Robin Hobb © Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

★★★ ½

The Rain Wild Chronicles: Book IV

In the fourth and final volume of the Rain Wild Chronicles, we rejoin our young keepers and their dragons in the ruined Elderling city of Kelsingra. With most of the company still stranded on the far side of the river and game growing scarce, it becomes increasingly important for the dragons to learn to fly before they become too large and heavy for their untried wings. Heeby and Sintara, who have made it into Kelsingra, have discovered marvellous baths and warm rooms which have improved their strength and growth: finally, it seems that their ancestral dreams of glory might be within reach after all.

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Robin Hobb © Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

★★★ ½

The Rain Wild Chronicles: Book III

And so, at long last, Kelsingra has been found. In this third book of the series, the dragons and their keepers have finally made their way back to the fabled, half-remembered city which features in so many of the dragons’ ancestral memories and which promises, in some as-yet undefined way, to heal and transform them. Faced with rolling hills and woods and solid ground, the like of which they have never seen before, the human members of the expedition rapidly come to understand that this is a place that could make a good home. But there is much to do.

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Robin Hobb © Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

★★★

The Rain Wild Chronicles: Book II

Following on in quick succession from The Dragon Keeper, we rejoin the dragons and keepers making the long, hard journey up the river in search of the elusive Elderling city of Kelsingra. As they get further from Casserick, leaving ‘civilisation’ behind them, it becomes increasingly clear that they have the freedom to break free of old social norms and create their own. But what shape that society should take, and how it should be regulated, and by whom, are questions that threaten to become fatally divisive.

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Robin Hobb © Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

★★★½

The Rain Wild Chronicles: Book I

Those of you who followed my Robin Hobb reread a few months ago will remember that I had no plans to read The Rain Wild Chronicles. My heart has always been on the Farseer side of Hobb’s fantasy world and, when I finished The Tawny Man trilogy, I believed that storyline was tied up. Although I’d enjoyed The Liveship Traders, the Rain Wilds wasn’t necessarily a place I felt the need to go back to; and, moreover, I’d read a number of lukewarm reviews of the series. However, the situation has changed since then.

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