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Home > Categories > Books > Fantasy > Blood of Dragons review
The final instalment of Robin Hobb's Sunday Times best-selling series The Rain Wild Chronicles.
Dragon blood and scales, dragon liver and eyes and teeth. All required ingredients for medicines with near-miraculous healing powers. The legendary blue dragon Tintaglia is dying of wounds inflicted by hunters sent by the Duke of Chalced, who meanwhile preserves his dwindling life by consuming the blood of the dragon's poet Selden Vestrit.
If Tintaglia perishes, her ancestral memories will die with her. And the dragons in the ancient city of Kelsingra will lose the secret knowledge they need to survive. Their keepers immerse themselves in the dangerously addictive memory-stone records of the city in the hope of recovering the Elderling magic that once allowed humans and dragons to co-exist. In doing so they risk losing their own identities, even their lives. And danger threatens from beyond the city, too.
For war is coming: war between dragonkind and those who would destroy them.
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Review by: flabbergastered (Karyn)
Dated: 22nd of September, 2013
Gosh I picked up this book and was shocked to see how thick the book was! After a while of holding the book it got heavy which made me want to put the book down... I think it would have helped to have a hard cover on a book this size maybe as that may have made it easier to hold as the soft cover didn't seem stable enough to hold open while reading it.
The cover though had me hooked and I thought reading a book about dragons would be fun... I enjoy reading fantasy books but as I was reading I slowly figured out this must be one book in a series of books as things didn't make sense as the characters within the book had a history that I didn't know about. I know it is my fault that I am starting a book within the series before reading the previous books first but it would help I think to have 'flash' back moments to refresh or explain things that have happened in the past maybe.
Not a whole lot happens in Blood of Dragons. The plot slows to a crawl and plays second fiddle to the characters and the overall result gets fairly boring. While I was writing this review, I wasn't worried about plot spoilers for readers because basically there isn't much to spoil. Nothing unexpected happens. All the bad guys get what is coming to them and everyone lives happily ever after. Don't get me wrong... this is a very well written novel, but the story just fell flat for me.
I particularly enjoyed the unflinching arrogance and self-absorption of the dragons and the sense of loss experienced by those who devoted themselves to looking after them... some of the keepers would be forever slightly adrift. Hobb provided a satisfying conclusion to most of the individual stories running throughout this book, but that does not guarantee happiness for everyone. Getting to the end of this book was bitter sweet because with it being the last book in the series the conclusion didn't make full sense but I was glad that I no longer had to hold onto the book to read it any more.
The book would have made way more sense if I had read the first 3 books within the series first... but that being said if you have read the other books I would recommend this book so the story is wrapped up and the final journey has ended for the dragons and their keepers.
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