Below is the complete list of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Stormlight Archive Books
- Elsecaller / King Lopen the First of Alethkar (2025)
(With Dan Wells)
Elsecaller / King Lopen the First of Alethkar is a 2025 release and appears as book #8 in the Stormlight Archive series.
About Stormlight Archive
Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is an epic fantasy sequence set primarily on Roshar, a world shaped by immense highstorms, living manifestations known as spren, ancient oaths, and civilizations built around environmental conditions unlike those of conventional medieval fantasy. The series is also a major pillar of Sanderson’s wider Cosmere, but its central conflicts remain rooted in Roshar: the return of powers thought lost, the reawakening of the Knights Radiant, and a war whose accepted history becomes less reliable as the characters uncover what earlier generations concealed.
The Way of Kings establishes the saga through several lives moving toward convergence. Kaladin begins as a gifted soldier reduced to slavery and forced into the brutal existence of a bridgeman. Shallan Davar seeks apprenticeship under the scholar Jasnah Kholin while hiding motives of her own. Dalinar Kholin, a powerful Alethi highprince and former warlord, experiences visions that challenge both his reputation and his understanding of the past. Szeth, the white-clad assassin seen in the opening movement, carries another burden tied to the return of forces the world is poorly prepared to understand.
These characters do not simply form an adventuring party. Sanderson builds the series through separate political, military, scholarly, and personal perspectives, allowing the meaning of events to change depending on who has access to the evidence. The war on the Shattered Plains, Alethi rivalries, the histories of the singers and listeners, and the apparent disappearance of the old Radiants gradually become parts of a much larger conflict.
The Knights Radiant provide one of the saga’s defining structures. Their abilities emerge through bonds with spren and progress through spoken Ideals rather than functioning as powers acquired without moral consequence. Different Orders embody different principles, and characters can struggle with what their oaths require. Stormlight itself powers extraordinary abilities, while Shardblades, Shardplate, Soulcasting, fabrial technology, and Roshar’s developing scientific knowledge give the setting multiple overlapping systems rather than one universal form of magic.
The first five novels form a distinct major arc. Across Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War, and Wind and Truth, the scope expands from fractured kingdoms and returning Radiants toward conflicts involving Odium, the nature of Roshar’s history, and forces operating across the Cosmere. Yet the emotional center remains intensely personal. Kaladin’s struggles with leadership and mental health, Shallan’s fractured relationship with memory and identity, Dalinar’s confrontation with his own violent past, and Szeth’s crisis of law and conscience are not detachable side stories; they shape how each character understands power and obligation.
A distinctive feature of the novels is their use of flashbacks. Individual volumes place particular emphasis on major characters and reveal formative experiences gradually, often changing the reader’s interpretation of behavior already seen in the present. Interludes widen the lens further, moving to distant parts of Roshar or following figures whose significance may not become clear immediately. This structure contributes to the sense that the world continues beyond the main viewpoints.
Two novellas occupy meaningful positions within the first arc. Edgedancer, centered on Lift, falls between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. Dawnshard, led by Rysn with Lopen among its important characters, takes place between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War. They are companion works rather than numbered main novels, but each develops people and concepts that matter beyond an isolated side adventure.
Wind and Truth, published in 2024, concludes the first five-book arc rather than the entire planned Stormlight Archive. Sanderson has designed the larger saga as ten principal novels divided into two five-book sequences, with a later arc intended to shift greater focus toward characters including Lift, Renarin, and Jasnah. That design makes Stormlight both a vast continuing epic and a series with a genuine midpoint: Roshar’s first great movement reaches a major resolution while the longer history of the world—and its increasingly visible place within the Cosmere—remains unfinished.