The Cosmere reading order
By Brandon Sanderson · Last verified · 9 sources
Quick answer
There is no single official Cosmere order. The publisher's beginner's guide suggests starting points by taste — Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, Elantris, Warbreaker or Tress — and says Warbreaker fits nicely between The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. Within each series, read in publication order.
Brandon Sanderson's shared universe, made up of several series (Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive), standalone novels, novellas, short fiction and graphic novels on different worlds.
- The series has 19 novels, 3 short stories, 5 novellas, 1 novelette, 3 graphic novels.
- In publication order, the main sequence starts with Elantris (2005) and the latest listed is Wind and Truth (2024).
- No source we trust defines an alternative (e.g. chronological) order, so we show publication order only.
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Verification: Some works cite only secondary or catalogue sources (3 of 31 works cite an author, publisher or official source). How we verify.
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Ordered by first publication date (original language). Derived automatically from the dates listed for each work.
- Elantris
- Mistborn: The Final Empire
- Mistborn: The Well of Ascension
- The Hope of Elantris
- Mistborn: The Hero of Ages
- Warbreaker
- The Way of Kings
- The Eleventh Metal
- Mistborn: The Alloy of Law
- The Emperor's Soul
- Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
- Words of Radiance
- Sixth of the Dusk
- Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30
- Mistborn: Shadows of Self
- Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning
- Mistborn: Secret History
- White Sand Volume 1
- Edgedancer
- Oathbringer
- White Sand Volume 2
- White Sand Volume 3
- Rhythm of War
- Dawnshard
- Mistborn: The Lost Metal
- Tress of the Emerald Sea
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
- The Sunlit Man
- Wind and Truth
- Isles of the Emberdark
Not placed in this order
Our sources do not give a position for these works in this order, so we do not guess one.
- The Fires of December
Why the order isn't simple
- The series and standalones can be read separately, but they share characters and background, and crossover increases in later books.
- Sanderson's official guidance gives several entry points by reader taste, not a single numbered order.
- Several short works first appeared in game supplements, anthologies or ebooks before being collected in Arcanum Unbounded.
Which order should I use?
Publication order is the only order shown, because no ranked official list was available: brandonsanderson.com's reading-order page returned 'not found' when checked.
Use the sub-series filter to follow one series (for example Mistborn Era 1 or Stormlight) in order.
Where each order comes from
- Publication order — Derived from publication dates
- Ordered by first publication date (original language). Derived automatically from the dates listed for each work.
Novellas & short stories
Several novellas and stories are gathered in Arcanum Unbounded (2016); its contents here come from secondary sources because the publisher's contents list is an image.
| Title | Type | First published | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Hope of Elantris | Short story | 2007 | Originally an ebook; Wikipedia's Cosmere navigation lists 2006 (conflict). Reprinted in Arcanum Unbounded. |
| The Eleventh Metal | Short story | 2011 in Mistborn Adventure Game | Released with the Mistborn Adventure Game (Crafty Games); reprinted in Arcanum Unbounded. |
| The Emperor's Soul | Novella | 2012 | Tachyon Publications. Named by the Gollancz beginner's guide as an entry point (per third-party summary; not visible in the extracted text). |
| Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell | Novella | 2013 in Dangerous Women | First in the anthology Dangerous Women (Tor). |
| Sixth of the Dusk | Novelette | 2014 in Shadows Beneath | First in the anthology Shadows Beneath. Wikipedia calls it a novelette in one article and a novella in another. |
| Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30 | Short story | 3 August 2014 in Mistborn Adventure Game: Alloy of Law supplement | Released with the Alloy of Law supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game; reprinted in Arcanum Unbounded. |
| Mistborn: Secret History | Novella | 2016 | First published as an ebook; reprinted in Arcanum Unbounded. |
| Edgedancer | Novella | 2016 in Arcanum Unbounded | Wikipedia reports a first part appeared in Words of Radiance (2014); the full novella was in Arcanum Unbounded (2016) and later published separately. |
| Dawnshard | Novella | 2020 | First published as an ebook by Dragonsteel in 2020. A Wikipedia bibliography also lists 2022-02-15, which we have not matched to a specific edition. |
Collections & omnibus editions: what's inside
Arcanum Unbounded and the White Sand omnibus are the two collections; the checker shows which listed works each contains.
Arcanum Unbounded gathers eight shorter works from several series — including Mistborn: Secret History, The Eleventh Metal and the Stormlight novella Edgedancer — so a reader who owns it does not need those as separate books. The White Sand omnibus collects the three White Sand graphic novel volumes.
Contents below are works from this series only. Tick the editions you own to check for duplicates and gaps.
Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection
Story collection · 2016 · Tor Books · series contents only / partly verified
- The Emperor's Soul
- The Hope of Elantris
- The Eleventh Metal
- Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30
- Mistborn: Secret History
- Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
- Sixth of the Dusk
- Edgedancer
Also contains an excerpt of the White Sand graphic novel and an unpublished opening of the prose White Sand, which are not separate works here. ISBN 978-0-7653-9116-2. Contents are from secondary sources: the publisher-affiliated table of contents (Tor.com, 31 Oct 2016) is published only as an image, and brandonsanderson.com and the Tor/Macmillan pages could not be read (404/403).
Source: Arcanum Unbounded, Find out what's inside Brandon Sanderson's new Cosmere book Arcanum Unbounded
White Sand Omnibus
Omnibus · 2022
- White Sand Volume 1
- White Sand Volume 2
- White Sand Volume 3
Collects all three volumes with revised material.
Source: Brandon Sanderson bibliography
Your editions
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About the sub-series
Mistborn has two eras: Era 1 is The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages (2006-2008); Era 2 (Wax and Wayne) runs from The Alloy of Law (2011) to The Lost Metal (2022). The publisher's guide calls Mistborn a multi-era series best read in two parts.
The Stormlight Archive has five novels from The Way of Kings (2010) to Wind and Truth (2024), with two novellas, Edgedancer and Dawnshard, published between them.
The 'secret project' novels (Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, The Sunlit Man, all 2023) and the earlier standalones (Elantris, Warbreaker) are self-contained; the publisher's guide suggests Elantris, Warbreaker or Tress as entry points.
Where sources disagree
We don't pick a winner silently. When sources conflict we show each view and cite it.
Official reading order
The official beginner's guide (Gollancz, carrying brandonsanderson.com branding) suggests entry points by reader taste: Elantris, Warbreaker, Tress, Mistborn, and Stormlight. It does not give one ranked list, so no author-recommended order is recorded here. Fan sites publish ordered lists said to be based on Sanderson's advice, but we could not confirm them on brandonsanderson.com (the page returned 404).
Sources: A Beginner's Guide to the Cosmere (PDF), Cosmere reading order page
Date of The Hope of Elantris
Arcanum Unbounded article says first published as an ebook in 2007; the Wikipedia Cosmere navigation lists 2006.
How this page was verified
The entry-point advice comes from the publisher's beginner's guide; most dates come from Wikipedia and are labelled secondary.
Last verified . Some works cite only secondary or catalogue sources.
Sources
Every date, order and edition listed on this page cites at least one of these. See our data methodology for how source types are ranked.
- A Beginner's Guide to the Cosmere (PDF) — Gollancz / Hachette UK · Publisher · accessed 7 October 2026 Fold-out guide with entry points by reader taste; not an ordered list. Read via text extraction.
- Cosmere — Wikipedia · Secondary reference · accessed 7 October 2026 Work list, years, subseries. Coppermind (coppermind.net) returned 403 to direct fetch.
- Brandon Sanderson bibliography — Wikipedia · Secondary reference · accessed 7 October 2026 Years, first venues, publishers.
- Arcanum Unbounded — Wikipedia · Secondary reference · accessed 7 October 2026 Collection date and contents with original venues.
- Isles of the Emberdark — Coppermind · Bibliographic database · accessed 7 October 2026 Release date 2025-07-01 as reported via search (direct fetch blocked).
- State of the Sanderson 2025 — Dragonsteel / brandonsanderson.com · Author (official) · accessed 7 October 2026 Fires of December plans, as summarized in search results (not fetched directly).
- Cosmere reading order page — brandonsanderson.com · Author (official) · accessed 7 October 2026 Returned 404 at access time; listed only to record the attempt.
- Find out what's inside Brandon Sanderson's new Cosmere book Arcanum Unbounded — Tor.com (now Reactor), Tor Books' site · Publisher · accessed 7 October 2026 Confirms the collection is organised by planetary system and includes a new Stormlight story; the actual contents list is an image and could not be machine-read, so it is not used to verify individual titles.
- Open Library edition records (first-publication year cross-check) — Open Library (Internet Archive) · Library catalog · accessed 7 October 2026 Year of first publication matched the earliest year with two or more catalogued editions for: Warbreaker (/works/OL5738149W); The Way of Kings (/works/OL15358691W); The Emperor's Soul (/works/OL19960448W); Words of Radiance (/works/OL16813053W); Oathbringer (/works/OL17834026W); Rhythm of War (/works/OL20842226W); Dawnshard (/works/OL24139894W); Tress of the Emerald Sea (/works/OL28687656W); Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (/works/OL31146657W); The Sunlit Man (/works/OL31181973W); Wind and Truth (/works/OL37577930W); Isles of the Emberdark (/works/OL43650021W). Generated by scripts/audit-dates.mjs; see audit/date-crosscheck.json.
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