Is The Fires of December Part of the Cosmere? (2026)

BookBinge · 2026-10-28

Is The Fires of December part of the Cosmere?

Yes. The Fires of December is a standalone Cosmere novel by Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Hoid and the third book in his Hoid's Travails series, after Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. The ebook and audiobook came out October 6, 2026, and Tor's US hardcover is due December 8, 2026.

Spoiler warning: none. This post doesn't spoil The Fires of December or any other Cosmere book. Everything about the new book comes from what Sanderson, Dragonsteel and Tor have announced.

What The Fires of December is and when it comes out

Sanderson revealed the book in December 2025 at Dragonsteel Nexus, his fan convention in Salt Lake City. He told the crowd it would come out in 2026 in two ways: through his next crowdfunding campaign, and from Tor in time for the Christmas season.

That's roughly how it played out. The crowdfunding campaign ran on BackerKit in March 2026 under the name Hoid's Storybook Collection, alongside four illustrated picture books, and it included a Dragonsteel premium edition of the novel. Backers got their digital copies in September.

For everyone else, the dates are:

• Ebook and audiobook: October 6, 2026. Michael Kramer reads the audiobook (Macmillan Audio).
• US hardcover: December 8, 2026, from Tor.
• UK hardcover: UK retailers list it for December 8, 2026 as well.

The premise, in short: December, a young woman in a land fed by colorful rivers of demon blood, learns that a deadly plague is coming. Hardly anyone believes her, so she travels up the River Violet to warn the royal court, with a chatty priestess and a would-be fashion designer for company. Sanderson has warned that nearly everything past the opening is a spoiler, so that's as far as we'll go.

Sanderson hasn't named the planet in any announcement we could find, so we won't either. You don't need to know where it sits in the wider Cosmere to follow the story.

How it connects to Tress and Yumi

When he announced the book, Sanderson said he'd enjoyed writing Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and that this made the three of them a series. He described it as the stories of Hoid's travails, where terrible things happen to Hoid and he tells you a story about it.

Tor's listing puts it plainly: the Hoid's Travails novels are standalone tales narrated by Hoid, and they can be read in any order. So The Fires of December is the third book by publication date, not a sequel. You can read it first, last or in between.

Hoid is the link. He's the wandering storyteller who turns up in nearly every Cosmere book, and in this series he's the narrator, which gives all three books a similar wry, fairy-tale voice. The heroines and the worlds change from book to book.

Which Secret Projects are Cosmere and which aren't

Sanderson's 2022 Kickstarter produced four Secret Projects, all published in 2023, and a fifth followed in 2025. Our Secret Projects reading order lists them, with The Fires of December as the next release. Not all of them are Cosmere, and the ones that are don't all stand alone in the same way.

• Tress of the Emerald Sea (2023): Cosmere, Hoid's Travails. Stands alone.
• The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (2023): not Cosmere. It involves Earth, and Sanderson's rule is that a book featuring Earth in any form isn't set in the Cosmere.
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (2023): Cosmere, Hoid's Travails. Stands alone.
• The Sunlit Man (2023): Cosmere, but it leans on The Stormlight Archive and ties into The Lost Metal, so it's best read after both.
• Isles of the Emberdark (2025): Cosmere, set in the far future. It works best once you've read several other Cosmere books.
• The Fires of December (2026): Cosmere, Hoid's Travails. Stands alone.

Strictly speaking, The Fires of December came from a later campaign than the original four, and Sanderson calls it part of his special projects line. For tracking purposes it sits with the others.

What to read before The Fires of December

Nothing is required. In his October 2026 video about the book, Sanderson said that if you've never tried one of his books, this is one of the best places to start. Tor's listing calls it a standalone, and none of the official material lists a prerequisite.

That said, a few things add to it if you already have them:

• Tress and Yumi give you the same narrator in the same mode, so you'll know Hoid's voice and habits going in. Neither is needed for the plot.
• Any of the big Cosmere series (Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive) gives you more context for who Hoid is and why he wanders. You'll catch more of his asides, but you won't miss the story without them.

If you read Tress or Yumi years ago, there's no need to reread them first. The books don't share a plot. Our post on whether to reread before a sequel covers the cases where a refresher helps.

Where it fits in a Cosmere reading order

Because Hoid's Travails can be read in any order, The Fires of December slots in anywhere. A few sensible places:

• As your first Sanderson book. He suggests it himself, and it's a single volume.
• As a break between big series. After a Stormlight or Mistborn trilogy, a standalone with a different tone is a good palate cleanser.
• Next to Tress and Yumi. Reading the three Hoid books close together makes the shared narrator easier to enjoy.

In a strict publication-order read, it comes after Isles of the Emberdark. Our Cosmere reading order guide has the full list, three reading paths and the handful of connections where order matters, such as Warbreaker before Words of Radiance.

Keeping track of where you are

The Cosmere is spread across several series, plus standalones and novellas, and most readers hop between them over years. BookBinge keeps Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive and the Secret Projects as separate series, each in publication order, and remembers which book you're on in every one. When you come back to a series after a gap, its AI recap is written only from the books you've marked finished and stops exactly where you stopped.

The app is free to start on iPhone, with one free recap and up to three series active at once. Pro adds Release Radar, which notifies you when a series you follow has a new book on the way, so the next Secret Project or Mistborn release won't slip past you.

Related reading

• The Cosmere reading order: where to start with Brandon Sanderson
• Sanderson Secret Projects books in order
• The Stormlight Archive books in order
• New releases in series we track

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