Having sacrificed much to bring dragons back to the world, all now seems as though it may be lost. The dragons and their human helpers have finally rediscovered the lost city of Kelsingra and the immature dragons are learning to fly. At the same time the Keepers are slowly changing, still human their closeness with the dragons has started a metamorphosis. In this stage of their development they are still vulnerable, more so because the Duke of Chalced requires their body parts to extend his own life. Tintaglia holds the secret of the dragons success, but she has been wounded and the threat of war looms between the dragons and those who seek to exploit them...

Blood of Dragons (535 pages) is the fourth and final book in The Rain Wild Chronicles series of book, written by Robin Hobb. The book works well as a standalone novel.

If the book has a major flaw it is its lack of surprises. The dragons and humans all go about their business building up to an ending you will see a mile away and then when you do get to the dragons attack, this section feels truncated as we are denied the full wrath of the dragons, skipping quickly to the aftermath.

The characters are nicely drawn, but seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about their relationship, so much so that this aspect of the story I found got in the way of what should have been a much shorter, quicker paced novel. That said, readers who have invested time in the characters will want to spend quality time with them before the series conclusion, so this aspect should be a fan pleaser.

From my perspective, it wasn’t all bad, I liked that Hobb did not bow down to creating human personas for them; they remain aloof and difficult to interact with, even for their keepers. The book is well written and Hobb has a way of placing you in the story so that you have a closer connection to the interactions. Every character has his or her moment in the sun and Hobb nicely balances the needs to tell the overall tale with the desire to examine the minutia of her characters relationships.

This then is really a book for those readers who have invested time and emotion into her characters, for the rest of us; I found the book plodding along and only finished it because I had to.

6

Charles Packer