Below is the complete list of Martha Wells books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Ile-Rien Books
Publication Order of Fall Of Ile-Rien Books
Publication Order of Books Of The Raksura Books
Publication Order of Emilie Books
Publication Order of Stories Of The Raksura Books
Publication Order of Murderbot Diaries Books
Publication Order of The Rising World Books
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
- Bad Medicine (1997)
Bad Medicine was published in 1997 and is listed as book #1 in the Short Stories/Novellas series.
Publication Order of Short Story Collections Books
Publication Order of Stargate Atlantis Books
Publication Order of Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion Books
Publication Order of Feral Astrogators Books
- The Other Half of the Sky (2013)
The Other Half of the Sky was published in 2013 and is listed as book #1 in the Feral Astrogators series.
About Martha Wells
Martha Wells is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for The Murderbot Diaries, the award-winning series that turned a security android with hacked governor modules, social anxiety, and a private addiction to media serials into one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary speculative fiction. Her career, however, began decades before Murderbot became a publishing phenomenon. Wells has written secondary-world fantasy, planetary adventure, young adult fantasy, media tie-ins, short fiction, and essays, building a bibliography defined by sharp worldbuilding, outsider protagonists, and societies whose histories are stranger and more layered than they first appear.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Wells studied anthropology at Texas A&M University, a background that fits naturally with the way her fiction handles culture, social structure, ruins, languages, and power. Her first novel, The Element of Fire, appeared in 1993 and introduced the world of Ile-Rien, a setting she later returned to in The Death of the Necromancer and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. These books established several durable traits in her work: court politics, espionage, old magic, uneasy alliances, and characters operating inside systems they do not fully control.
Before her late-career breakthrough, Wells had already produced a substantial body of fantasy. City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite are standalones that show her interest in ruined civilizations, ritual, exile, and dangerous knowledge. The Books of the Raksura, beginning with The Cloud Roads, became one of her major pre-Murderbot achievements. That series is especially notable for its nonhuman societies. Instead of relying on familiar fantasy races, Wells created the Raksura, shapeshifting beings with complex court structures, kinship systems, biological castes, and cultural rules. The result is fantasy built less around prophecy than around belonging, survival, and the difficulty of finding a place in a community.
The Murderbot Diaries began with All Systems Red and brought Wells a much wider readership. Murderbot, the self-named SecUnit at the heart of the series, is not simply a comic robot narrator. It is a traumatized, highly capable artificial person trying to decide what autonomy means after a life of corporate ownership and violence. The books combine action, corporate dystopia, space exploration, humor, and emotional restraint. Murderbot’s voice—dry, defensive, exhausted, observant, and deeply reluctant to admit attachment—is central to the series’ power. The sequence has won major awards including Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex recognition, and it was adapted for television by Apple TV+.
Wells has also written in established universes, including Stargate Atlantis novels and the Star Wars novel Razor’s Edge, centered on Leia Organa. Those works show her ability to write within shared continuity while still emphasizing competence, pressure, and character agency. More recently, Witch King and its sequel Queen Demon opened the Rising World fantasy sequence, returning Wells to expansive secondary-world fantasy with demons, immortals, politics, and buried history.
Her bibliography is best understood as a career with two public phases: the long, respected fantasy career that developed Ile-Rien, Raksura, and several standalones, and the later global visibility created by Murderbot. The two phases are not separate in craft. Across them, Wells repeatedly writes characters who have been used, displaced, underestimated, or treated as tools, then follows the difficult process by which they claim identity, loyalty, and freedom on terms not granted by the worlds around them.