I don’t want to spend any more of my time on this series, I’ve spent way too many precious times on this mediocre series already so I’ll try to keep it short. The plotline has become super predictable, heck Big Hero 6 has more twist than this series. Not only that, most of the plot sits in the background while the two dimensional new characters focusing on love, sex, and who cheated on who. I’m looking at you, Thymarra, Rapskal, and Tats. I hope there will be a payoff for reading this quartet in The Fitz and the Fool trilogy because believe me, if anyone asks me whether to read this quartet or not I will immediately tell them to stay away. This is one of the lowest ratings I’ve ever rated for a series. I mean it, it’s not often that I found a series with each installment rating 3 stars and below; I certainly didn’t expect it to be coming from Robin Hobb.
There are actually a lot of important things happening for the world of the Elderlings that Hobb has created here, especially regarding the dragons and Elderlings. However, they were once again heavily overshadowed by poorly written new characters and love triangles. In fact, I think of this series overall as a chick flick with Adam Sandler as the main character. Don’t even get me started on the very poorly written one dimensional Chalcedean villains. Disney animation villains have more characterizations and tension than them. The buildup towards the last battle in the series was long and then boom, it happened off-screen. Robin Hobb is not a great action scenes writer, she never was and I'm fine with that. However, it’s still not advisable to build towards something and then telling it happened off the screen without the readers being able to see it.
Finally, I did some research and as it turns out, this quartet was actually two books divided by four because it was too long. Look, instead of dividing it into four books that made the quality of each book diminish, maybe you know? Edit it properly into a more efficient two books.
I’m just glad I’m finally done with this quartet. Not only it's easily Hobb’s worst series, it's also one of the worst series I’ve ever read in my life. Regardless of what I feel on the last trilogy and the previous series, I will never reread this quartet again. I will recommend this quartet only for anyone who loved reading poorly written love triangles with the plot, world-building, and pretty much everything else sits in the background. In the end, the only redeeming factors of this quartet are the pretty covers.
Picture: My copies of Rainwild Chronicles quartet
Series review:
Dragon Keeper: 3.5/5 stars
Dragon Haven: 1/5 stars
City of Dragons: 3/5 stars
Blood of Dragons: 2/5 stars
Rainwild Chronicles quartet: 9.5/20 stars
