Raymond Feist Books in Order

Few fantasy worlds grew as far as Midkemia. Raymond Feist's Riftwar Cycle began in 1982 with Magician - the orphan Pug, an invasion through a rift between worlds - and ran for thirty-one novels across five sagas and three decades before closing deliberately at Magician's End (2013), a title chosen to shut the door behind it. Along the way it absorbed a trilogy co-written with Janny Wurts, novelized its own video game (Krondor: The Betrayal grew out of Betrayal at Krondor, 1993), and outlived most of its contemporaries. Since 2019 Feist has been building a second world, the Firemane Saga. The order question is the cycle's most-asked: publication order is the consensus, with two sanctioned insert points, and this page lays out the whole map (1982–2022).

Where to start

Magician (1982), always - and note the packaging trap: US editions split it into Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, so 'book one' is half a book. Pug's whole arc pays off across thirty years of sequels; start where it starts.

Does the reading order matter?

Publication order is the standard route: Riftwar Saga (Magician 1982, Silverthorn 1985, A Darkness at Sethanon 1986), then Prince of the Blood and The King's Buccaneer, the Serpentwar Saga (1994-98), and the later sagas in sequence - Riftwar Legacy, Conclave of Shadows, Darkwar, Demonwar, Chaoswar (2011-13). Two sanctioned insertions, per Feist's own site: the Empire Trilogy (with Janny Wurts) slots right after Magician, and Legends of the Riftwar runs parallel to the original saga. The Krondor books assume you know the game's story is canon. Magician's End (2013) closes the cycle by design; the Firemane Saga (The Kingfisher, 2019, through Master of Furies, 2022) is a separate world entirely.

Which one is the best?

Magician (1982), still one of the genre's great debuts; the Empire Trilogy (1987-92) - many readers' pick for the cycle's actual peak; and A Darkness at Sethanon (1986) for the first saga's slam-bang close.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: David Eddings books in order, Robin Hobb books in order, Shannara books in order. Every guide follows the same format — the shelf, the entry point, the honest answer about order.

Make it a project

Pick a session size and let the days accumulate — at the pace our reading speed test measures, most shelves above clear in a few weeks of half-hours. Every guide on the books in order shelf follows this same format, and when a book lands, its 8-question quiz is waiting on the original book quiz.