Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The second volume of the Rain Wilds Chronicles shows Hobb again working at the highest level of contemporary fantasy, to which her creativity with dragons adds additional there's no other word for it majesty. Battered, bruised, and lamed sea serpents have returned to the Rain Wild River to lay eggs that will hatch into dragons. But the dragon hatchlings are feeble, misshapen, unable to fly. They can't even survive without the assistance of human Dragon Keepers. Keepers and dragons make a perilous foray up the river in search of the long lost Elderling city of Kelsingra, which possibly holds the key to the dragons' survival. Tight bonds unite the humans to their ancient liveship Tarma, but as they voyage upriver they find the landscape hideously altered by earthquakes and storms. Starvation stalks them, and the bonds among humans, at least, fray even without any open treachery gnawing at them. The Rain Wilds is one of the most gripping settings in modern fantasy, highly to Hobb's credit, and an entire novel amid its lowering trees and rock formations would be impossible to put down even without Hobb's superior skills at characterization. Let us applaud, and shelve this with the rest of Hobb's magisterial fantasy fiction, though it won't stay on the shelf long.--Green, Roland Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
A new generation of dragons promises new life and prosperity to the people who live along the Rain Wild River, but they emerge from their cocoons deformed and sickly. Driven away from human settlements and assigned a group of young misfits as their keepers, the dragons make their dangerous way upriver toward a legendary lost haven, the city of Kelsingra. This journey brings dragons, keepers, and other travelers into conflict with a hostile environment and, most dangerous of all, with one another. Hobb's sequel to Dragon Keeper continues the stories of the Wilding girl Thymara, the Bingtown gentlewoman-turned-naturalist Alyse, and the blue queen dragon Sintara. VERDICT A vividly depicted exotic fantasy background and compelling characters make this a strong, well-written fantasy with broad appeal, particularly to fans of Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels and lovers of dragon lore in general. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
