Robin Hobb Books in Order
Explore Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm books in order, with reading guides, short summaries and Elderlings world background to help you pick where to start.
Last updated: December 25, 2025
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Publication Order
32 books
Assassin's Fate
by Robin Hobb
2017
Bee is dragged toward Clerres while learning to wield a frightening power of her own, and Fitz sails south on the liveship Paragon with the Fool, driven by grief and vengeance. Their paths and the dragons of Kelsingra collide in a final reckoning.
Fool's Quest
by Robin Hobb
2015
Believing his daughter Bee dead, Fitz follows the Fool toward distant Clerres to punish the secretive Servants. At Buckkeep, politics and old magic complicate the search as Bee endures captivity among people who see her as the key to their prophecies.
Fool's Assassin
by Robin Hobb
2014
FitzChivalry Farseer has hidden for years as Tom Badgerlock, tending the country estate of Withywoods with his wife and grown children. A troubling messenger, an impossible late pregnancy and the return of the broken Fool shatter his hard won quiet.
The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince
by Robin Hobb
2013
Set long before Fitz's time, this tale follows lowborn Felicity, companion to headstrong Princess Caution, who loves a Witted stableman. When Caution bears a piebald marked son, courtly fear of the Wit and buried truths about his birth ignite a deadly legend.
Blood of Dragons
by Robin Hobb
2013
In Kelsingra, dragons and their transforming human companions race to rediscover lost Elderling arts, including the vital silver that keeps dragons healthy. Enemies close in from Bingtown and Chalced, forcing the new Elderlings to decide how fiercely they will defend dragonkind.
Words Like Coins
by Robin Hobb
2012
In a drought stricken corner of the Six Duchies, hedge witch apprentice Mirrifen struggles with her own fears when tiny, dangerous pecksies move into the farmstead. Their bargains and tempers force her to weigh the power of promises, etiquette and the literal weight of words.
The Inheritance & Other Stories
by Robin Hobb
2011
This collection gathers tales written as both Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, ranging from Rain Wild settlers and Six Duchies folk to near future and urban fantasy. The stories explore family, sacrifice and small acts of magic that quietly change lives.
City of Dragons
by Robin Hobb
2011
The weakened dragon flock and their keepers finally glimpse the abandoned towers of Kelsingra across the swollen Rain Wild River. While they struggle to unlock the city's magic and survive, distant plots for dragon parts and political power push the wider world toward conflict.
Dragon Haven
by Robin Hobb
2010
Still traveling upriver with the starving dragons, the keepers and crew of Tarman face treacherous floods, predators and simmering rivalries. As human and dragon bodies begin to change in unsettling ways, the dream of reaching Kelsingra tests every loyalty and secret desire.
Dragon Keeper
by Robin Hobb
2009
Malformed young dragons languish on the toxic shores of the Rain Wild River, too weak to fend for themselves. A mismatched group of outcast keepers, a dragon obsessed scholar and the river barge Tarman set out to escort them upstream in search of the lost city Kelsingra.
Renegade's Magic
by Robin Hobb
2007
Condemned for crimes he barely understands, Nevare finally gives in to the Speck magic that shares his body, watching as another self fights to stop Gernia's destruction of the ancestor forest. His struggle becomes a reckoning with colonial guilt, identity and obligation.
Forest Mage
by Robin Hobb
2006
After plague ravages his military academy, Nevare returns home changed in body and mind, his expanding weight and strange dreams marking him as cursed. Cast out by his family, he is drawn ever deeper into Speck magic and the battle over Gernia's encroaching road.
Shaman's Crossing
by Robin Hobb
2005
Noble born Nevare Burvelle is destined, by strict Gernian tradition, to become a cavalry officer and help expand his king's road through hostile lands. An encounter with the forest dwelling Specks infects him with alien magic, slowly derailing his ordered life and loyalties.
Fool's Fate
by Robin Hobb
2003
Fitz joins Dutiful's quest to the frozen isle of Aslevjal to slay the legendary dragon Icefyre and win an Outislander bride. Old prophecies, the Pale Woman's schemes and Fitz's tangled loyalty to the Fool collide in a brutal, world shaping journey.
Golden Fool
by Robin Hobb
2002
Disguised as the servant Tom Badgerlock, Fitz returns to Buckkeep to secretly train Prince Dutiful in the Skill. As Outislander envoys arrive and Witted ambassadors seek acceptance at court, Fitz must balance loyalty, old wounds and his complex bond with the Fool.
Fool's Errand
by Robin Hobb
2001
Fifteen years after the Red Ship War, Fitz lives in seclusion with his wolf Nighteyes and foster son Hap. When Prince Dutiful disappears on the eve of his betrothal, the Fool returns to drag Fitz back into court intrigue, Wit politics and a perilous rescue.
Ship of Destiny
by Robin Hobb
2000
Bingtown reels from fire and war as the Vestrit family, Paragon and Vivacia converge on a final confrontation. Political upheaval, pirate ambitions and the truth about wizardwood reshape alliances at sea and on shore, changing the fate of traders, serpents and dragons alike.
The Mad Ship
by Robin Hobb
1999
With Vivacia under the sway of the pirate Kennit, Althea and Brashen gamble everything on restoring the unstable liveship Paragon. In Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, rebellion and earthquakes expose buried dragon secrets while sea serpents circle restlessly offshore.
Ship of Magic
by Robin Hobb
1998
In Bingtown, merchant heir Althea Vestrit expects to inherit her family's newly awakened liveship Vivacia, only to see it handed to her brutal brother in law. Cast adrift, she fights to reclaim the ship as Vivacia is drawn into piracy, slavery and sea serpent haunted waters.
Assassin's Quest
by Robin Hobb
1997
Raised from the edge of death, Fitz escapes the usurper king and sets out across mountains and legend to find his missing king in waiting. His journey toward the Elderling road and stone dragons will decide the fate of the Six Duchies and his own.
Royal Assassin
by Robin Hobb
1996
Fitz returns to Buckkeep still damaged from poison, bound more deeply than ever to his wolf Nighteyes and to the king. As Red Ship raids escalate, treachery at court forces him to juggle secret assassinations, forbidden Wit magic and a doomed love.
Assassin's Apprentice
by Robin Hobb
1995
Taken from his mother to the royal keep, the bastard boy Fitz is trained in secret as an assassin while learning he carries two dangerous magics. As Outislander raiders terrorize the coasts, his loyalty to the Farseers is tested again and again.
The Gypsy
by Megan Lindholm
1992
In a rust belt American city, a weary cop and a mysterious Romany wanderer are pulled into a chain of ritual murders. As Hungarian folklore bleeds into a gritty police investigation, both men confront an inhuman predator and the Gypsy's lost identity.
Alien Earth
by Megan Lindholm
1992
In a future where humans have abandoned a poisoned Earth aboard sentient Beastships, the ship Evangeline and her small crew secretly turn back toward their home world. Their voyage uncovers buried truths about the planet's past and what it means to remain human.
Cloven Hooves
by Megan Lindholm
1991
Evelyn has always half believed in the faun who comforted her as a child in the Alaskan woods. Years later, trapped in a failing marriage and isolated rural life, she finds that Pan is real and his return will upend both her family and her sense of self.
Luck of the Wheels
by Megan Lindholm
1989
Wagoners Ki and Vandien take what seems a simple job, escorting a boy called Goat to a distant city for generous pay. The journey plunges them into rebellion, bandit attacks and eerie magic, forcing Ki at last to decide what Vandien truly means to her.
Wolf's Brother
by Megan Lindholm
1988
Kerlew's budding shamanic power calls to the wolf spirit and to Carp, the ruthless old shaman who wants to claim him. As Tillu and Kerlew flee across the frozen north, they must decide whether his magic will belong to their small family or to a cruel master.
The Reindeer People
by Megan Lindholm
1988
Healer Tillu is abducted by reindeer herders and forced into a harsh nomadic life on the prehistoric tundra. Her son Kerlew grows up strange and gifted, drawing the attention of an ambitious shaman as mother and child search for safety and a place of their own.
Wizard of the Pigeons
by Megan Lindholm
1985
In the streets of Seattle, a homeless veteran called Wizard survives by using the Knowing, a gift that reveals hidden truths to him and the people he helps. When a malevolent presence from his buried past returns, it threatens both the city and his fragile sanity.
The Windsingers
by Megan Lindholm
1984
Vandien seeks a way to erase the scar he earned saving Ki, agreeing to steal a treasure from weather singing sorcerers. As Ki takes a separate hauling job that secretly serves a rival wizard, both are drawn into a dangerous struggle between Windsingers.
The Limbreth Gate
by Megan Lindholm
1984
Ki is tricked into passing through a magical gate into a dreamlike realm ruled by a hungry, godlike being that soothes away her pain. Vandien must decide how far to go to bring her back when she no longer wishes to leave that false paradise.
Harpy's Flight
by Megan Lindholm
1983
Teamster Ki is haunted by the slaughter of her family by harpies and the terrible revenge she took. Hired to haul a risky cargo over a deadly mountain pass, she reluctantly allies with the rogue Vandien while hunted by vengeful harpies and old grief.
Where should I start?
If you want to follow Fitz from the beginning: Assassin's Apprentice → Royal Assassin → Assassin's Quest.
If you prefer seafaring epics and pirates: Ship of Magic → The Mad Ship → Ship of Destiny.
If you like Fitz and the Fool most of all: Fool's Errand → Golden Fool → Fool's Fate → Fool's Assassin → Fool's Quest → Assassin's Fate.
If you want a fresh world beyond the Elderlings: Shaman's Crossing → Forest Mage → Renegade's Magic.
If you are curious about Megan Lindholm's early work: Harpy's Flight → The Windsingers → The Limbreth Gate → Luck of the Wheels.
Author bio
Robin Hobb is the pen name of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, an American fantasy writer born in Berkeley, California in 1952. She grew up between California and Alaska, and the cold, remote landscapes of the north have never really left her imagination.
Her family moved to Fairbanks when she was a child, into a life that involved big gardens, hunting, fishing and long winters. That mix of self reliance and close attention to weather, animals and wilderness later fed straight into her stories of harsh coasts, deep forests and dangerous seas.
She married young and spent years in coastal Alaska, raising children while her husband worked at sea. In between shifts as a waitress and other jobs, she wrote poems and short pieces for local newspapers and children’s magazines, learning how to fit writing into every spare corner of the day.
Under the name Megan Lindholm she began selling speculative short fiction in the late 1970s, then moved into novels with the Ki and Vandien books, the prehistoric Reindeer People duology and standalones like Wizard of the Pigeons and Alien Earth. Those stories often blended magic with everyday worries about money, family and belonging rather than distant kings and prophecies.
In the mid 1990s she chose a new byline, Robin Hobb, for a different kind of project, an epic fantasy told as the memoir of a royal bastard raised as an assassin. Assassin's Apprentice introduced FitzChivalry Farseer and the Realm of the Elderlings, a world of coastal duchies, pirate isles, toxic river cities and long vanished dragon linked Elderlings.
Across the Farseer, Liveship Traders, Tawny Man, Rain Wild Chronicles and Fitz and the Fool series she followed that world for more than twenty years. Some books stay close to Fitz’s first person voice, charting the cost of loyalty, trauma and magic on a single life. Others pull back into broader sagas about traders, dragons and revolution, but the focus on flawed, believable people never really shifts.
Readers often talk about a handful of titles as touchstones. Assassin's Apprentice captures the loneliness of a boy who is both needed and unwanted at court. Ship of Magic dives into seafaring politics, slavery and sentient ships off the coast of Bingtown. Shaman's Crossing and its sequels move to a new continent, using fantasy to examine colonial expansion, disease and the weight of inherited duty. As Megan Lindholm, Wizard of the Pigeons set a fragile urban wizard among the homeless of Seattle decades before urban fantasy became a familiar label.
Certain themes run quietly through all of it, the fear and necessity of change, the way power marks bodies, the tension between human needs and the nonhuman world, and a deep interest in people who live at the edge of their societies. Her fiction returns often to chosen families, difficult friendships and relationships that have to weather years of damage.
She and her husband, Fred Ogden, have made their home in rural Washington for many years, on a small, damp farm with poultry, garden rows and dogs underfoot. They raised four children there, and now have several grandchildren. Hobb still writes under both her Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm names, and in 2021 she received a World Fantasy Life Achievement award recognizing the long arc of that work.
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