New Releases: Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's Dragon Keeper is the latest entry in the series of books that started with the Farseer Trilogy and followed with two other trilogies.  Although it follows the first nine books chronologically, Dragon Keeper takes place in a new location - the remote backwoods of the Rain Wilds.

Dragon Keeper begins with the hatching of hundreds of new dragons - the first such occasion for centuries. This event should be the dawn of a new era. Not only are dragons returning the world in numbers, but this time they'll be befriended/shepherded/loved by humanity. 

Unfortunately, nothing goes to plan. When the dragons hatch, they do so as malformed monstrosities. Their wings don't work, their bodies are stunted - even their racial draconic memories are fuzzy. 

Equally unfortunately, the book doesn't quite go to plan either.

Dragon Keeper is told through a series of different perspectives - mainly Sintara (a dragon), Thymara (one of the Rain Wilds'  many semi-mutated hillbillies) and Alise (a neglected, upper-class housewife) and . All three are united by by the book's theme - they're all unappreciated, unempowered and out of place. Sintara should be a powerful dragon queen, but can't even fly. Thymara is a skilled huntress at sixteen, but, due to her accelerated mutation, her culture demanded that she should have been left out at birth. Alise is an amateur scholar, but is essentially shut in by her frosty, emotionally-abusive husband.

All three characters are thrown together in their quest to resolve the dragons' future. As Dragon Keeper progresses, they discover that, perhaps, they aren't quite as worthless as they thought.

Dragon Keeper is exactly the sort of character-driven story that readers have come to expect from Hobb. Readers expecting swordfights and fireballs won't find them here - the action here takes place as internalized emotional struggles and behind-the-scenes political manipulation. 

The problems come from unexpected directions. 

First, the book is littered with odd redundancies - either a strange style choice from the author or a bad oversight from an editor. The omniscient narrator will make a point, only to have it repeated (verbatim) by one of the characters. This happens so frequently that, as a wild guess, it feels like a character was removed or added into the book at the last minute. It is, at the very least, distracting.

Secondly, and my main problem with the book, is the unfortunate, hopefully-accidental, homophobia. Robin Hobb unfortunately selects a pair of gay men as the book's villains - the ringleader being Alise's husband, Hest. 

Hest ignores and abuses Alise solely because he's not interested in women. Because he prefers men, he's not attracted to her and alienates her. As Alise grows to realize her own value, she does so because people treat her in a way different to Hest. She starts to feel attractive and intelligent because another (straight, clearly) man flirts with and listens to her - unlike Hest. Hest's disinterest is the main cause of feelings of inadequacy.

This is a cheap, lazy excuse for Hest's unconscionable behavior - as well as an offensive one.

While Hest's homosexuality is used to explain his abusive behaviour towards his wife, the book's other villain, Sedric is much sneakier. He's slightly more empathetic, but only in that he's treacherous and slimy instead of openly cruel. Still, everything he does wrong is, again, rooted in his sexuality. Sedric steals, plots and connives against the female characters in order to preserve his hidden life. In a more progressive book, he could easily be a sympathetic hero. In Dragon Keeper, this makes him the villain. 

It is disappointing that a book intended to build empathetic, female characters also utilizes such a lazy, unprogressive view of sexuality. Robin Hobb has created a world filled with complex characters and complicated storylines. Dragon Keeper has the makings of another excellent book, but is undermined by unfortunate, unprogressive choices in character motivation.

Comments

[Den]

Good review, man. Interesting. Insightful.

[the Joker]

Unprogressive is your keyword: anything favorable about homosexuality is apparently progressive and therefor good? It is a logic i find not in order.
I have not seen this book as homophobic at all.
the book just takes the marriage arrangement as a starting point. What i find week in the book is the fact that the female (Alise or whatever) is so naive and has let this go one for years. she is played. i found that unrealistic.
What amazes me is that you find an reason to scream "homophobia", i dont see that as such in the book. looks like you only know gay persons who have noble motives etc. I happen to know gays that are completely irresponsable in their overall lifestyle. their goal in life seems to be "i am gay and you should like me for that"

[Jared]

For the sake of argument, I'll separate "unprogressive" and "homophobic". And I'll keep it in the context of the book itself.

"Unprogressive": The relationship between Alise and Hest is fundamental to the book - both in terms plot and character development. Hest doesn't like Alise. Why?

There are two ways this could go:

1) There is actually something wrong with Alise. This would mean that over the course of the two books, Alise would have to come to terms with her flaws, grow out of them, come to grips with her broken marriage, and find a way to resolve or escape it. This would, dare I say it, be an interesting book.

2) Or, Hobb could rely on the tired mechanism of the disinterested husband (well-worn from the romance and gothic genres). Which essentially means that, hey, Alise is fine just the way she is, but Hest doesn't like ANY woman - so don't take it personally. This is just lazy. And old-fashioned.

Furthermore, throughout the book, we come to know that Alise is actually attractive, brave, smart and resourceful (we're told all of these things). Essentially, she's perfect - she just can't see it. It puts the onus of character development off of the character and into the hands of external events. This is more lazy, old-fashioned writing - especially in terms of the fantasy genre.

"Homophobic": I don't think Hobb is being intentionally homophobic, but that's the unfortunate side effect of making Hest's homosexuality the main barrier to Alise's happiness. In fact, Hest's homosexuality is the thread that - when tugged - will resolve every problem in the book. Once Hest is "outed", Alise will feel better about herself, she can have her romance with the horny riverboat captain and Sedric will be exposed as a sneaky bastard.

Essentially, Hest's homosexuality is the root of all the book's character problems and we're stuck waiting two books for him to be revealed so everyone can go home.

Again, I don't think this is an intentional bullying of homosexuals as much as the side-effect of an unfortunate and lazy writing decision. If any other character besides Hest carried any sort of flaw, it would be even slightly mitigated. But instead, he's the book's primary source of evil.

(The fact that he's also an adulterer, philanderer, spousal abuser and sexual predator doesn't help either. It becomes a little stale - like some sort of 1950's movie, "I MARRIED A HOMOSEXUAL!!!!")