Spoiler warning: This review contains some mild background on Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, although it does not contain spoilers for Dragon Haven. If you haven’t read Hobb’s previous works in this series, you probably shouldn’t be reading Dragon Haven or this review.

With Dragon Haven, fantasy master Robin Hobb has begun to rekindle some of the magic that had left her most recent works, particularly the Soldier Son trilogy. The book represents a satisfying conclusion to the two book series –The Rain Wild Chronicles — Hobb has penned as a follow-up to her extended nine book saga The Realm of the Elderlings, while still leaving room for future works in that world.

What a seasoned Hobb fan will most note about Dragon Haven is that it contains a great deal of the subtle plot and character creation and gradual world revelation that Hobb had perfected in her Elderlings saga. There is a wonderful undercurrent of ideas and emotions swirling through Hobb’s prose that constantly leaves the reader both guessing and angsty that her characters don’t know the full picture and haven’t worked through their internal turmoil.

But the book doesn’t have the same kind of drawn-out pacing that plagued the Soldier Son trilogy. Instead, I found it a pleasure to read.

I came down pretty hard on Hobb after I finished The Dragon Keeper, the first book in The Rain Wild Chronicles. And now I have to admit Hobb has taken any criticism from myself and others she read on board, and created a book in Dragon Haven that her fans will simply love.

Like The Dragon Keeper, the plot of Dragon Haven takes place in the Rain Wilds, the exotic area located upstream of Bingtown, the city where much of the action in The Liveship Traders is set, at a time shortly after the concluding events at the end of The Tawny Man trilogy.

In The Dragon Keeper, dragons had returned to the world, but in a stunted and degraded form — they could no fly, and some appeared witless and bestial. In short, they were far from the magical and all-powerful beings of legend.

With the dragons becoming a danger to the humans who tend them and live nearby, the logical next step was to move them upriver to a more appropriate setting; a glorious ancient city the dragons themselves dream of: the fabled Kelsingra. Half of this journey was completed in the first book.

Dragon Haven is in many ways a story of being on the road. Like many novelists, Hobb uses the plot device of her characters travelling through various hardships as a method to force them to grow and develop.

In both the dragons’ and the humans’ cases, the journey is both physical, in the sense that as the book wears on, they endure various hardships and traverse much terrain, and internal, in that these external trials serve as mirrors which force the characters to look into themselves and find who they really are.

For the dragons, this means both becoming physically larger and stronger, while also re-learning and remembering much of their power and their glory. For the humans, the struggle is often tied up in their sexuality. For Rain Wilder Thymara, it’s getting past the idea that her physical defects don’t mean she can’t have a relationship or potentially even bear children. For Bingtown wife and dragon scholar Alise, it means dealing with the reality of her marriage and potential future happiness.

And for poor Sedric, it means coming to a dreadful understanding of what his own relationship with Alise’s husband has truly been about.

Like other ‘road’ books, the eventual fate of Hobb’s individual characters, and indeed the entire expedition, is unclear. Kelsingra was abandoned long ago and may not even exist any more. When you add the constant grinding labour involved in even surviving the Rain Wilds, let alone travelling through them, to internal plots within the expedition and even the dangers of sharing the journey with a bunch of unpredictable dragons, it’s hard throughout Dragon Haven to know where the characters and the book will end up.

But I will say this — the eventual ending of the book is satisfying and worth reaching. Although it leaves room for a continuation of the story — particularly with relation to the potential future revelation of more details about Hobb’s world — it does not leave too much hanging.

All of Hobb’s strengths as a fantasy writer are found in Dragon Haven. Complex, realistic, multi-faceted characters who change and grow. A plot that deceives you into thinking you can foretell its changes in direction — and then twists things around on you. Subtle writing that leaves barely traceable hints of information that you really want to know.

And most of all, lurking beneath the surface of everything Hobb does in Dragon Haven, is the gradual, almost scientific revelation of the secrets of the dragons, their magic, and what it all could mean for the future of the whole world.

If you were disappointed by the Soldier Son trilogy and even by somewhat lacklustre first book in the Rain Wild Chronicles series, The Dragon Keeper, don’t lose your faith in their author just yet.

Robin Hobb is back in form. And with Dragon Haven she’s cutting up the fantasy scene once again. I can’t wait to see what she’s got in store for us next.

Obsessive hobbies such as video games can kill the ability of a writer to produce their books because they’re so addictive, fantasy master Robin Hobb has warned in a new interview.

The author is one of fantasy’s most beloved writers, due primarily to her nine-book Realm of the Elderlings Saga commenced with Assassin’s Apprentice. Hobb is the pen name of the author, who has also written other fantasy books under the pseudonym Megan Lindholm, which is derived from her real name Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden.

But, in an interview with gaming blog Grinding to Valhalla, Hobb said her novels might never have appeared if she had gotten into gaming:

“I think that early on I realized that gaming, online worlds and even the Internet connection presented a very real danger to me as a writer! Seriously. I can handle one obsession at a time, and writing is a career where the obsessive parts of it are actually very helpful to me.

Online gaming presents a very strong lure to me. After a couple of very small trials, I realized that it would be an ‘all or nothing’ occupation for me. And I do mean an ‘occupation’ as in something that would occupy all my life and time.”

Her children have played and do play video games, Hobb says, but she stays away.

Online bookseller Amazon recently made Hobb’s next book Dragon Haven available for pre-order. It is expected to ship in May 2010.

The book is the next in Hobb’s series The Rain Wild Chronicles, which follows on from her Liveship Traders series (itself a part of her larger Realm of the Elderlings saga that was initiated with Assassin’s Apprentice).

Commentary
There is no doubt that Robin Hobb is right! Anyone who has played addictive games like World of Warcraft or Diablo II will testify as to the amount of time they can take away from your life.

From what I’ve seen as a critic and journalist, good writers are obsessive about their work, and rightly so. Writing is an art form, and you need all your concentration to keep it at the sort of level that Robin Hobb writes at (that would be the highest level).

Robin Hobb’s UK publisher has revealed the cover art for the fantasy author’s next book in The Rain Wild Chronicles series. Entitled Dragon Haven, it is slated to be published in March 2010 (via Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist).

The publisher’s web site gives the following blurb for the book:

Return to the world of the Liveships Traders and journey along the Rain Wild River in the second instalment of high adventure from the author of the internationally acclaimed Farseer trilogy.

The motley band of deformed dragons and Rain Wilders continue their journey upriver towards the ancient city of Kelsingra – if it even exists – but whilst the humans are becoming used to, and more adept at controlling their dragon charges, they are completely unprepared for the discovery that the dragons are irrevocably changing them the closer they become…

The Dragon Keeper debuted this year to somewhat mixed reviews from critics disappointed by Hobb’s percieved lack of form compared with her previously fantasy epics spanning nine books in the Realm of the Elderlings series begun with Assassin’s Apprentice, which is still one of the best-selling fantasy books on Amazon.com, and was recently made available online for free for a limited time.

Keeping the Door wrote about The Dragon Keeper that while the book was a solid accomplishment, it was ultimately a disappointment due to its lack of challenging ideas:

The experienced reader will be easily able to predict the plot and much of the character development ahead of time, due to the abundant clues Hobb leaves littered throughout her text. The sense of deep mystery and Hobb’s glorious ability to gradually reveal the true workings of her complex world are somewhat lacking in her latest effort.

Elitist Book Reviews went much further in a scathing review of The Dragon Keeper published only last week, with reviewer Steve describing the book as quite possibly the worst novel he had read in 2009:

Don’t read this novel. Ever. It doesn’t matter if you are a Hobb enthusiast. The book is awful. It’s bad enough that we read it. Our worry now is that the next book we read will incorrectly seem amazing when compared to this one. Be glad this book isn’t available in the US for several months yet.

Commentary
There’s no doubt that I’m going to rush out and buy Dragon Haven as soon as it’s released. It’s Robin Hobb, after all! Hobb has pretty much earned a space in my credit card statement for as long as we both shall live. Whenever I mention fantasy literature and “masterpiece” in the same sentence, Hobb’s name is never far from my lips.

However, there is no doubt that the author is facing a few disgruntled fans at the moment. Her Soldier’s Son trilogy, which was not set in the world she created in the nine-book Realm of the Elderlings saga, is commonly spoken of amongst the fans I speak to as being below par compared to Hobb’s previous work, although it’s still worth reading.

I’ve been reading Assassin’s Apprentice on my iPhone recently as an e-book, and it’s safe to say the book still pulls me in so fast I don’t even realise it’s been several hours since I looked up. In my opinion, after reading some of this older work, Hobb has slipped a little recently.

I just hope the author and her editors are paying attention to the reviews, and realise that none of her readers are pressuring her to get Dragon Haven out any time soon. Quality, not quantity, is what matters when it comes to fantasy literature.