephew for the first time in over a year, he had a stack of books for me. He'd been saving up all his recommendations and oh, be still my heart, he's old enough to give me reading recommendations!  So he was super excited for me to read Darkstalker, which is a prequel to the events of the original series.

This book was infinitely better than some of the original books. It's also really dark. I mean, dark is in the name, but the themes are SO DARK. There is a violent murder on page 70 and it just kept getting more and more intense, so if your child is a sensitive soul, this might not be the book for you. If you're an adult reading this book because a nearly twelve-year-old told you to read it, you might learn a little about the maturity level of that child.

This book follows three dragonets: Fathom, Clearsight, and Darkstalker. We know how Darkstalker is going to turn out, but we meet him as an innocent young dragon and then, through a series of decisions that seem to be based on good intentions at the time, turn him into something *ahem* dark. Meanwhile, his friends Fathom and Clearsight are doing all that they can to save his soul. The plot in this book moves along swiftly, the writing is clear, and Sutherland is so invested in this world that I desperately want Universal Studios to create it for me in my world.

I have some nitpicks, of course. There's a bit about how if you don't have children, you might as well be dead, which is an appalling bit of thought to have in a children's book.  There's also a funny bit at the end about how dragons aren't evil, just sometimes make bad decisions, which is similar to something that my brother-in-law, a city attorney who prosecutes felonies, says to his kids - they're not bad adults, just adults who made bad decisions. Ha ha ha.

Anyway, if you have a little nerd in your life who likes dragons, you should definitely recommend this to him or her, particularly if they've read other books by Sutherland.  

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb

 The Farseer Trilogy
Assassin's Apprentice
Royal Assassin
Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Man Trilogy
Fool's Errand
Golden Fool
Fool's Fate

Rain Wilds Chronicles
Dragon Keeper
Dragon Haven
City of Dragons
Blood of Dragons

The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy
Fool's Assassin
Fool's Quest

Assassin's Fate is the last book in the Realm of the Elderlings saga. The last book!  I thought it was sort of terrible, but now it's done.

The Good: I'm happy for the conclusion to the liveship conundrum that I've talked to my husband, a man who has never read any of these books, about so many times because it has always been an ethical plight for me.  I actually did like the resolution of the Fitz and the Fool relationship.

The Bad: Bee. Oh, my God I hate her. Every chapter told from her perspective was interminable.  I just feel like Hobb wanted us to love her because Fitz did, but I never loved Molly and I never loved Bee. Don't get me started on Motley the Crow, either. Hobb did Motley wrong, my friends.

The Ugly: So many unanswered questions. What happened to the luriks who we didn't see die?  What happens to the liveships? What happened to Rosemary?  Why is this book a gazillion pages and I still want more? 

The saga as a whole is a must-read for fantasy lovers.  In general, though, I didn't really like the last trilogy.  If you read the first three trilogies, you'd get the gist of the whole thing and you'd really see the strengths of Hobb's writing. If you like dragons, Rain Wilds is a fun romp, although it's probably the most divisive of the series.  The Fitz and the Fool trilogy is absolutely non-essential in my world. I sort of wish I hadn't even bothered.  

Notable lines:

The woman came to light the lamps. They smelled of pine, of a forest. I longed for the forest. I longed to be anywhere that people were not. (page 530)

Months of being on my own. It wasn't even noon and I was relegated to being a child again. (page 666)

Both of these quotes are from Bee, which is a bit unusual since she's so terrible, but I do have to say that her misanthropic control freak tendencies do reflect a bit of my own personality at me.

Fool's Quest by Robin Hobb

The Farseer Trilogy

Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Man Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Dragon Keeper

Dragon Haven

City of Dragons

Blood of Dragons

The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy

Fool's Assassin

Fool's Quest is the second of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy and is the penultimate book in the Realm of the Elderlings saga

A theme of some of my recent posts is how upsetting I find Goodreads rankings. Love Lettering has a low score, despite the fact that it is maybe the most perfect romance novel I've read in a decade, and this 754-page book of nothingness has a 4.52. I think it's possible that the Goodreads people are not MY people. Look, I love Hobb and I will read the last book in the saga, but I think this is the worst book I've read of hers. I partially blame the name.  I was expecting this to be a quest book because, you know, it's called Fool's Quest, but instead it isn't until page page 439 that Fitz finally gets on a horse (58% of the way through the book) and, I hate to break it you, but he returns BACK TO THE FUCKING CASTLE on page 555 and we didn't leave again until page 652. I'm going to do the math for you because I care, but that means we spent 218 page of 754 on a quest - that's 29% of the book - and only a small portion of that was actually the Fool's quest.  

So what I'm saying is that this was a boring book with lot of Fitz moping about, blaming himself, both fairly and unfairly, for events at the end of the previous book.  There's also way more about fashion and unnecessary buttons on pants than is called for, in my humble opinion.  It's just...it's a book about grieving and I understand that, but I would have expected Fitz to immediately want vengeance and he's just dithering about the castle for hundreds of pages - it isn't even until page 191 that Hobb gets around to letting Fitz know the events of the end of the previous book.  

Fitz really rubbed me the wrong way in this book. I know Fitz is beloved and I am opening myself up for some criticism here, but he never learns.  He has been making the same mistakes since he was a teenager. I used to give him a lot of slack because he was a traumatized young adult doing the best he could. But he's a grown man now and still running away from his problems, not asking for help from obvious people who would love to help him,  and refusing to listen to people who might disagree with him. Fitz needs to grow up ASAP or I'm going to scream.

And there's so much rape and dismissal of women in this novel.  I was actually kind of nostalgic for the dumb love triangles in the Rain Wilds Chronicles.  One of the characters repeatedly refers to another character as the "handsome rapist" and the way Chade, Fitz's mentor, describes women, is a bit off-putting (see examples in the notable lines section). There's one line where Fitz talks about how he does everything for women, but even that line makes it seem like women are just one more responsibility of life that men need to take care of all the time.  Egads. This saga is not unproblematic with regard to sexual violence, but it seems to be particularly emphasized in this book.

There's also a surprising amount of lazy writing here. The Chalcedeans have been enemies from the beginning and the Duke of Chalced was a particular problem in the Rain Wilds Chronicles, but the portrayal of the Chalcedeans as just plain evil villains was a bit surprising from Hobb, who I would have said was a master of writing characters before this. 

"They were not warriors! They had no honor as warriors. All know women can possess no honor. They are weak! Their lives have no meaning save what men give to them."  (page 499) I mean, can we get more on the nose about just how bad our enemies are? I was expected Hobb to give us some sort of nuance, but none came and I was disappointed.

We leave this book on a bit of a cliffhanger. Fitz, the Fool, and their coterie of bumbling idiots have made it to Kelsingra, where we meet a bunch of our favorites from The Liveship Traders and Rain Wilds.  But poor Fitz is trying to help out some children and he finds himself in a bit of a bind.  So I'm excited to see what happens in the last book in the saga, Assassin's Fate. 

Notable lines:

1) "You have a crow tangled in your wig?" he asked, and for a wonder there was a trace of both amusement and mockery in his voice. "Ah, Fitz. I can always count on you to have some sort of bizarre problem that breaks my ennui." (page 133)

This crow is another problem I have with the book.  A whole new character introduced with no real payoff. There better be a Chekhov's crow scene with the crow in the next book or I'm going to cry foul and suggest this is worse than the unnecessary introduction of Grawp in the Harry Potter series.

2) "Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with the details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it." (page 183)

The great debate about whether or not lies of omission are actual lies.  

3) "But she was a stupid, vain woman, pretty as a picture and vapid as a moth." (page 259)

I like to notate animal metaphors, but this one is also an example of how Hobb treats women in this novel.

4) "She is as maternal as a snake." (page 260)

Another unflattering animal metaphor for a woman.

5) "There is no path to the future, Fitz. The path is now. Now is all there is, or ever will be. You can change perhaps the next ten breaths in your life. But after that, random chance seizes you in its jaws again. A tree falls on you, a spider bites your ankle, and all your grand plans for winning a battle are for naught. Now is what we have, Fitz, and now is where we act to stay alive." (page 363)

I do not agree with this. We can definitely plan ahead for more than ten breaths in your life. Yes, accidents may befall us, but we can even form contingencies for some of those accidents. This line rang as false for the character who spoke it, too, since he is someone who is in charge of a spy network and definitely planned ahead. It just rang as false in the narrative and false about reality. I'm disappointed in Hobb.

6) "But I've seen war and I've seen peace and I know well that there is never truly one or the other. And being ready for war is  better than being ready for peace, if peace is what you truly hope for." (page 431)

As an American (mightiest military in the world?), this seems true. As a person who used to call herself a pacifist, it hurts to read.

7) Night would soon be falling, it was very cold, and I was unexpectedly saddled with two idiots. (page 656)

The whole book was filled with idiots. It was nice to see it called out appropriately in the text.

Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb

 The Farseer Trilogy

Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Many Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Dragon Keeper

Dragon Haven

City of Dragons

Blood of Dragons

Fool's Assassin is the first book in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, which is the last of the Realm of the Elderlings (ROTE) saga. We last left Fitz as he took on the Tom Badgerlock persona and he moved to Withywoods Manor as Lady Molly's husband and he helped her raise her children.  But just as they become empty nesters, there's a baby! But then a messenger comes to Withywoods and mysteriously disappears leaving nothing but blood behind. Molly dies, Fitz is left to (badly) parent Bee, a strange baby and even stranger child. Suddenly Fitz is embroiled in a world he never meant to return to.

I adored older Fitz. He's nostalgic for Nighteyes, Molly, and the Fool, missing them all the time. He's strong and heals quickly, but he gets sore and traveling rough is not for him anymore. More importantly, he has a true understanding of the things that are important and his behavior is reflective of that understanding.  It's also interesting to read about his own reflections on his own behaviors from his reckless youth.  

But I didn't love all the new characters. Of course there are new characters.  We're not at Buckkeep Castle anymore.  But so many of them are inexplicably poorly done.  Robb is a master of character, but there are three (Shun, FitzVigilant, and Bee) who are just stereotypes of already established character types in the saga.  This book also suffers from a serious lack of plot.  Not all ROTE books are jam packed with action (Golden Fool, I'm talking about you), but this one seemed to meander and meander as Fitz checked on sheep, repaired the manor, and bought clothes and then *BAM* in the last one hundred pages everything happened all at once. In some ways, that's how life is, right? When it rains, it pours? It seems fitting that Fitz is just living his country manor life, far removed from politics and intrigue, when all of a sudden it falls into his lap.  But it doesn't make for the most exciting of reads until you get to all the excitement all at once.

Regardless of any of my nitpicks, the worst of Hobb's books is the best of fantasy. I am so looking forward to reading the next book in the series that I actually requested it from the library before I finished this one.  Robin Hobb is a literary genius.

Lines of note:

It was like watching a kitten attack a bull. (page 69)

As you know, I like a good animal analogy.

"Why aren't you with the kind? Where are your guards."

She gave me a look. "I told Dutiful I'd be with you and needed no other guard. He and Chade both agreed."

"Why?"

She stared at me. "Well, among them, you do have a certain reputation as a very competent assassin." (page 126)

Fitz's self-deprecation gets me every time. And Nettle's dry humor here also amuses me.

There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of  another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything has ending and nothing else can ever begin. (page 251)

Is 2020 an ending of how things used to be? Or is it the beginning of a newer, better world? 

Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb

 The Farseer Trilogy
Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Many Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Dragon Keeper

Dragon Haven

City of Dragons

Blood of Dragons is the final installment of the Rain Wilds Chronicles and is probably the best in the quartet. It's not the best Hobb out there, but I seriously enjoyed it.  As a matter of fact, the ending to chapter eighteen was so unexpected and exciting I audibly whooped.  I will say that while there are many legitimate gripes about this book, the two biggest being the introduction of Chassim as an important character (I mean, we're a dozen books into an epic saga that already has more than a hundred characters - do we really need her?) and the inability of Hobb to give up on the Thymara/Rapskal/Tats love triangle that no one cares about, but those gripes do not outweigh the sheer enjoyment I got turning the pages of this book.

So, the dragons and the keepers are all in Kelsingra, but they need to figure out how to get dragons something called Silver to get the dragons to full strength and complete the process of turning the keepers into full Elderlings. Meanwhile, the Duke of Chalced wants dragon parts to help keep himself alive. Tintaglia is injured and the search for Silver becomes that much more important to save her and, in doing so, save Reyn and Malta's baby.  Not to give too many spoilers here, but OMG the dragons DESTROY Chalced in the last big battle.  Whoop it up, dragons.

Hobb's writing is strong in so many areas. Her characters are fantastic and the growth from so many of our characters from the first book in the quartet to this book is simply brilliant.  Alise goes from the spoiled wife a Bingtown trader to a liveship captain's lover who has to cook her own meals and clean her own rooms and it's seamless.  Sedric goes from an abused, brainwashed lackey to Elderling in love with his dragon and in a healthy relationship.  Leftrin goes from a boorish sea captain to a boorish sea captain, but we love him anyway.

But her settings are also worth mentioning. I feel like we know Bingtown, the Rain River, and Kelsingra and each place has its own personality and feeling.  I imagine the Rain River as sort of a Cuyahoga River at the time it caught fire and Kelsingra as if Walt Disney World were open to like a dozen people, but all the rides and attractions were sort of working sometimes. The whole world of liveships and dragons seems so completely normal at this point and it's because Hobb never steps out of her immersive writing to let us forget that we're in a world unlike our own.

I have, as I'm sure you suspect, immediately put the first book in the last trilogy of the expansive Realm of the Elderlings saga on hold at the library. This world has gotten me through the first part of the pandemic. I have to start giving some serious thinking to what my next fantasy saga will be.

City of Dragons by Robin Hobb

 The Farseer Trilogy

Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Many Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Dragon Keeper

Dragon Haven

As we move along through the Realm of the Elderlings saga, I have to say that I continue to be impressed with Hobb. I wasn't exactly in love with Dragon Haven, but this book was so exciting.  I just kept racing from chapter to chapter and just thought it was quite exciting. There's a bunch of different plotlines coming together and we see some characters from Liveship Traders.  This is definitely the best of the Rain Wilds Chronicles.

Plots:

1) Leftrin, the captain of Tarman, returns to civilization to resupply and get paid.  The Council is being a bit petty and not paying him.

2) The Duke of Chalced wants dragon parts to cure his illness.  There are assassins and spies.  

3) The Elderlings from The Liveship Traders, Malta, Reyn, and Selden come back! Selden is part of plot #2, and Malta is pregnant the baby is born, but only Tarman can help. The baby needs dragons!

4) The dragons are still separated from the legendary city of Kelsingra by a river.  But then Sintara can fly and she opens up secrets to the city.  The Keepers are cold, hungry, and exhausted, but if they could just get the rest of the dragons over to the city, things might change.

5) This bird keeper thing.  Because of plot #2, there's a dirty bird keeper and things are getting nasty. It's also making it hard to communicate because birds are expensive and in rare supply.

A lot of reviews say that this book is a leisurely journey to nowhere, but I disagree. I'm finally starting to see how some of the threads from the previous trilogies are coming together and I'm super pumped for the last installment of this quartet. And then! THEN! The last trilogy. I can't tell if I'm sad or excited about the end of this literary journey.

Be ready for Blood of Dragons soon. It's on the shelf at my local library and as soon as they pull it for me*, I'm going to go get it ASAP.

*The Covid numbers in Wisconsin are terrifying and our local library has gone back to curbside pickup. That means I have to drive the three blocks to my library to pick up books.  I like that they collect the books for me, but I feel dumb driving just a few blocks, so I have taken to only going to the library when I'm out for other things. I will make an exception to this self-imposed rule for another dragon book.

Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb

The Farseer Trilogy
Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Many Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Rain Wilds Chronicles

Dragon Keeper

 Dragon Haven is the second book in the Rain Wilds Chronicles, which is the fourth of five mini-series that make up the Realm of the Elderlings. This book picks up right where Dragon Keeper left off, with our band of misfit Keepers and their associated dragons, a couple of hunters, Alise and Sedric who are from Bingtown and doing research, and the crew of the liveship Tarman.  They're trying to find the legendary city of Kelsingra.  But there's a rogue wave and it separates our group and we spend the first third of the book trying to reunite and deal with the fallout. Then we spend endless days of grooming dragons, hunting and foraging, and dealing with interpersonal relationships.  It's an exhausting, grueling journey, and that certainly shows in the endless pages of travel.

Meanwhile, the dragons are getting stronger and healthier. Some of the Keepers are changing, too.  They are developing scales and other dragon-like characteristics and we learn that this is part of changing humans into Elderlings to be long-term companions to dragons. We also learn more about the secrets of Tarman and why he can travel in much shallower waters than other ships, watch as Alise and Sedric become further and further away from their Bingtown roots and connections.  We also learn that young people are always ready for sexual action.

I'm so mixed on this book. Robb is known for her slow builds, so I'm not surprised that we're halfway through this quartet of books and we're just now making some headway.  I guess I'm a bit surprised that the characters are so meh to me.  Don't get me wrong, Robb's characters are great.  Thymara, Alise, Sedric, Sintara, and, to a lesser extent, Leftrin, are all interesting and complicated characters. They do dumb things because they aren't perfect. They frequently make me angry because they honestly just don't the things I would do.  Robb does create believable, complex characters. She develops characters in lieu of developing plot and I am 100% on board for that.

But there's too many characters here. We've got more than a dozen dragons, a dozen Keepers, we've got half a dozen people on the crew, and we've got Alise and Sedric. Plus, there's a side story in which two birdkeepers from Bingtown and Trehaug correspond back and forth.  There's just too much. There's no one character to get invested in and so I just don't really care about the outcome for any one of them, with the exception of a Keeper and a dragon who honestly don't play a huge role in most of the novel.

So, the characters are well done, but not that exciting to me. There's remarkably little plot development. That does not explain why I spent an entire workday trying to read a page here or there between meetings. Robb's magical writing makes me want to keep reading and keep reading and keep reading.  I want to see more of her world. I want to know more about its mysteries. I want to find out if the dragons ever learn to fly.  I want all this and I don't know why I want all this except to say that Robb is a genius.

I immediately put the next book on hold at the library, of course.

Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb

 The Farseer Trilogy
Assassin's Apprentice

Royal Assassin

Assassin's Quest

The Liveship Traders Trilogy

The Tawny Many Trilogy

Fool's Errand

Golden Fool

Fool's Fate

The Dragon Keeper is the first book The Rain Wilds Chronicles.  

In this book, the serpents from The Liveship Trader trilogy manage to make cases, but they hatch weak and malformed. None of them can fly or really hunt enough to sustain their own life.  The dragon Tintaglia even abandons them and the Traders are getting sick of taking care of the dragons. So the Traders hire some young people from the Rain Wilds, kids who don't have families or people who care about them, to shepherd the dragons upriver to the legendary city of Kelsingra, which may or may not exist. 

Major characters:

Thymara, one of the Rain Wilds youngsters, who has taken over the duties of watching Sintara.  Thymara is "heavily marked by the Wilds," which is how people describe those who have physical differences because of the environmental hazards of being born and living in the area. She has claws instead of hands and feet.  She leaves a loving father and snappish mother behind at home to go on her quest.  

Alise is the wife of an abusive Bingtown trader, Hest. She likes to call herself an expert on dragons and Elderlings. She's on the journey with the dragons "to do research," but we all really know that she just wants to get away from Hest and the captain of the ship is so nice.

Speaking of the captain of the ship, that's Leftrin. He captains Tarman, a liveship, and he has a huge crush on Alise. He also stole a dragon casing and started selling it, so I'm pretty sure that's going to come and bite him on the ass later.

And then there's good old Sedric, who is technically chaperoning Alise on the behest of her husband (remember Hest?).  But it quickly becomes clear that Sedric is actually Hest's lover and he really just wants to profit off of the dragons.

Rain Wilds:

I think what makes this book is the setting.  The Rain Wilds is about as different from Buckkeep as it gets.  The river is a disruptive force in this place, constantly moving, sometimes toxic, and always dangerous.  The people who live there are tough, eking out a living trying to use the meager resources left to them in the trees to survive their frequently short lives.  Babies born with deformities are often abandoned.  Hobb's descriptions of towns and cities that are built in the tree canopy were vivid and I could almost see myself walking along the swaying bridges.  If Rain Wilds was a place in the United States, it would be Cancer Alley, and I found myself really empathizing with the folks who lived there, constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Overall:

There is a lot of scene setting in this book.  I'm sure that there's going to be a payoff for all of this and for introducing so many characters so quickly, but this is probably my least favorite Hobb so far.  I mean, all we have accomplished through this book is getting the dragons partway down the river. The book just stopped at that point.  Golden Fool was a bit like this book in that the book was more about character development than plot development, but I don't know these characters or, frankly, care about them much.  

So, it's quite a big switch from hanging out with Fitz and the Fool, two beloved characters, to be thrown into this world without them.  But I trust Hobb and I trust that all this scene setting will pay off in a big way before I'm done with The Rain Wilds Chronicles.