Realm of the Elderlings Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Farseer Trilogy | TBD | |
| Assassin’s Apprentice | 1995 | Buy |
| Royal Assassin | 1996 | Buy |
| Assassin’s Quest | 1997 | Buy |
| The Liveship Traders | TBD | |
| Ship of Magic | 1998 | Buy |
| The Mad Ship | 1999 | Buy |
| Ship of Destiny | 2000 | Buy |
| The Tawny Man Trilogy | TBD | |
| Fool’s Errand | 2001 | Buy |
| Golden Fool | 2002 | Buy |
| Fool’s Fate | 2003 | Buy |
| The Rain Wild Chronicles | TBD | |
| Dragon Keeper | 2009 | Buy |
| Dragon Haven | 2010 | Buy |
| City of Dragons | 2011 | Buy |
| Blood of Dragons | 2012 | Buy |
| Fitz and the Fool Trilogy | TBD | |
| Fool’s Assassin | 2014 | Buy |
| Fool’s Quest | 2015 | Buy |
| Assassin’s Fate | 2017 | Buy |
Robin Hobb is the pen name of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, born in 1952 in Berkeley, California. She grew up in Alaska, where the landscape shaped her sense of place and isolation. The long winters gave her time to read and write. She began writing in her late teens, selling her first short story in 1975.
The Windsingers series, published as Megan Lindholm in the 1980s, followed a matriarchal family of sailing traders in a fantasy world. These books were her first published work. The Reindeer People and Wolf’s Brother explored northern indigenous themes with a mythological sensibility that would later inform the Mountain Kingdom in the Realm of the Elderlings. Wizard of the Pigeons was contemporary urban fantasy set in Seattle, exploring magic and homelessness.
Hobb began writing the Farseer Trilogy in the early 1990s. Assassin’s Apprentice introduced FitzChivalry, a royal bastard trained as an assassin, who would become one of fantasy’s most introspective protagonists. The Liveship Traders trilogy ran parallel in development and explained the dragons and magic system through the lens of merchant families. The two streams of story converged in Tawny Man and continued through Rain Wild Chronicles before returning to Fitz in Fitz and the Fool.
Hobb lives in Tacoma, Washington. She gardens and keeps chickens. Her dog’s name is Molly, after a character in her books. She continues to write under both names and has spoken about how writing the Realm of the Elderlings was a thirty-year project of worldbuilding and character development.
The Fool is her favorite character. Hobb has said the Fool appears whenever she writes, demanding attention. The ambiguity of the Fool—gender, origin, purpose—was by design. Hobb doesn’t answer those questions because the Fool exists on the boundaries between definitions.