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Dragon Keeper (The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 1) (Paperback)

This book follows on from the Liveship Traders series, you don't need to read that series first but it would provide a good grounding as to why this world is the way it is. That series is quite long but I think it is well worth reading and a better place to start; it is actually my favourite of what the author has written.

Dragon Keeper is short and easy to read. The plot in this book is simple: Alise is a Bingtown girl that wants to go to the Rain Wilds to study dragons, she's the misfit type of character that has some vague resemblance to Althea in the Liveship series. Another female character, Thymara, is a Rain Wilds girl whom is also a misfit and in many ways she is similar to Alise. Less is said about Thymara, so it is hard to form much of an opinion of her. Alise has a lot of depth, and an interesting character to follow but she is perhaps the only one. It feels like the characters are less unique; even the older characters from the Liveship series feel like shadows of their former selves.

That said, the book is not poorly written but rather feels less well developed than previous efforts. I enjoyed being back in the 'universe' of the Cursed Isles so I didn't really object to many of the short-comings of this book but my enjoyment isn't really enough to give this book a high rating, nor can I easily recommend it to others. I'd say you would be better reading the other series, at least the Liveship series, before beginning to read this one. I think if you were to begin here then your view of the author's works would be unfairly tainted.