"Dragon Keeper"

Dragon Keeper (Robin Hobb)

I tried with this book, I really did. This is another free Kindle e-book, a genre which I have not exactly enjoyed in the past. In this case, I tried to make it 50 pages (this is not easy to measure with the Kindle's "location" system), and after three and a half chapters I just couldn't stand it anymore. Reading this book is like wading through hip-deep mud: It's slow, heavy, turgid, and your mind constantly wanders to something more interesting. The book opens badly, starting with a bunch of dragons cocooning themselves, but they're all weak and dazed and half of them die, and it's so ham-handedly GUYS THIS IS SAD that it becomes silly; I couldn't help but imagine these dragons drunkenly bumbling around to comical music.
Then we switch to focus on a deformed harpy girl and her dad, and nothing happens, and while reading this part I was missing the dragons stumbling around. After a bunch of pages of nothing of interest happening we switch to focus on Alise, our mary sue who LOVES DRAGONS GUYS, and while reading this I was somehow missing the earlier parts about nothing happening to a deformed harpy girl. At this point (I was reading the book in the bathroom) I would have rather just listened to the various gross sounds coming from the next stall than continue reading this book, which I guess is very mean to say, but there you have it.

Grade: F