Below is the complete list of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Mistborn Books
About Mistborn
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series is a multi-era fantasy saga set on Scadrial, a planet within the larger Cosmere universe. Rather than following one cast through an indefinitely extended sequence, Mistborn is designed around different periods of history. Civilizations change, technology advances, religions reinterpret earlier events, and magical abilities that once belonged to an apparently medieval world become part of societies developing firearms, industry, mass communication, and eventually more modern technology. The two completed eras therefore tell connected but markedly different stories.
The original trilogy begins with Mistborn: The Final Empire. For a thousand years, the Lord Ruler has governed an ash-covered world where the skaa live under brutal oppression and the nobility occupy a rigid hierarchy. Into this system comes Vin, a wary street thief recruited by Kelsier, a charismatic survivor building a crew to overthrow an emperor widely regarded as immortal. The first novel combines rebellion and heist structures with the gradual discovery of Allomancy, a magic system in which metals grant specific abilities when consumed and “burned.”
Vin becomes the emotional center of the trilogy, but the series quickly grows beyond the problem of defeating one ruler. The Well of Ascension examines the far harder task of holding together a society after revolution, while The Hero of Ages reveals the scale of forces operating behind Scadrial’s history. Political instability, prophecy, religion, environmental catastrophe, and competing interpretations of the past become inseparable. Sanderson’s long planning is particularly visible here: details that seem local or incidental in the opening book acquire very different significance by the trilogy’s conclusion.
The second major sequence, commonly called Wax and Wayne or Mistborn Era Two, takes place roughly three centuries later. Scadrial has changed dramatically. Railways, firearms, expanding cities, newspapers, and new political pressures exist alongside Allomancy and Feruchemy. The Alloy of Law introduces Waxillium Ladrian, a lawman returning from the frontier Roughs to aristocratic life in Elendel, along with his unpredictable partner Wayne and the increasingly important Marasi Colms.
This era has a different rhythm from the original trilogy. It draws on westerns, detective fiction, urban crime, and early industrial modernity rather than revolutionary epic fantasy, yet the historical connection is constant. Figures from the first era have become religious icons, legends, misunderstood historical personalities, or influences embedded in institutions. Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, and The Lost Metal steadily widen the conflict, moving from criminal investigation and social unrest toward questions with major implications for Scadrial and the wider Cosmere.
Several shorter works complicate the bibliography. The Eleventh Metal is a Kelsier-centered prequel story. Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania presents an in-world adventure connected to the later era. Most significant is Mistborn: Secret History, a companion novella that reveals events occurring behind the original trilogy and exposes connections that were deliberately invisible from the main viewpoints. It contains major spoilers for the first three novels and also touches material associated with The Bands of Mourning, making its placement a matter of revelation rather than simple chronology.
Mistborn is also unfinished on the scale Sanderson has planned. The next major sequence, titled Ghostbloods and known as Era Three, is set about fifty years after Era Two in a society broadly analogous to the early computer age of the 1980s. Its first volume is planned for 2028, beginning another technological and historical transformation of Scadrial.
What distinguishes Mistborn across these eras is accumulation. Victories become history, history becomes mythology, and magical systems once understood in one context are rediscovered under new scientific and political conditions. The series is not merely changing protagonists between trilogies; it is following an entire world as knowledge, power, and memory evolve across centuries.