But I started the first book and just couldn't engage with it at all… perhaps because it was so different (and in a different world) from what I was used to with Hobb. 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.

That aside, though, there is no doubt that the Rain Wild Chronicles made less of an impact on me than the Farseer books; and I suspect that might be because it sticks more closely to fantasy conventions. 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. It is also good to see all the trilogies come together in a sort of understanding that takes your mind back to key points from other stories. 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.While these young people struggle to understand the fabulous new world they’ve wandered into, danger comes ever closer.

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.We start to fully understand exactly who and what Elderlings were - and who and what the Keeper Elderlings will become.

It’s a bit of a relief to know that all her series are not to be rushed upon, it leaves me more time to finish the others The climax of the novel felt particularly rushed and I was disappointed that things wrapped up quite quickly. 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. The world building aspects of this series have been the most entertaining thing, as the characters explore themselves and the new world that they find themselves in.Although these four novels seem very separate from the rest of the sequence (only a few shared characters with The Liveship Traders and hardly any overlap at all with the Farseer and Tawny Man books), I’m still pleased that I read them as they have added to the overall world-building and helped me to understand more about the relationship between dragons and Elderlings. I don’t know whether I might have felt differently about the books if I’d read them with more time between them, because barrelling through them all in one go means that I’m particularly sensitive to repetition or excessive exposition. Che dire, tutte le avventure finiscono e anche le più belle lasciano sempre un po' di amaro in bocca.

And the dragons in the ancient city of Kelsingra will lose the secret knowledge they need to survive. I have been eagerly awaiting this fourth and final book in Robin Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles, Blood of Dragons. 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.My only complaints about Blood of Dragons are that certain elements of the plot feel under used, or that we didn't spend enough time with certain characters or situations to really derive the impact from them we should. Her best known series is The Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest.