In honor of latest release, DRAGON KEEPER, Robin Hobb graciously agreed to a Q&A with SciFiChick.com. AND one lucky reader who comments below will win a limited edition dragon figurine! (Details below.)
Can you talk a bit about DRAGON KEEPER in your own words?
I’ve taken a rather long vacation from the Cursed Shores, and the world that contains the Farseer, Liveship Trader and Tawny Man trilogies. This is my return! I intended to write a stand alone novel that would serve as a nice introduction to the world for new readers. Unfortunately (or perhaps not!) I got carried away and the manuscript became too long to publish as one book. So, Dragon Keeper is volume one of The Rain Wilds Chronicles. Volume two, Dragon Haven, will follow it in May of 2010, so there won’t be too long a wait between the books. Chronologically, Dragon Keeper occurs after the events in The Tawny Man trilogy. The Rain Wild Traders are finding that living up to their bargain with the dragon Tintaglia is harder than they expected. The dragons they expected to hatch and fly away are instead still lingering, dependent on humans as they are unable to hunt for themselves. Having a horde of intelligent and aggressive dragons on the edges of one’s city can present more than a few problems. So, Keepers are hired, along with a liveship barge and his captain, to escort the dragons up and river and away. But to where?
What brought about the decision to divide DRAGON KEEPER and DRAGON HAVEN into two separate books? What was your reaction?
It was my fault. Quite simply, I got involved in the stories, I liked the characters and I started investigating too many side issues and plotlines. So, the book grew, and I found myself going back and adding material to the beginning, so that the actions of the characters made sense to the reader. But as I added more back story, the book manuscript grew longer and longer. So, when I submitted it, (late, I am sorry to say!) it was too long both for the time allowed to edit it and to put it out as a single book. So we had to make it volume one and two. My reaction to it? “I need more self discipline!!!”
The book chronicles two strong female characters – Alise and Thymara. Why are their journeys such important tales to tell?