The Cosmere Reading Order: Where to Start with Brandon Sanderson

BookBinge · 2026-09-23

Start with Mistborn: The Final Empire. If you'd rather try a single book first, Elantris and Warbreaker both stand alone, and read Warbreaker before you get far into The Stormlight Archive. Sanderson says any Cosmere series is a fine place to begin, so the order below is for readers who want the crossovers to land.

Spoilers: none. This guide says which books connect and when to read them. It never says how they connect or what happens in any of them.

What the Cosmere is

The Cosmere is the shared universe behind most of Brandon Sanderson's adult fantasy: Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker, The Stormlight Archive, the short fiction collected in Arcanum Unbounded, the White Sand graphic novels, three of the 2023 Secret Projects, and 2025's Isles of the Emberdark. Each series is set on its own planet with its own magic system. On his website, Sanderson sums it up as "Think MCU, but for a bunch of epic fantasy worlds."

A few characters travel between those planets. The best known is Hoid, a wandering storyteller who turns up in nearly every Cosmere book. Sanderson's own advice is that you don't need to know any of the background to enjoy a series. Each one is written to be read by itself, and the links start to matter more the further in you go.

Not everything he writes is Cosmere. His rule of thumb: if Earth appears in a book in any form, it isn't set in the Cosmere. So Skyward and its follow-up series Riftwake aren't Cosmere, and neither are The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, The Reckoners or Legion. His children's books and his Wheel of Time novels sit outside it too.

Where to start

• Most readers: Mistborn: The Final Empire. A street thief is recruited by a crew planning to rob, and then overthrow, an immortal emperor. It opens a finished trilogy, so you get a complete story in three books.
• One book, not a series: Elantris or Warbreaker. Elantris (2005) was Sanderson's first novel. He points readers who don't usually read fantasy toward Elantris, and romance readers toward Warbreaker (2009).
• The big one: The Way of Kings. Sanderson lists it as a starting point too. The Stormlight Archive is his largest series, and each of its five novels runs past 1,000 pages in hardcover.
• The shortest taste: The Emperor's Soul. A novella set on the same world as Elantris, and another of Sanderson's own suggested starting points.

One caution from his site: The Alloy of Law, the first book of Mistborn's second era, can work as a way in, but it spoils the original trilogy.

Every Cosmere book in publication order (through 2026)

Novellas are marked. Series order within Mistborn and Stormlight matches our Mistborn and Stormlight Archive reading orders.

1. Elantris (2005)
2. Mistborn: The Final Empire (2006)
3. The Well of Ascension (2007)
4. The Hero of Ages (2008)
5. Warbreaker (2009)
6. The Way of Kings (2010), Stormlight 1
7. The Alloy of Law (2011), Mistborn Era 2 begins
8. The Emperor's Soul (2012), novella
9. Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (2013), novella
10. Words of Radiance (2014), Stormlight 2
11. Sixth of the Dusk (2014), novella
12. Shadows of Self (2015)
13. The Bands of Mourning (2016)
14. Mistborn: Secret History (2016), novella
15. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (2016), which gathers the short fiction above plus a few short stories and the first printing of Edgedancer
16. Edgedancer (2017 standalone edition), Stormlight novella
17. Oathbringer (2017), Stormlight 3
18. Dawnshard (2020), Stormlight novella
19. Rhythm of War (2020), Stormlight 4
20. The Lost Metal (2022), the end of Mistborn Era 2
21. Tress of the Emerald Sea (2023), Secret Project 1
22. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (2023), Secret Project 3
23. The Sunlit Man (2023), Secret Project 4
24. Wind and Truth (December 2024), Stormlight 5 and the end of the series' first arc
25. Isles of the Emberdark (2025), Secret Project 5; Tor's hardcover followed in February 2026

Secret Project 2, The Frugal Wizard's Handbook, came out in 2023 alongside the others but isn't Cosmere. Our Secret Projects reading order lists all five.

Two optional extras: the three White Sand graphic novels (2016 to 2019), set on the planet Taldain, and two short Stormlight stories from 2024, Elsecaller and King Lopen the First of Alethkar. You can skip all of them without losing the thread.

The connections that matter

Most Cosmere links are small nods you'd only catch on a reread. A handful change how a book reads.

• Warbreaker before The Stormlight Archive. Sanderson has said Warbreaker, Stormlight and Mistborn are tied together. Elements of Warbreaker appear in Stormlight from Words of Radiance onward and carry more weight in the later books, Wind and Truth included. Read Warbreaker before Words of Radiance if you can.
• Mistborn Era 1 before Era 2. The Alloy of Law and the three books after it are set centuries after the trilogy and spoil it throughout. The Lost Metal, which ends Era 2, also leans on the wider Cosmere more heavily than the earlier Mistborn books.
• Secret History after The Bands of Mourning. Sanderson warned that the novella spoils the whole original trilogy and a little of The Bands of Mourning. Most readers slot it in right before The Lost Metal.
• Stormlight novellas in their gaps. Edgedancer goes between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. Dawnshard goes between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War.
• The Secret Projects. Tress and Yumi read fine on their own. Hoid narrates both, and Sanderson now groups them with the upcoming The Fires of December as "Hoid's Travails", books he says can be read in any order. The Sunlit Man is different. It leans on The Stormlight Archive and ties into The Lost Metal, so save it until you've read both.
• Isles of the Emberdark is set in the Cosmere's far future and reworks the 2014 novella Sixth of the Dusk into its flashbacks. It works best once you've read several other Cosmere books.

Three reading paths

New reader. Close to publication order, with the dependencies above built in.

1. The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages
2. Warbreaker, then Elantris if you want more
3. The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer
4. The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, Secret History
5. Dawnshard, Rhythm of War, The Lost Metal, Wind and Truth
6. Tress and Yumi whenever you want a break; The Sunlit Man and Isles of the Emberdark last

Stormlight first. For readers who came for the big series.

1. Warbreaker
2. The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer, Dawnshard, Rhythm of War, Wind and Truth
3. Mistborn Era 1, then Era 2 with Secret History before The Lost Metal

You'll catch fewer of the cross-series nods this way, but Sanderson writes each series to stand on its own.

Completist. Follow the publication list above from Elantris to Isles of the Emberdark, reading each novella in the year it appeared, then add White Sand and the two 2024 Stormlight stories. It's the order the first readers had, and our guide to publication order vs chronological order explains why that's usually the safest choice.

What's coming next

• The Fires of December (Hoid's Travails): ebook and audiobook due October 6, 2026; Tor hardcover due December 8, 2026. Sanderson says it happens before Tress and Yumi in the timeline, though Hoid tells it after them.
• Mistborn Era 3, the Ghostbloods trilogy: scheduled for December 2028, December 2029 and December 2030. Sanderson has called the 2028 date for the first book firm.
• The Stormlight Archive's second arc: no date. Sanderson plans at least five more books and has said Ghostbloods comes first.
• Elantris sequels: no date. In his December 2025 update he said he's unsure where they fit in his schedule.

Keeping your place across the Cosmere

Reading the Cosmere means running several series at once, often with years between books. Going back to Stormlight after a Mistborn detour is exactly when you forget who's where and what they promised.

BookBinge keeps Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive and the Secret Projects as separate series, each in publication order, and remembers where you are in every one. If you'd already read part of a series before you started using the app, "Already read up to here?" marks that book and everything before it as read. When you come back to a thread after a gap, the app writes a spoiler-free recap from only the books you've marked finished, and it stops where you stopped. Standalones like Elantris and Warbreaker aren't tracked as series.

BookBinge is an iPhone app, free to start and with no account needed. The free tier covers three active series and one AI recap. Pro adds unlimited series and recaps, plus Release Radar, which notifies you when a series you follow has a new book on the way.

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