Legends of the First Empire Books in Order

Legends of the First Empire steps thousands of years back from the events of Riyria to a time when humans are scattered tribes called Rhunes and the immortal Fhrey are worshipped as gods. The opening of Age of Myth hinges on a single shocking act: a human warrior, Raithe, kills a Fhrey in a moment of anger, proving that these supposed deities can bleed.

That one death cracks the world. The series follows several threads as the consequences spread. Persephone, a recently widowed leader in the remote village of Dahl Rhen, suddenly has to keep her people alive in a world where the rules have changed. Suri, a wild young mystic who talks to trees and travels with her wolf Minna, senses that something much bigger than a feud is coming. On the Fhrey side, prince Mawyndulë and sorceress Arion grapple with court politics, forbidden magic, and their own shifting loyalties.

Across six novels the war between humans and Fhrey builds from skirmishes at the edge of the forest into a full-scale struggle that will shape the next three millennia. Books like Age of Swords and Age of War show the Rhunes inventing tools, tactics, and even basic technologies their descendants will later take for granted. The invention of iron, the forging of alliances, and the first attempts at written history all carry as much weight as any single battle.

Later volumes, including Age of Legend, Age of Death, and Age of Empyre, venture into stranger territory. Some characters walk into the underworld itself, others wrestle with the temptation to rewrite destiny, and both sides confront the uncomfortable gap between the stories they tell about themselves and what really happened. The series leans into the idea that legends are usually tidy, flattering versions of events that were messy and painful at the time.

For readers of Riyria, one of the pleasures here is watching the raw material of future myths being laid down in real time. Names that appear as half-remembered deities or historical figures in the later books are flesh-and-blood people in Legends, making heroic choices, bad mistakes, or both.

You do not need any prior knowledge of Elan to enjoy these novels; they are written as a complete, self-contained saga. But if you read them alongside Riyria Revelations, The Riyria Chronicles, and The Rise and Fall, you get the layered feeling of a world where history, rumor, and personal memory rarely line up perfectly, which is exactly the point.