Galaxies and Goddesses: A Sci-Fi & Fantasy Bookcast

What to Read after the Farseer Trilogy
Andrea: I’m Andrea.
Elizabeth: And I'm Elizabeth.
Andrea: Join us as we chat about sci-fi and fantasy books and beyond.
Elizabeth: Looking for a little escape from reality. So are we.
Andrea: Welcome to Galaxies and Goddesses.
Elizabeth: On this week's episode, we're discussing books you might wanna read next if you enjoyed reading Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb.
Andrea: We'll be talking about books that we actually picked up to read next.
Elizabeth: Along with books we were reminded of while reading The Farseer Trilogy, because of the characters, world building, and magic systems.
Andrea: Let's get started.
Andrea: So Elizabeth, what was the book that you started reading immediately after Assassin's Quest?
Elizabeth: I read a narrative nonfiction book actually, since I'm the one that reads everything. And it was A Marriage at Sea and the subtitle is A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst. And I read it because I think Time Magazine picked it as one of the best books of the year, in their top 10 in the last couple years. And then I think I bought it from the used bookstore in Bozeman that you were there with me. They had it on display as I was going up to check out and buy the books that I'd picked out, it was just sitting there and I was like, "Okay, sure, yeah, I've seen that book.”
Elizabeth: But then I read it because my local library has a book club, and that was the book that they were reading for this book club. When I saw that's what they were reading, I thought to myself, "Oh, I have a copy of that book. I've been meaning to read it." So that's what I read next, 'cause I had to read it in time for book club, which was only a couple days later.
Andrea: That can be a big driving factor like, what's the next book club pick.
Elizabeth: And when you have deadlines that you need to read a book by, whether it's a book club or you have a book from the library and you have to take it back, or if there's a book that I wanna give to somebody and I'm about to see them.
Andrea: Yeah.
Elizabeth: That's why I read that next, jump shift in type of book.
Elizabeth: What did you read immediately afterwards?
Elizabeth: You just finished it didn’t you? So have you started anything since then?
Andrea: Yes, I did start reading another book, and I hesitated a little bit. I didn't immediately start another book the same day. I waited until the next day to pick another book, and it was a little bit of a debate because I also had a book club coming up, but I didn't think I could finish the book in time for that book club.
Andrea: So I chose to read something off of my list for 26 in 2026, that I still haven't finished yet. I chose to read The Ballad of Falling Dragons by Sarah A. Parker, so the second book, the first book being When the Moon Hatched, which we would read last year. So I thought that might be a nice transition from Robin Hobb.
Andrea: It's another assassin's tale. She's a female assassin. But it's very different in a lot of other ways, and I didn't get that far. I haven't finished it. I'm still in the middle of it.
Elizabeth: How long is it?
Andrea: I have a hardback edition that's 540 pages. It came out this year. I try to read a few new releases every year.
Andrea: So this is one of the new releases I'm trying to finish before the end of the year. So a little bit of a mood influence, but also because it's on my list of books I wanna finish before the end of the year, it's a little bit more goal oriented.
Elizabeth: Did you know, when you made your 26 in 2026 list, that book wasn't out yet, was it?
Andrea: It was not out, no. But I knew it was going to be released.
Elizabeth: Oh.
Andrea: I knew the release date.
Andrea: It came out earlier this year, so I figured I'd have plenty of time to read it. But there have been quite a few other new releases that are on my radar that I don't think I'm gonna be able to finish before the end of the year.
Andrea: I guess the natural question is, do you think that somebody who enjoyed the Farseer trilogy would enjoy your Marriage at Sea nonfiction book, or is it way too different? Do you think people can genre hop? Is there, enough adventure in the narrative nonfiction to keep people interested?
Elizabeth: Well, It keeps me interested.
Andrea: So yeah, you think so?
Elizabeth: Well yeah.
Andrea: Is it told from, like, first person point of view?
Elizabeth: No, it's Sophie Elmhirst. I think she's a journalist, and so it's like investigative journalism kind of a thing.
Elizabeth: If anything, it reminded me a lot of that book that I have mentioned in the past and really liked the other nonfiction sperm whale attacking a ship book.
Andrea: The Nathaniel Philbrick?
Elizabeth: Yeah, In the Heart of the Sea. It made me think of that they're in the middle of the Pacific and their boat gets attacked by a sperm whale, and it puts a big hole in it, and their boat sinks really fast, and then they are stuck on basically a life raft for four months. Had they not been rescued by this Korean fishing vessel at the time that they were, they probably would've only been a few more days and definitely he would've died. So yeah, that kind of made me think more of that.
Elizabeth: There is a lot of adventure there because when they decide to go on this trip, he specifically decides to not take a radio, and she doesn't know how to swim.
Andrea: Wow!
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: Wow.
Elizabeth: It's some bad choices there. but they purposefully made those choices. They wanted to go on their own.
Andrea: Like push their limits kind of. And this is nonfiction, so it's not like a metaphor for something. This is real life.
Elizabeth: No, it’s real. It really happened 'cause then when they were rescued and then they came back, they were from the UK, from England, and when they came back, then they wrote a book, so yeah, it's all it's all very real.
Elizabeth: The way it's written doesn't necessarily have to do much with, like, the adventure of it and more has to do with how do you survive in a situation like that? Like mental resilience and grit.
Andrea: Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth: And then also they were obsessed, like before they even were rescued, they were already planning their next sailboat. What size it was gonna be and how they were gonna stock it and, food supplies and navigation supplies, and like they were already planning their next trip even before they'd been rescued from almost dying on their current trip.
Andrea: Well, that sounds somewhat like Fitz's journey of like a close call and then he continues on, right?
Elizabeth: Sure.
Andrea: Similarities there.
Elizabeth: That was not a similarity I was making myself as I was reading it, but sure…
Andrea: I think one of the things that I really enjoyed about the Farseer trilogy was Robin Hobb's writing style in general. And I felt like it was really well-written. Do you think maybe that's an area that relates? Like, if this book was picked as one of Times' top 10, then it must be well-written.
Elizabeth: Yeah, it was really easy to read. And that is something about Robin Hobb's writing is that it is really easy to read. It's, conversational and it flows really well, and so that was the case with this book too, that it was written very well. And yeah, like narrative nonfiction, so nonfiction that kind of reads like fiction, and it wasn't dense by any means.
Elizabeth: So there wasn't anything that you had to go look up.
Andrea: Yeah, I think it's funny that you say that. I'm just kind of laughing to myself because the book that I read next, The Ballad of Falling Dragons by Sarah A. Parker, is maybe the exact opposite in that there are so many references to different gods, and I don't remember which god is which. And so, it has a giant glossary at the beginning to remind you of who all these characters are, but I just skip through the 10 or 12 pages of glossary, and then I'm trying to read it, but not really remembering who everyone is. And so, it was a little bit confusing for me to jump back into that series.
Andrea: But I feel like the further in the book you get, the more you remember, and I think it'll get easier once I'm past the first, you know, 100 pages or so. There are some similarities between the Farseer Trilogy because he's an assassin and she's an assassin, Raeve, the main character.
Andrea: But there are also multiple points of view in this one, whereas I don't remember the first book, When the Moon Hatched, as having multiple points of view. I felt like it was mainly her point of view, right? Raeve's point of view.
Elizabeth: It's also Romantasy, so that's very different…
Andrea: Yes.
Elizabeth: From the Farseer Trilogy. And who's the like, romantic love interest?
Andrea: Kaan Vaegor. Yeah, I just think that name is kind of funny. It sounds so intense.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: Yeah. I like it, but I just can't help laughing at the same time, so,
Elizabeth: I seem to remember in When the Moon Hatched, was there something with a single moon or multiple moons? Or no, the dragons turned into moons.
Andrea: The dragons turned into the moon when they died, and then the planet seems to be tidally locked, so there's the different climates, like the Burn, the Fade, and the Shade. And there's different types of dragons in each of those environments. And so I remember in the first book it took me a while to figure all of that out and I'm glad I figured it out in the first book, but then coming back into this one, there's different dragons that get referred to by name, and you have to be like, "Wait, whose dragon was that?”
Andrea: “And who is this person? How are they related?" And it takes a minute to get back into it. But I'm excited to read it.
Elizabeth: Wasn't there something about the way that the cycles of time were different? Like amounts of time?
Andrea: A day is, is spelled as D-A-E is a dae.
Elizabeth: Then it's like how the sun comes out every day or…?
Andrea: There's like an aurora. they measure the time by the aurora, I believe.
Elizabeth: Right, that.
Andrea: Hasn't really been mentioned again, at least not in a way that I have paid attention to, so…
Elizabeth: A certain number of like auroras equaled a certain amount of time, like a year, but it called it something different. And then a certain number of years or these like sort of cycles of time that were almost the same but just slightly different and I don't know, that a little annoying.
Elizabeth: And is it that different from what happens in our real life world? It's like trying to be different, but then didn't seem like it was actually that different, and now it's just like basically the same idea but just giving it different names, and then, I don't know, I just found that a little annoying. It seemed unnecessarily complicated for not really being that groundbreaking of an idea.
Andrea: So that's, fair. I think that's kind of fair.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: But I appreciate the effort that goes into that. I mean, it takes work to be consistent I would imagine as a writer, I'm assuming that as she typed this up, I don't think she just used, like, find all and changed them from day to dae, right?
Andrea: Like, I think she probably kept it in her head as this intensely built world, and intentionally changed things. So I think if you like world-building and you're not afraid of a long book, and you like romantasy, those three things you would probably enjoy When the Moon Hatched.
Andrea: But you also have to enjoy an angsty main character. She's very angsty, or revenge driven. And that part reminded me of Fitz, where, like, the assassin is driven by revenge.
Elizabeth: That does make me think about, as far as world building. Like some authors try really hard build this world. Like, for the amount of effort that they put into trying to build this and make it different, that seemed like a lot of effort I feel like Robin Hobb, I know it's not effortless, and I know that, maybe this is a sign of how good of an author she is, that she can build a different world, but without having to try so hard.
Andrea: It felt really kind of intuitive and relatable, like a very relatable world that she built, but then with magic and myth and history. And maybe that's where there's a bit of a jump to When the Moon Hatched because it's not as relatable, it's more fantastical.
Andrea: But that's fun for different reasons.
Andrea: We've talked a lot about these first two books that we read. I think a natural continuation of what to read next would just be to keep reading Robin Hobb. So I looked into what the first book of the Liveship Traders trilogy was about, just to get the highlights and, as you said before, it takes place in the same world, but instead of being based in Buckkeep, it's based in Bingtown, and there are pirates and magical ships and sea creatures, and I'm like, "Oh, this sounds so much fun."
Andrea: Pirates, I didn't know there would be pirates. Thank you, Robin Hobb. Thank you. I get to, like, go on a brand-new adventure, and it's something I'm excited to go back to. But pirates, that almost relates to your Marriage at Sea.
Andrea: Like, shipwrecks. Maybe there'll be some shipwrecks in this.
Elizabeth: There weren't any pirates, but there was a shipwreck, definitely.
Andrea: Yeah.
Elizabeth: I wonder if there will be dragons in the Liveship Traders trilogy, so then you get a book that has both dragons and pirates.
Andrea: I think there's other kind of fantastical creatures that show up.
Elizabeth: Sea dragons?
Andrea: Or maybe like a kraken. I'm picturing like a giant sea octopus type character. I didn't want spoilers, so I don't know exactly what happens, but those are kind of the things that I found sprinkled on, the internet.
Elizabeth: I mean, if there's maybe there are sperm whales. I'm a big fan of sperm whales these days.
Andrea: Do they fight each other? Is that like...
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Elizabeth: That’s how they survive, is they only eat giant squid. That's all they eat.
Andrea: Wow. Wow, I did not know that.
Elizabeth: Yeah. You just imagine this is all happening hundreds if not thousands of feet below the ocean, that there have to be these epic chases, battles between the sperm whales and giant squid that we don't know anything about, and we don't get to see those, and it's gonna be in the dark anyway.
Andrea: Wow.
Andrea: So yeah, the next book in the Realm of the Elderlings after the Farseer Trilogy is Ship of Magic. It's the first book in the Liveship Traders trilogy, and it is not short. It is listed as 830 pages for one of the paperback versions. So yeah, it's quite the endeavor for the first book in a trilogy.
Elizabeth: Robin Hobb's so good about character development and having these really strong characters, not even just the main character, but the side characters, too. Were there any characters that the characters in The Farseer Trilogy made you think of in other books?
Andrea: So, I mentioned before that Starling wasn't necessarily my favorite character in Assassin's Quest, but I think that might have been partly because she reminded me of another character that I really loved, and like I kinda felt like she couldn't measure up to this other book series in my mind. So there's a book series that the first book is called Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon, and she is a minstrel basically with magical powers, and it was one of my maybe like, gateway books, I'd almost say, to fantasy when I was in high school.
Andrea: I read this series. It was published in 1999. It's called The Symphony of Ages series, and she can like sing songs of magic. She has an assassin friend and then also kind of like a fighter, orc-type friend, and I remember just loving this series and loving that character as this singer with magic and Starling just couldn't quite live up to that.
Andrea: And I haven't gone back to read that series, but reading about her character made me think back on that and go, "Oh yeah, that was such a good book." There's action and adventure and in the later books there's a little bit of romance.
Andrea: A lot of yearning romance. I don't recall exactly if there's anything explicit, but I was in high school, so yeah.
Andrea: What about you? Were there any characters that made you think of another book series?
Elizabeth: Maybe just 'cause I read them fairly recently, reading about Nighteyes. You know I read of the Call of the Wild by Jack London, and then I read White Fang maybe about six months ago.
Elizabeth: White Fang is written from the perspective of the wolf of White Fang.
Andrea: There's no bonding. There's no mental link with the wolf, but…
Elizabeth: Well, no, 'cause it's not fantasy. It’s fiction.
Andrea: Right.
Elizabeth: But it's not fantasy.
Andrea: Yeah
Elizabeth: Another one, I haven't read anything by this author, but I've heard really good things about Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Have you read that or heard about it?
Andrea: No, I've seen the cover. Like, I can imagine seeing the cover and it's been a really popular book
Elizabeth: Yeah, and I don't think it's fantasy either, but my sisters read it and said it was really, really, good. But anyway, the same author, she wrote a book called Once There Were Wolves. And so a book about wolves trying to reintroduce gray wolves into the remote Scottish Highlands.
Andrea: That's cool.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: Well, this wasn't necessarily a, a character that reminded me of this, but there's a game that Kettle plays with Fitz that's similar to chess there's black and white pebbles that are pieces, and it reminded me a lot of a game called tak in The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss,
Andrea: But what's frustrating about that is it's a trilogy and nobody knows if the third book is going to ever be released. So there's a little bit of frustration there with that. The first two books are really good, but then you might be waiting for a long time.
Elizabeth: Or forever…
Andrea: But they're good books!
Andrea: I mean, I read Name of the Wind several years ago, and then last summer I actually went back and listened to the audiobook for the first two books, and they are very long audiobooks, but it was fun to just immerse yourself in the story and kind of live in that world for a little bit.
Andrea: What I liked about the world of The Name of the Wind was that the magic system was built around words having actual power, and so if you know the true name of something, you have power over it.
Andrea: And there was a lot of really technical things about how the magic system worked, so it was this sort of epic quest, adventure, saga with an interesting magic component, and it had a lot going for it. But it's hard to recommend a book when the series is incomplete and you don't know how it's gonna turn out.
Andrea: So take that for what you will.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Sort of like I've mentioned it before on previous episodes, that as far as the politics and the scope and the court intrigue and the sort of backroom deals does remind me a ton of Game of Thrones. Or I should say the Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. But it is very hard to people go read that because there's only five books, and there's supposed to be seven, and are they ever gonna be finished? I don’t know.
Andrea: Yeah. We hope. We hope. You can hope.
Elizabeth: Yep.
Andrea: Speaking of magic systems, something I thought about in retrospect about the Farseer trilogy was that the Wit and the Skill are also very convenient as a literary storytelling device.
Andrea: It's a really cool concept, like the idea of bonding with an animal, but that also means that the reader gets to hear the animal's thoughts and understand that scope of the story.
Andrea: And similarly, you can keep it first-person narrative because he can just sort of teleport into the mind of somebody else to see what else is going on somewhere else. Like, you don't have to change perspective because his perspective is their perspective. When you're reading it, it just comes across as really cool.
Andrea: It's just fun and neat. But then later on, I realized it was genius. It is a genius literary and storytelling device because she doesn't have to change perspective. She doesn't have to jump to somebody else's point of view because you're getting their point of view through that main character.
Andrea: Genius. I loved it.
Elizabeth: I hadn't thought about that.
Andrea: I was trying to think about books that have a similar kind of Wit or Skill or kind of a, like an inherent ability that is not very well defined, and you get to understand more about that ability throughout the series, and it made me think of Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. That follows this main character as she becomes like a almost warrior nun.
Andrea: She becomes a trainee, and there's different factions within this kind of school where depending on what your inherent abilities are you get sorted.
Andrea: It's all women and I like that. I like the strong female character narrative.
Andrea: One of the other things that stuck out about that book was the world-building in that it takes place on a planet where most of the planet is frozen except for a habitable zone around the equator, basically.
Andrea: So that defines a lot of how these, trade routes are established, and the climate has a big impact on politics. I found the series really interesting, and so if you are looking for kind of a similarly ambiguous but interesting magic, talent, skill-related book, I think Red Sister by Mark Lawrence would be a worthwhile read.
Andrea: It goes Red Sister, and then Grey Sister, and then Holy Sister. So there's a very religious component to this kind of training school. It's at the Convent of Sweet Mercy.
Andrea: And that was a book that I randomly got as a free book at Comic-Con one year. I went to, like, a book club meetup, and they gave away a bunch of books, and this was one of the books I got there, and I really liked it. I ended up reading more books in that series as well.
Elizabeth: All right.
Andrea: Yeah.
Elizabeth: It's fun to get a free book that you don't know anything about and it turns out to be good.
Andrea: Pleasant surprise.
Andrea: I guess, and another one in terms of politics, history, and epic scope that we were talking about, I know I've recommended this book to you before, Elizabeth, and that's The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. I feel like this is one of the book series that I constantly recommend. There's a lot of Middle Eastern mythology that she blends into her story, and I just loved it. There's also kind of family dynamics and political faction and these competing claims to power.
Andrea: Yeah, a really fun.
Elizabeth: Is that a series or is it just a standalone?
Andrea: It's a trilogy.
Elizabeth: We're talking about books that have an epic scope, we can't really not mention The Lord of the Rings too.
Andrea: Right. We spent so much time talking about Lord of the Rings, but it's like if somebody has read The Farseer Trilogy and they have not read Lord of the Rings, they might need to read that next. Would you say that's fair?
Elizabeth: I don't know they need to read it next. You make your own decision. Whatever you wanna read next is what whatever strikes your fancy. I think it should be prioritized.
Andrea: It's kind of fun that, sometimes books find you at the right time in your life, and it can be really fun to just live in the world of Middle Earth and Lord of the Rings for a little while and have, your entire Instagram feed flooded with Hobbit memes and Hobbit themed decor.
Andrea: There's something that's really nice about that. It may be a better, springtime read. I feel like there's something nice about reading about the Shire, coming out of winter. But maybe it'd be fun to read that in the winter too because it is partly when the story takes place.
Andrea: Maybe there's no wrong time to read Lord of the Rings. Maybe you can just read it year round.
Elizabeth: Yeah, I don't think there's a wrong time.
Andrea: Yeah. I do think if people like Robin Hobb and the Farseer Trilogy, they would enjoy Lord of the Rings because I don't recommend Lord of the Rings to everyone. I think you need to be able to commit to a long book and be okay with a slower pace, and I think that aligns pretty well with the style of Robin Hobb's writing and the feel of those books as well.
Elizabeth: I mean, it is also, you know, an epic quest, it is like Fitz's epic quest. A very well-realized world, that has a lot of history and character development, and how this one main character changes based upon this quest throughout the three books.
Elizabeth: If there's not some sort of book that has some sort of requirement, like you gotta read it for book club, or there's a deadline, or you gotta take it back to the library or whatever you usually read by what mood you're in?
Elizabeth: Or if you have a blank slate, like you're about to start a book and there are no requirements on it, you can just pick anything, how do you choose?
Andrea: It does depend a little bit on my mood. There's usually more than one reason why I decide to read a book, it's usually like the combination of factors.
Andrea: And I can't say there's a logical system behind it. Like there's no mathematical formula. Sometimes it's just a gut feeling. I will say if there's a book that's being turned into a movie, that sometimes rises in priority because I wanna try to read the book before the movie comes out.
Andrea: So that's another reason I might try to read something besides the list or because somebody let me borrow it.
Elizabeth: Yeah. The book that I'm reading currently, which is My Friends by Fredrik Backman. I really like him. I've read Man Called Ove and Beartown, both books that were really good. And my mom read this book, My Friends and she said it was a five-star book. So I don't own that book. I just got it from the library, and why did I check it out from the library? I think it's 'cause it was... I went to the library, it was on the shelf, and I was like, "Oh, it's here to check out right now, so I'm gonna check it out right now." So purely because it was there, and then my mom said it was, a five-star read. The book before that was The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, the health resort horror story, and that was also from the library, and that was like, oh it's a horror story, so it was, good for October, but also just happened to be on the shelf of the library. And then the other one before that was Happy Place by Emily Henry and that was also just on the shelf at the library, and someone had told me that was good. So yeah, it was like the last three books were all library books, but... they just happened to be there at the time, I didn't necessarily plan it out that way.
Andrea: It's a constantly changing set of variables.
Andrea: Well, it can be hard to decide what to read next, and sometimes it's nice to read something that's completely different as a palate cleanser. But if you wanna read along with the podcast, our next book that we'll be reading as part of our trilogy theme for the year is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
Andrea: So maybe that should be the next book that you read if you're reading along with us.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Andrea: You haven't read it, right? But you have a copy.
Elizabeth: I do have a copy. I have had this copy for easily 15 years.
Andrea: Wow!
Elizabeth: I've owned this copy for a really long time.
Andrea: Well, I read Oryx and Crake a long time ago, and I'm curious to see what I think about it on a reread, so I'm looking forward to reading that together for our next episode.
Elizabeth: Unfortunately, that concludes this week's episode. We've reached the end of another cosmic journey on Galaxies and Goddesses.
Andrea: Don't worry, the adventure never really ends. There are always more stories to explore and more bookish tangents for us to go on.
Elizabeth: But hey, that's part of the fun. If you loved today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the magic.
Andrea: Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll be diving into our next trilogy, The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood with Oryx and Crake.
Elizabeth: And in the meantime, keep your mind fueled by the magic of stories.
Andrea: And never stop chasing the worlds waiting for you between the pages. Thanks everyone.