Robert Jordan Books in Order

Robert Jordan is the writer who made the thousand-page fantasy sequence an industry standard: The Wheel of Time ran fourteen novels, 1990 to 2013, sold somewhere north of ninety million copies, and built a world - the Two Rivers, the White Tower, the Breaking - dense enough that whole websites exist just to track its prophecies. Jordan died in September 2007 with the series unfinished; Brandon Sanderson, chosen by Jordan's widow and editor Harriet McDougal, wrote the final three volumes from his notes, and the sequence closed in 2013 at 4.4 million words - roughly five times the length of War and Peace. The Amazon series ran three seasons before cancellation in 2025. The order question is real: a prequel, a dead author, a second writer, and a fandom that argues about where New Spring belongs. This page settles it (1990–present).

Where to start

The Eye of the World (1990), book one - and the standard advice holds: do not start with New Spring, the prequel, however tempting. Jordan wrote it for readers who already know what Moiraine is.

Does the reading order matter?

Main sequence 1-11 by Jordan: The Eye of the World (1990), The Great Hunt (1990), The Dragon Reborn (1991), The Shadow Rising (1992), The Fires of Heaven (1993), The Lord of Chaos (1994), A Crown of Swords (1996), The Path of Daggers (1998), Winter's Heart (2000), Crossroads of Twilight (2003), Knife of Dreams (2005) - his last. New Spring (2004) is the prequel, set twenty years earlier; the working answer is publication order, reading it between Knife of Dreams and The Gathering Storm, when the backstory pays. Books 12-14 - The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010), A Memory of Light (2013) - are Brandon Sanderson writing from Jordan's notes; read them last, as one continuous finale. Before all of it: the Fallon historical trilogy (as Reagan O'Neal, 1980-82) and his Conan novels for Tor (1982-83) - pick-any-order curiosities. Warrior of the Altaii (2019) is a posthumous early novel.

Which one is the best?

The Shadow Rising (1992), the fandom's peak; The Eye of the World (1990), the door; and A Memory of Light (2013) - the finale Jordan plotted and Sanderson landed.

Related guides

Readers finishing this shelf usually want the map next door: George R.R. Martin books in order, Brandon Sanderson books in order, The Witcher 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.