Alana asked Michael J. Sullivan:

Hi there! I started reading your work with Age of Myth and fell in love with it. I consequently gobbled up the next two with joy. However, there will be a gap between last released and the rest of the series. I want to jump into the Riyria Chronicles but will it be a spoiler of the Legends of the First Empire? Since Legends is basically history before Riyria Chronicles? Thank you!

Michael J. Sullivan Hey thanks for stopping by. So when there are many different reading orders of my books and while you'll learn different things at different times (depending on where you start) all the reading orders will provide a good reading experience.

The thing about Riyria, is it is based 3,000 years after the events in Legends and much of what you read there will be less than truthful. (History, after all, is written by the victors). So, you've already met Nyphron and Percepliquis and you will learn certain myths about them in Riyria, so you may say "That' not how it happened at all!" Or, "That person really isn't like that!" It's just part of the fun of the Easter egg hunt that readers of both series get to enjoy where the reader of one series won't have that aspect.

Now you mentioned "Chronicles" and I should mention there are actually two different sets of "Riyria books."

* Riyria Revelations - is a completed six-novel story told in three, two-book omnibus editions (Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, Heir of Novron).

* Riyria Chronicles - is an "open ended" series which currently has 4 books in it (they are mostly standalone tales). They occur BEFORE the events of Revelations and basically tell little one-off adventures of how they met and their early life together. I have no idea how many of these there will be because I write a book in that series, release it, and then check the pulse of the readers to see if they want more. If yes, then I write another one. I have outlines for 10 books (that will butt up against the timeline of Revelations) but whether all ten will be produced is something I just don't know yet.

In general, when it comes to reading order of Riyria, I suggest "order of publication (Theft of Swords)" over "chronological order (The Crown Tower)" - again there are better Easter eggs when going that way, but then again, I've had readers who start with Crown Tower and they say THAT was the best way to go.

The good news is no matter what order you read the books in they tend to be satisfying and people seem to think "their" order was the "best order" which tells me I did the job I set out to, which is have both ways work well.

I hope this helps, and I do hope you'll jump into Riyria - I think you'll find a lot there to love.

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