The Banned and the Banished

About The Banned and the Banished

James Clemens -- the epic-fantasy pen name of thriller writer James Rollins -- opens this five-book series with Elena, a village girl whose blood is accidentally awakened into 'wit'ch fire,' a rare and dangerous form of magic that marks her for both persecution and desperate recruitment. In a world called Alasea, ruled through fear by a corrupt empire that hunts magic-users, Elena's growing power over the course of Wit'ch Fire, Wit'ch Storm, Wit'ch War, Wit'ch Gate and Wit'ch Star becomes central to a widening conflict against not just the empire but older, stranger forces stirring beneath the land itself.

Written between 1998 and 2002, the series carries over the large-scale, escalating-stakes plotting that would later define Rollins's Sigma Force thrillers, translated into a fully realized secondary-world fantasy with an ensemble cast that grows around Elena as the story widens from a single village's troubles into an empire-spanning war. It's a complete five-book arc with a definite ending, making it a good pick for fantasy readers who want a finished series rather than an open-ended one, and a natural next stop for Sigma Force readers curious about Rollins's other pen name.

How to read this series

This is one continuous story told across five books, not a series of standalones -- read in strict publication order starting with Wit'ch Fire (1998) and continuing through Wit'ch Storm, Wit'ch War, Wit'ch Gate and Wit'ch Star (2002). Each volume ends mid-conflict rather than resolving cleanly, so this is best approached as a single long read rather than a pick-up-and-put-down series.