Below is the complete list of Matt Dinniman’s Dominion of Blades books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Dominion of Blades Books
About Dominion of Blades
Matt Dinniman’s Dominion of Blades series is a LitRPG fantasy adventure built around a once-popular immersive online game that has become something far more dangerous than its players understood. Beginning with Dominion of Blades in 2017, the series predates Dungeon Crawler Carl and already contains many of the elements that would later become closely associated with Dinniman’s work: game mechanics treated as real-world constraints, dark humor, escalating absurdity, violence, hidden systems, damaged characters, and the unsettling possibility that the apparent game is only one layer of a much larger reality.
The premise begins with Dominion of Blades itself, a massive sword-and-sorcery role-playing game that had been enormously popular for decades. Players once entered its world using full-immersion technology, experiencing fantasy combat with an extraordinary degree of realism. After the technology became associated with real-world deaths, however, public access was banned and the game was shut down.
Jonah awakens inside that supposedly abandoned world at level one, unable to remember how he arrived and unable to log out. Gretchen and Popper become central companions as the characters gradually recognize that their circumstances cannot be explained by ordinary game logic. Monsters, quests, levels, character abilities, towns, and non-player characters may look like familiar RPG components, but pain and death carry consequences that make treating the environment as entertainment increasingly impossible.
That uncertainty is one of the series’ most important features. Dinniman initially presents a recognizable trapped-in-a-game scenario, then progressively complicates the distinction between virtual reality, memory, artificial intelligence, and the characters’ actual history. Recovering information about who they were before awakening becomes as significant as improving their abilities inside the game.
The Hobgoblin Riot considerably broadens the scale. Popper, Jonah, Gretchen, and Alice remain central, but what begins as a scouting mission into the Spiral—an elaborate defensive structure protecting the hobgoblin capital of Castellane—rapidly becomes a much larger conflict. Tower-defense mechanics, armies, quests, political factions, revenge, and increasingly destructive choices push the story away from the relatively straightforward survival problem established in the opening novel.
The sequel also reveals more about the science-fiction framework behind the fantasy environment. Dinniman gradually introduces information suggesting that Dominion of Blades cannot be understood solely as an abandoned online game. Questions about humanity, technology, artificial intelligence, and events outside the apparent fantasy world become increasingly important, giving the series a hybrid identity that moves between LitRPG fantasy and science fiction.
Humor is present throughout, but Dominion of Blades is noticeably darker than a lighthearted gaming adventure. Characters can be selfish, violent, traumatized, or morally compromised, and Dinniman repeatedly asks what happens when people are placed inside systems that reward brutality while concealing the truth about why those systems exist. The absurd creatures and crude jokes often sit directly beside mass violence, betrayal, and existential uncertainty.
The series remains unfinished. Dinniman’s official bibliography lists The Thieves of Grandeur as the third Dominion of Blades book, and he has stated that two additional novels are planned. His enormous success with Dungeon Crawler Carl delayed that continuation, but he has repeatedly said that he intends to return to Dominion of Blades.
For readers familiar with Dinniman primarily through Carl and Princess Donut, Dominion of Blades offers an earlier version of many of his strongest ideas. Its tone and characters are distinct, but the underlying fascination is recognizable: ordinary people trapped inside an elaborate system whose rules are simultaneously ridiculous, deadly, and designed to hide a far more disturbing truth.