Review: City of Dragons-Robin Hobb

City of Dragons: Volume III: The Rain Wild Chronicles
Robin Hobb
HarperVoyager Publishing 334 pgs.

Robin Hobbs’s latest work is the third volume in The Rain Wild Chronicles entitled City of Dragons. If you read my review of Dragon Haven, you will know I felt her last book wasn’t anywhere close to being her strongest effort. However with City of Dragons, Robin Hobb has seen a return to form. I think most of her fans will agree City of Dragons is her strongest effort in years and did well to remind me why Robin Hobb is among this genre’s finest authors.

The story takes up with the crew of the liveship Tarman having reached its destination of the lost city of Kelsingra. After successfully navigating up the Rain Wild River, Captain Leftrin has delivered his cargo of dragons, keepers, and hunters and has embarked on his return voyage to Cassarick to collect on his contract and resupply for his return voyage to his beloved Alise and Kelsingra. Meanwhile, Thymara and the rest of the keepers are still struggling in their duties as dragon keepers to service and feed their dragons. The dragons are still far from being fully developed and the keepers are continuing their transformation into Elderlings. The entire expedition are all encamped across the Rain Wild River unable to reach their ultimate destination of Kelsingra because of the lack of any land-based approach or a proper place for the Tarman to moor. The only access to the city for Alise and the others is on the back of the tiny little dragon Heeby.

Although, I didn’t find Dragon Haven to be an overly compelling novel, when I finished reading City of Dragons it became apparent to me that the extra time and care Hobb spent fleshing out those characters in the previous novel really payoff in City of Dragons. With the relationships and conflicts firmly in place, Hobb is able to move the plot forward effortlessly and each of the various plot threads remain very tenderly wrought without suffering from the melodrama that plagued Dragon Haven. If you couple that with a richly detailed setting, a strong sense of continuity and fully formed characters, you have the recipe for a wonderful fantasy novel and that is exactly what City of Dragons is.The only real problem I found with City of Dragons is that it seems to be more like half a book than a full novel. At 334, the page count is quite light and the novel’s ending isn’t neatly done therefore giving it that incomplete feeling. But to be fair, “book-splitting” seems to be becoming more and more common these days and seems to be affecting the entire fantasy genre, so I can’t fault Hobb. I just chalk it up to capitalism and thank the Lord I get these books free. After all, why should the publishing house sell one 700 pg book when they can sell two 350 page books? In that sense, City of Dragons needed a better place to end or needed about 400 more pages to finish. As it is, nearly nothing gets fully resolved and you’ll probably be infuriated that you just won’t be able to simply continue the story, but you and I will have to wait until Blood of Dragons comes out next year to satisfy our appetites and further deplete (y)our pocketbooks.