Blood of Dragons

Executive Summary: A good but not perfect ending, to a good but not perfect series.Full ReviewI was only introduced to [a:Robin Hobb 25307 Robin Hobb https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1205023525p2/25307.jpg] in summer of 2012, but she's quickly become one of my favorite authors. While I think this is probably the weakest of her Elderling series books, I still greatly enjoyed it.Ms. Hobb once again has a way with writing characters that feel real, especially in the way they can frustrate your and make you down right furious.She has a way of making me just enjoy following her characters around as they go about their lives. I feel like not as much happened in these four books as have in her previous trilogies. Yet I don't mind.I don't need her to have epic battles, with spell slinging mages or dragons engaged in combat. This book has no mages, and the dragons do very little fighting. What it does have is complex characters dealing with the complexity that is life: love, hate, greed, courage in a fantastical setting. Somehow that's enough for me. It may not be enough for everyone.There are some complaints I could make, but not many and I won't really dwell on them. I would have liked to see some more time spent with characters from Liveship. Their cameos throughout the series, and in this book in particular were excellent though.The series ends by tying up many but not all of the loose ends I'd have liked. It leaves me wanting more, yet not upset as though the book just stopped. I would be happy to read more about these characters, especially a few years down the road to see how they made out.I think the best example of this might be the bird keepers. We only know a little of them from their correspondence in a few paragraphs between each chapter. Yet they feel just as real to me as the main characters of the book.They feel like friends. People I know and care about. Or they feel like rivals. People I would never want to meet. That's hard in writing, and Ms. Hobb always seems to do an excellent job of that for me.