Chronicles of the One

About the Chronicles of the One series

Chronicles of the One is Nora Roberts's darkest and most epic project: a post-apocalyptic fantasy trilogy set after "the Doom," a global pandemic that wipes out most of humanity and awakens magic in the survivors, splitting the world into ordinary humans, newly magical "uncanny" people, and those who remain plain — while prophecy names a single child, born in the pandemic's shadow, as the One who can defeat the rising evil bent on wiping out magic entirely. Year One opens as the Doom sweeps the globe, following several survivors — including Lana Bingham and Max Fallon, whose fates become tied to the prophesied child — as they band together and begin rebuilding in the wreckage. Of Blood and Bone jumps forward roughly thirteen years to focus on that child, Fallon Swift, now an adolescent training under a fierce, isolated mentor to master the power she'll need for the fight ahead. The Rise of Magicks completes the trilogy as an adult Fallon leads the last stand against the dark force hunting magic-born survivors, alongside the found family and allies gathered across the first two books.

Unlike Roberts's contemporary trilogies, this one is a true multi-generational epic with a large ensemble cast, a fully invented post-plague world, and romance as one thread among war, prophecy, and survival rather than the central focus of every book.

How to read this series

Read in strict publication order — Year One, Of Blood and Bone, The Rise of Magicks — this is a continuous, chronological epic that jumps forward in time between books (roughly thirteen years between Year One and Of Blood and Bone) as the prophesied child Fallon grows from infant to warrior. It is not a trilogy of standalone romances; character relationships, world-building, and the central war against the forces hunting magic all build cumulatively, so reading out of order will be genuinely confusing.