Jata has produced viable eggs-without ever having had a mate. Then one day, Meg makes an amazing discovery. Meg has always been better able to relate to reptiles than to people, from her estranged father to her live-in boyfriend to the veterinarian who is more concerned with his career than with the animals' lives. A species that became endangered soon after being discovered, Komodos have a legacy of independence, something that Meg understands all too well. Jata brings the exotic to Meg's Minnesotan life: an ancient, predatory history and stories of escaping to freedom. Meg Yancy knows she may be overly attached to Jata, the Komodo dragon that has been in her care since it arrived at the zoo from Indonesia. Watch this space.A zookeeper fights to save the animal she loves, even as her own life crumbles around her. However I am still keen to dabble in some of Hobb’s previous series. I’m not left feeling desperate to finish the trilogy. Robin Hobb is obviously a master at what she does, but I can’t help feeling my first foray into her work began with a slightly substandard work. Thymara leaves the prejudices and judgements of her hometown with a group of other misfits and begins to realise she can fend for herself and live amongst those that will not judge her. She volunteers to journey upriver with the group of dragons to find the fabled Elderling city of Kelsingra. Her storyline is perhaps the most believable and intriguing of the lot. Then we have Thymara, a young girl marked by the scales and deformities of a child that should have been abandoned at birth. He fell flat because he simply was not believable as a character. Rounded characters do, of course, have these conflicting traits, but Sedric was never here nor there. Sometimes presented as sympathetic, other times a self-absorbed apathetic ass, I was never quite sure what to make of Sedric. Hest’s secretary and Alise’s guard as she journeys through the Rain Wilds in search of the dragons. Perhaps the greatest enigma of the book is Sedric. Alise remains infuriatingly meek and sombre. We will Alise to discard the shackles of her confined life with Hest, discard her skirts and roam barefoot on the ship’s deck with Leftrin by her side for the rest of her days. Alise and Captain Leftrin find themselves falling in love with one another which is where it gets interesting. He falls for the meek and timid Alise Kincarrion, a gentle academic forced to marry the abominable arsehole Hest Finbok. We have Captain Leftrin, a rogue Han Solo type, who finds a piece of wizardwood (aka old dragon cocoon) and fortifies his ship with the magical substance. The other characters are marginally more riveting. She is furious, proud and, quite frankly, pretty dislikeable. When Sisquara does emerge as the dragon Sintara, she is equally difficult to like or engage with. But I just found it impossible to engage with her. She has reptilian traits and desires that are obviously going to be different from my own. She needs to reach the shore to cocoon herself with her own serpent-spit-cement so she can emerge as a fully-formed dragon in the spring. Here’s where my issues with the characters began. The book opens through the eyes of the serpent Sisarqua. There are various story threads, but they all centre around the birth of a group of new dragons in the swampy and inhospitable Rain Wilds. Hobb’s The Dragon Keeper is the first in The Rain Wild Chronicles. Eager to dabble deeper into the realms of epic fantasy, I was keen to try one of the biggest female names in the genre. Martin, who has made fantasy ‘cool’ again. There are some heavyweight male names knocking around the place, spearheaded by George R. As a female fantasy author, the idea of Robin Hobb really excited me.
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