I attended a book reading by Robin Hobb a few days ago.  This was a lovely event and boy is she popular – there were no seats without bums on them!

We listened to a reading from Robin’s latest novel, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince and then the floor opened onto some earnest Q&A.  Talk about your serious Robin Hobb fans!!  Wow, the questions were pretty intense and the answers very interesting to say the least.

    Two different covers – which do you prefer???

I confess I’ve only read one book  by Robin Hobb – Assassin’s Apprentice – which I loved and will definitely read the rest of the trilogy but the rest of the audience clearly knew A LOT (even if I was an amateur/johnny-come-lately).   I didn’t ask anything but was a very curious listener (and also, unfortunately, due to lack of preparation I have no photos! – phone battery died just as I was walking in.)

I had no idea that Robin Hobb wrote under another name (Megan Lindholm) which was interesting (in fact Robin Hobb is apparently also a pen name!).  She told us about all the different jobs that she’s held down over the years that have helped to flavour the way she writes and how to a degree she misses those jobs because of all the daily interaction with people whose small snippets of stories made up part of her life.  She was also asked about how she manages to write about characters of the opposite sex so well – apparently she just imagines that they’re humans’ – okay, she did have a serious answer to this question!  I really liked that she shared so much information about her writing experiences and seemed such a lovely person.  Plus – one particular member of the audience asked if she enjoyed turning the readers around with characters turning them from a character that was not liked to one who the reader’s come to love.  To be honest I can’t remember her full response, I think she mentioned that she doesn’t consciously make such a decision during the writing process, but she did at this point say that if we enjoyed dark fantasy, fantasy where we probably won’t be able to sleep at night (and by the way I’m not quoting verbatim here) and more to the point where our original opinion of the character is likely to change massively, then we should read the Broken Empire series by Mark Lawrence (Prince, King and Emperor of Thorns) – a series of books where you can’t help rooting for the anti-hero Jorg!  Of course I’ve read these so I was able to sit looking happy (or smug!)  But, more to the point I love that type of generosity in an author – plus I love hearing what books they like to read anyway as I’m just plain nosey.

Anyway, all in all a really great book reading experience.  Seriously I think I could become addicted to meeting authors in this way!  Not to mention it’s so nice to put a face to the name and add a bit of character to an author whose works I’m just starting to get into and expect to thoroughly enjoy.  I’ve had a look at all of RH’s books and there are quite a few to say the least – can anybody out there advise me if I need to read these in order – I’m reading the three Assassin books first but do the rest have to be read in order, are they from the same universe even???  Doh – all help gratefully received.