![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When she is offered the chance to become a Dragon Keeper, she seizes it, backed by her father and her friend Tats, a young boy who is a former slave.Īnother member of the trek north is Alise Kincarrion Finbok, a scholar forced into a conventional marriage by her Trader family. Thymara's mother is ashamed of her daughter's appearance and keeps her isolated and fully aware of her “inferiority.” Thymara becomes a hunter, preferring the chase to the company of most other people. One of the main characters is Thymara, an 11-year-old girl who has been marked physically by the Rain Wilds “magic”-an invisible power that alters some humans, leaving them with claws, scales, or other mutations. The first volume, Dragon Keeper, sets up the world and the characters whose adventures Hobb will be chronicling. Faced instead with Tintaglia's mysterious absence and malformed dragons who cannot fly or even hunt for themselves, Malta and Reyn Khuprus and the council make a drastic decision: hire Keepers for the dragons and send them all north to re-found Kelsingra. In exchange for fostering the young dragons, they would in turn receive protection from the warlike inhabitants of Chalced, a city far south that nevertheless presents real danger to the Rain Wilds inhabitants. The official guardians of the cocoons are the council of the city of Cassarick, who struck a deal with Tintaglia. Tintaglia disappears before they hatch her Elderlings, Malta and Reyn Khuprus and Malta's brother Seldin Vestrit, are left behind to watch over the cocoons. These hatchlings have only vaguely formed memories to aid them. Dragons are supposed to be born with the memories of their bloodline, which serves to make them fully developed personalities and self-sufficient from birth. But the acid river water and exhaustion from the journey take their toll on the hibernating serpents they hatch too early, before they are fully formed. ![]() In a desperate attempt to bring more dragons into the world, she has herded their proto-forms, serpents, from the sea into the Rain Wilds River, and then has arranged for a guard for them as they hibernate in cocoons. The relics are said to originate in Kelsingra, the legendary, lost city of dragons and their Keepers, known as Elderlings, immortal humans who tend to and partner the dragons.Īs the books open, only one dragon, Tintaglia, is left alive. Vague legends of an earlier, better time are articles of faith to the Rain Wilders, and are physically manifest in the magical relics that occasionally surface in trade. There is little arable land most of the Rain Wilders live in trees. Rain Wilds refers to the vast swampy basin surrounding a slow-moving river full of acidic water, on which only Traders travel between cities located far apart from each other (most communication between cities is through carrier pigeons). However, she provides enough detail and backstory so that reading the earlier books is not necessary. Hobb has already set two other trilogies in the world where the Rain Wilds Chronicles takes place. Her series does include dragons who use telepathy to communicate with certain special people, but if the reader is expecting the beneficent, empathy-driven dragons of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books or the childlike, humorous dragons of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, then Hobb's dragons, who are alien in every sense of the word, will be a welcome surprise. There are no pre-ordained outcomes or messianic Luke Skywalkers here, only people with their own problems to solve and their own journeys to adulthood and/or freedom to complete. The Rain Wilds Chronicles document a quest with world-changing consequences, but Hobb keeps the narrative focus on her characters. Hobb, who also writes under the name of Megan Lindholm, is a prolific author known for her rich world-building, evident here in the evocative, detailed descriptions of the plants and animals that her characters encounter. ![]()
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