Blood of Dragons (The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 4)

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I was particularly intrigued by the role of the Silver as a sort of life-force with magical properties; I’ve been remembering other references to silver in the earlier Hobb trilogies and trying to work out how all of this relates to the Skill. Personally, this was not how I felt, indeed I found myself wrapped up in the story right from the beginning, and I've loved seeing how a doomed expedition became the rediscovery of an ancient city as well as the discovery for both dragons, their keepers and the Crew of the Liveship Tarman, of who they really are and what they want. We start to fully understand exactly who and what Elderlings were - and who and what the Keeper Elderlings will become. She has spent her life mostly in the Pacific Nortwest region of the US, and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington State, with her husband Fred. The final novel in the Rain Wilds Chronicles, and thirteenth full length story to take place in the Realm of the Elderlings, Blood of Dragons follows on immediately where the previous novel left off, and wraps things up - possibly a little too quickly.

As the last of the Rain Wild Chronicles, I thought this book brought the series to a satisfactory conclusion and I didn’t feel that anything significant had been left unresolved. Various relationships also developing, involving humans and dragons and those very close to the latter.

There isn’t much variation in the American and British covers, which essentially use the same concept with slightly different artwork; I rather love the monochrome variation which shows a pencil sketch of the dragon and rider in flight, rather than the finished version. This even goes down to the mundane, rarely has an author given me the sense of a world where characters eat breakfast, get bored, go to the toilet and have very normal concerns the way Hobb does, despite this being a world with dragons and sea serpents and magic. I have heard people criticize the first few volumes, (especially the first), as being slow, or featuring two dimensional characters.

Although there is no out and out exposition to bring you back up to speed, so it can take a short while to get into this if it's been a while since you read book three, the early stages do feel as if they are reminding you of certain things. Like those Flemish weavers, she works on small, often inconsequential threads in slow deliberate detail, weaving them together gradually bit by bit, and only when you sit back and consider the whole do you realize just how much she's accomplished, or how subtly and gradually the plot, the lives of the characters and the entire world of the Elderlings has progressed.Perhaps because this plot is compressed, I'll also say that Chasim is one instance where Hobb's usually careful dialogue and character understanding seems to fail, as the last thing any person who has been violently raped would do literally the moment after is sit down with a fellow prisoner and have a discussion about their feelings. The dragon keepers immerse themselves in the dangerously addictive memory-stone records of the city in the hope of recovering the lost Elderling magic that once allowed humans and dragons to co-exist. On a structural level, the Chalced plot and its resolution, which comes at the very end also felt definitely out, indeed I was rather feeling the book should have ended before t hen and things were becoming a little static.

Tintaglia, the great queen dragon, is making her laborious way home after suffering a potentially fatal injury, but finds herself in the sights of a band of Chalcedean dragon-hunters. Her later titles under that name included Wizard of the Pigeons, Alien Earth, Luck of the Wheels, and Cloven Hooves. Having been fond of Alise throughout, I was rather moved by her development here, as she learns to accept that her desire for museum-like preservation has no place in Kelsingra’s future. Even if however I am incorrect on her motivations, that doesn't stop the fact that I did feel if Chasim was to serve more purpose in the plot we needed to see more of her, and especially more of her that did not involve such brutality, since I never really got a sense of who she was. This is particularly notable since her plot did have the potential to include romance and her first steps into adulthood outside the dictates of her society, but in the end Blood of Dragons resolves all her romantic difficulties by default, and though for one character this resolution is an interesting one, at the same time it makes Thymara feel a little superfluous to requirements.

I think Hest’s eventual confrontation with Alise and Cedric is possibly the best handling of a villainous, (albeit understandable), character I've ever seen in Hobb's writing, and is a moment when I literally punched the air, since it feels such an apt use of the character and so satisfying for Alise, Sedric and Leftrin, rounding off this tangle of relationships perfectly.

All written content contained on this site belongs to the author, unless otherwise stated, and should not be appropriated for use by anyone without permission. That makes it a completely solid, readable and enjoyable fantasy series, which is still head-and-shoulders above many other novels in the genre; but it doesn’t have the magnetic blend of grit, power and raw characterisation that has made Hobb’s other books such enduring favourites. There are also questions that are answered, questions that arose through this series, and questions that arose from the very first series in the Realm of the Elderlings. As I found the pages dwindling, I wondered whether we were even going to see the battle, or whether it was going to happen off-stage, despite being (surely? Che dire, tutte le avventure finiscono e anche le più belle lasciano sempre un po' di amaro in bocca.There’s plenty of action in this instalment and, as the characters grow towards their full potential, I felt they became correspondingly more engaging. In this final volume then, Hobb had to round things off, and present us with the finished tapestry, weaving all the previous plot threads together into an even whole and snipping off the loose ends to leave us with the complete picture, and for the most part I'd say she certainly succeeds. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose.