Warning. May contain Spoilers.Robin Hobb's new Rain Wild Chronicles series is promising to be one of the most interesting fantasy series ever written.Robin Hobb is no stranger to powerhouse series.Her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies were truly mind boggling and path breaking.Her use of complex emotions and extremely complicated characterizations is unique.Just like crystals, her characters have many facets that make us truly identify with them.Her writing style is beautiful and uncluttered and makes for some very easy reading.But her ideas are complex and intellectually satisfying.Her characters may be simple and uncomplicated but she makes them do some amazing things.Her previous series, the Soldier Son Trilogy, was not very satisfying.I think one of the many traps in making your characters all too human is to make them do silly emotional things with which some people may not identify.In this series, she explores strange themes of magical obesity and intense human weakness.But after some time, the dreariness makes the series a drag.You feel the ineptitude, incompetence and wretchedness of the main character and that is a cause for some major frustration but she has redeemed herself with the Rain Wild Chronicles.This series starts off from where the Liveship Traders trilogy ends.The dragon Tintaglia has led the sea snakes to the mouth of the Rain Wilds River and they have formed their cocoons.The dragon then leaves the Rain Wilds folks in charge of the newly hatched dragons and runs off somewhere.She is not seen in the first two books.The dragons hatch but they are deformed and undernourished and do not have the ability to fly.Without giving away too much, let me say that things do not turn out too well for them in the first book at all.This book has themes of longing and adventure.The dragons want to claim their birthright of being lords of the world but they are no more than wretched and sad little beings.This book is about their struggles.It is also about the struggles of a little girl and her friends.Thymara, who is the protagonist, is a little girl who is born with severe birth defects such as claws instead of hands.She is even more deformed than the traditional scaly rain wilders and instead of being left to die after she is born, she is saved by her father.Of course, there are many similarities between Thymara and the dragons she is charged to take care of.That is what makes the series truly interesting.Again, Hobb explores deep qualities of humanism and ostracism but what makes this series different from the forest mage trilogy is that there are also themes of friendship and love.There are also many different threads in this tapestry of a story.Another interesting aspect of the series is the exploration of gay sexuality amongst certain characters.Hobb is unique in this aspect.Once more, one of my favorite authors has provided a wonderful new series and I am looking forward to reading the third book.
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