24 Facts About Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb achieved commercial success with her debut work under this pseudonym, the Farseer trilogy.

Robin Hobb went on to write four further series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which received praise from critics for her characterization, and in 2005 The Times described her as "one of the great modern fantasy writers".

Robin Hobb recalls growing up in the middle of an oil boom in Alaska, which led to a rapid growth in population of the rural town she lived in.

Robin Hobb's family raised a half wolf called Bruno and hunted caribou and moose; this would later inspire the wolf character Nighteyes and the descriptions of wilderness survival in Lindholm's writing.

Robin Hobb published her first novel at age 30, while working as a waitress; she balanced between writing and caring for her four children while her husband worked offshore as a commercial fisherman.

Robin Hobb worked part-time, including in waitressing and mail delivery, early in her career.

Robin Hobb's writing as Hobb was commercially successful, and has appeared on New York Times bestseller lists.

Robin Hobb continues to write under both Hobb and Lindholm bylines.

Robin Hobb composed educational material, short works of fiction created to a very specific vocabulary list, which were used in SRA's programmed reading material.

Robin Hobb contributed short stories to a shared world anthology entitled Liavek from 1985 to 1988, and co-wrote a novel, The Gypsy, with Steven Brust.

Robin Hobb has continued to publish short stories as Megan Lindholm, including an appearance in the 2013 anthology Year's Best SF 18.

Robin Hobb's writing has mainly focused on the Realm of the Elderlings, a series of 16 books written in five parts.

Robin Hobb next wrote a nautical fantasy series, the Liveship Traders, set in a different part of the Elderlings world and featuring pirates, sea serpents, a family of traders and their living ships.

From 2009 to 2013, Robin Hobb released the four novels of the Rain Wild Chronicles.

In 2014, Robin Hobb resumed the story, decades later in life, of her two most popular characters in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, with its three volumes, Fool's Assassin, Fool's Quest and Assassin's Fate, published from 2014 to 2017.

Robin Hobb's earlier writing as Megan Lindholm comprises short-form science fiction and urban fantasy.

Robin Hobb herself has said that she employs different voices for the two pseudonyms, with Lindholm's voice "a little more snarky, a little more sarcastic, a little less optimistic, less emotional", and more attuned to dark, urban fantasy.

Critic Amanda Craig describes Robin Hobb's writing as having a Shakespearean flavor, and calls the mood "nothing like as bleak as George R R Martin's, nor as Manichean as Tolkien's, but close to Ursula Le Guin's redemptive humanism".

Robin Hobb explores gender as a theme in the Liveship Traders, which focuses on the lives of three generations of women in a patriarchal society.

Robin Hobb described Hobb's characters as believable people who "age, change, waver and suffer lasting scars", and highlighted the portrayal of Fitz, the protagonist of the Farseer trilogy.

The New Statesman remarked on the "striking portraits of three generations of women" in the sequel Liveship Traders trilogy, and stated that though Robin Hobb's works had a medieval setting, her themes resonated in the modern world.

Some of Robin Hobb's works have received less positive a reception: The Guardian criticized the Soldier Son books as lacking the "heart and page-turning spark" of her Fitz novels, and viewed the Rain Wild novels as "flimsy in comparison".

In 2014, Robin Hobb was a Guest of Honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London.

Robin Hobb currently publishes under both her pen names, and lives on a small farm outside of Roy, Washington.