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

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Thus, only part of the action in the book reflects Kelsingra itself, much else reflects how the discovery of a new and almost intact Elderling city peopled by the dragons and their keepers will affect places like Bingtown, the Rainwilds and Chalced and the people who inhabit them. Even thou Robin Hobb has a way of rounding things up in a summary that explains it all there are still things you would have liked to have read in detail. It was released in March 2013 [1] and is a direct continuation of the previous novel: City of Dragons. Something I find fascinating in Hobb's writing is her use of the traditional "journey" structure for a fantasy story. I haven’t read that series, but I started her Farseer novels years ago (have the unread ones on a shelf behind my back).

I wonder if that might not be a result to the rather mixed reaction to her preceeding work, the Soldier Son trilogy where she burns the bridges to pretty much every single Epic Fantasy trope in existence, For my part, I still think this trilogy is her best work today, but it also put off a lot of her fans – so lets hope that she manages to strike the balance between doing the unexpected and appealing to readers in her new trilogy which, like most of her fans, I'm looking forward to with bated breath.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. It's one of those books that so much happens in, it's hard to believe it happens just in this one book - a lot is packed in to these 481 pages, and most of it is pretty epic. My only issue with Hest’s plot is it feels that it should have been the end of the book, since Hest’s journey also ties into the fate of the dragon Tintaglia, and Malta's child in a careful but tightly woven fashion which will be familiar to any of Hobb's fans. This runs for five hundred and thirty five pages, and is divided into twenty two chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue.

And Alise’s estranged husband Hest struggles closer to Kelsingra, dreaming of claiming his part of the treasure-city’s profits and drawing both his wife and Sedric back into his shadow.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. What they don't know is Tintaglia is making her way to Kelsingra, badly injured herself, and almost at death's door.

We have a couple of scenes of the Duke and his advisers discussing his "dragon man" and the duke's courageous daughter Chasim and her attempts to start a revolution among the women of Chalced. As with other volumes in the series each chapter has a letter sent between various different characters in between it. In Blood of Dragons however, I did rather wonder if Hobb was attempting a little too much since while certain aspects of the plot are most satisfyingly and completely dealt with, other aspects seemed under developed.The dragons have got to learn to fly and make their way over to Kelsingra, so they can reach the hot baths that will help them grow and fully develop into the dragons they always should have been. And with discovering this about Silver, we discover more about things we first learnt about in The Farseer Trilogy. 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.

I think part of the reason why I enjoyed it so much is that I have read (and liked) quite a lot of Victorian novels in my time, and that trilogy is really closer to those than to the Lord of the Rings. Many of the characters have engrossing personal dilemmas in regards to relationships, and one character in particular does get into an interesting one that you wouldn't have seen coming. Throughout the series I’ve been trying to fit what we see into my existing framework of the Wit and Skill, and attempting to understand where we can draw parallels. The world is certainly no longer the place it used to be, and I am pretty certain that the new books will be affected to some degree by the changes at Kelsingra. For Althia, Malta and indeed Alise this hasn't been an issue, indeed the romance between Alise and Leftrin was more a matter of liberation than passivity, however in the case of Thymara, since her other plots such as her potential conflict with her dragon rather petered out, I did feel it left her feeling slightly under used, simply prevaricating between her two admirers (an unkind person might almost say teasing), rather than engaging in a more active, equal relationship or trying to sort matters out for herself.The magic of the city and the final secret it conceals present their only chance of survival, not just for the queen dragon Tintaglia but for Malta and Reyn's infant Elderling son as well. It was also interesting to see Rapskal taking on more and more of the characteristics of his long-ago counterpart Tellator as he spends more time immersing himself in Kelsingra’s memory stones. This question leads to both political intrigues’ with Leftrin and the Trahorg council, Malta's desperate voyage up river to Kelsingra to find help for her dying child, and the Chalcedian's attempt to attain dragon blood to appease the Duke of Chalced.