I’ve just finished reading the first book in Robin Hobb’s latest addition to her Elderling Realm universe: Dragon Keeper*. Hobb uses a lot of exposition in this book (which possibly explains the complaints by readers reviewing on Amazon that this book is “slow moving”). The pace didn’t bother me, though, and I was quite interested in studying Hobb’s technique here.
Flashbacks and Bridging Gaps
The story unfolds, unevenly, over quite some time. To bridge gaps of time when little of importance occurs Hobb jumps the story forward, and then summarises the interleading period through a musing by the viewpoint character. But, interestingly, she also uses this technique to cover important plot events by jumping ahead to when the event is over and allowing the character to mull over the day in question. I’m ambivalent about this constant retrospectivity. It requires a lot of pluperfect tense (“had had”) and, as mentioned, I think this is the cause of the slowness that many readers are battling with. But I also think it lends the story a lot of depth due to the characters’ introspection. The characters have much more time in the quiet following an event to decide how they feel about what occured and to analyse their own and others’ behaviour. Since so many of the subplots are character driven, this is important to the story.
Repetition
I was also interested to compare this book to the book I finished earlier (Inkspell*). Robin Hobb’s books always feel very intense to me and I wanted to try and figure out how she achieves this. In comparason, Funke’s books feel very light and breezy, even when the subject matter is quite dark and sad. Is it just the difference between adult and children’s authors, or is there some additional technique being put to use here? J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter* series achieved a middle ground in intensity, I think, so it doesn’t seem a quality that must be denied in children’s books.
A technique I did notice in Dragon Keeper that seemed to add intensity was layers and layers of repetition, particularly of the characters’ feelings and torments. Hobb doesn’t rely on just one example to show the reader that Alise was an emotionally abused wife or that Thymara felt unloved by her mother; she layers these themes over and over the way an artist would apply a glaze. Again, this techique is tricky; too much feels too repetitive, but hitting the right formula adds a heaviness to the character’s soul that feels like depth to the reader.
Multiple Viewpoints
Sorry to bring this up again. But one of my reasons for reading this book after Inkspell was to contrast these authors’ use of multiple points of view. Hobb keeps to one viewpoint per scene, but allows a number of these scene changes per chapter. I know it’s nit-picking, but I really prefer that the characters have a whole chapter to themselves even if the chapters are shorter. What difference does it make whether the switch comes at a double paragraph break or a chapter end? I don’t know; only that a chapter break feels more complete to me.
Hobb employs a viewpoint technique of showing a scene from one character’s viewpoint and then turning the camera around, as it were, and filming the response from the opposing character’s viewpoint. I’m not fond of this, or at least not a lot of it; it feels a bit contrived to me. Also, the danger here is that viewpoint characters don’t need to become suspicious of one another, or notice any clues in order to pass these on to the reader, because the reader is dished the dirt directly by the character doing the deed. This was another complaint logged by Amazon reader-reviewers: one of the main characters, in particular, is infuriatingly blinkered to two pieces of knowledge that she should, these readers felt, have picked up by now. I wonder how the story revelation might have been affected if the point of view (Sedric’s) that reveals these secrets were removed and only hinted at through subtle clues observed, but not understood (yet), by Alise.
This is an interesting element to ponder, and again I’m relating it back to my own WIP: Do I really need three viewpoint characters? Or would the story pack more punch if the character with the dark, dirty secret is only observed by another character, and not free to spill the beans directly to the reader?
Further reading on exposition and point of view:
Avoiding Exposition Pitfalls
Point of View
More on Robin Hobb’s books:
The Farseer Trilogy
The Liveship Traders Trilogy
*Book Depository has free world-wide shipping, making it a better option for non-US book buyers.
