Lindholm's writing includes the urban fantasy novel Wizard of the Pigeons and science fiction short stories, among other works.

After an early career in short fiction, at age thirty Lindholm published her first novel while working as a waitress and raising children.

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".

Lindholm did not like how the town's urbanization intruded on the nature trails around her house, which she had enjoyed exploring, but said her childhood was overall a happy one and described herself as more of a solitary than social child.

[6][8] Margaret enjoyed journeying on Fred's ships and said the sea was a prominent aspect of her life, inspiring the maritime focus of her Liveship books.

[12] Megan Lindholm's writing received critical praise,[13] including Hugo and Nebula Award nominations for her short fiction,[14] but did not sell well.

[15] In 1995, the author started writing in a new fantasy subgenre and deliberately chose an androgynous pen name, Robin Hobb, for her new work written as a first-person male narrator.

[26] She contributed short stories to a shared world anthology entitled Liavek from 1985 to 1988,[5] and co-wrote a novel, The Gypsy, with Steven Brust.

The series comprises four trilogies and one tetralogy – the Farseer, the Liveship Traders, the Tawny Man, the Rain Wild, and the Fitz and the Fool – set in the same world.

[33][34] The three books of the Soldier Son trilogy (Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic) are Hobb's only works to be set outside of the Elderlings world,[35] and were published between 2005 and 2009.

[49] Critic Amanda Craig describes 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".

[50] Literary allusions to the works of Robert Louis Stevenson and R. M. Ballantyne have been identified in Hobb's Liveship Traders series, which academics Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher described as an immersive portrayal of a world that is water-centric, aided by unique perspectives such as a serpent's-eye view of the ocean (the serpents view the sea as "the Plenty", while the air above is termed "the Lack").

[54] The Wit, the ability to bond with animals, is viewed as an unnatural inclination, as emasculating and shameful, with its practitioners publicly hanged and forced into hiding.

His bond with his Witted partner, a wolf, is portrayed as central to his life as his human relationships, but is forced to operate in secret due to social prejudice.

[59] The women of the series often defy stereotypical expectations of their femininity: Althea, a rebellious sailor who dresses as a man to work on a ship, re-kindles her sensitive side; Keffria, a submissive housewife, discovers her independence; and Ronica, a conservative, traditional matriarch adapts to social change.

[63][64] The resurgence of dragons in the Elderlings series poses a challenge to anthropocentrism, or the supremacy of man's place in the world, with humans forced to re-adjust in relation to a stronger, more intelligent predator.

[65] The Wit, an ill-regarded ability associated with the animal world, is shown through Fitz's perspective as a natural extension of the senses and as an interconnectedness to all living things.

[65] Other themes in Hobb's writing include critiques of colonialism and examination of culture-specific honor systems in the Soldier Son trilogy, a series set in a post-colonial secondary world that has drawn resemblance to the nineteenth century American frontier.

[1] Following her success as Hobb, her Lindholm works such as Wizard of the Pigeons and Alien Earth were translated to French,[69] and Cloven Hooves, which had been out of print for more than two decades, was reprinted in the US.

She 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.

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

[33] In a review of the first book of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy, The Telegraph said of her characters that "their longings and failings are our own, and we find our view of the world indelibly changed by their experiences".

[74] A different view was offered by scholar Peter Melville, who described the final Elderlings trilogy as "confirm[ing] the series' place within the larger history of queerness in the fantasy genre".

[75] As Megan Lindholm, she has received praise for the depiction of understated magic, poverty and mental illness in the novel Wizard of the Pigeons[76][45] and other themes such as aging in her short fiction.

Orson Scott Card stated that she "arguably set the standard for the modern serious fantasy novel", and cited the Liveship Traders as his favorite work of Hobb's.