As the mystical bonds with their dragons deepen, Thymara, Tats, Rapskal, and even Sedric, the unlikeliest of keepers, have begun transforming into beautiful Elderlings raked with exquisite features that complement and reflect the dragons they serve. 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. Che dire, tutte le avventure finiscono e anche le più belle lasciano sempre un po' di amaro in bocca. But most of the dragons now lack the strength for the final hazardous river crossing, and the mythical silver wells they need to survive are nowhere to be found.

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. Her best known series is The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest. Although there was a lot going on throughout the book, there was an abrupt change of tempo in the final chapters (and here I have to talk about minor spoilers, so please be careful). 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. We start to fully understand exactly who and what Elderlings were - and who and what the Keeper Elderlings will become.

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. 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.

Blood of Dragons is easily the best book in the Rain Wild Chronicles, and a climax worthy of the rest of Realm of the Elderlings.The writing is cunning because it's totally character driven, all actions arising out of what the characters do rather than the needs of the plot, and although it doesn't move along at the fastest pace things are always clearly going somewhere. Far away, in Chalced, Selden Vestrit finds himself sold into the service of the Duke, who (rather worryingly) discovers that an Elderling’s blood has an effect almost as restorative as that of dragon’s blood.

I often feel with Hobb's books that I know what it is like to smell the stench of a dragon's breath, feel the sudden sting of acid water from a splash of the Rainwild River or drink foul coffee with honey from one of the Tarman's chipped mugs. 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. 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.

Blood of Dragons continues the story from the previous book, City of Dragons, with our band of young keepers and their dragons beginning to make their way into the deserted Elderling city of Kelsingra.