The Stormlight Archive

About The Stormlight Archive

The Stormlight Archive is Brandon Sanderson's flagship epic, set on Roshar — a world scoured by apocalyptic highstorms, where plants retract like anemones, armies war over gemstones that hold the storms' light, and ten legendary orders of Knights Radiant fell into ruin so long ago that their powers have passed into myth. The Way of Kings (2010) braids three lives together: Kaladin, a surgeon's son turned enslaved bridge-runner who refuses to let his men die; Shallan, a scholar whose scholarship is a front for desperate theft; and Dalinar, a warlord haunted by visions commanding him to 'unite them'.

What begins as war epic becomes something stranger and bigger: the return of an ancient enemy, the rediscovery of the Radiants' oaths — each sworn ideal a step of genuinely moving character growth — and some of fantasy's most acclaimed treatments of depression, trauma and leadership. Sanderson's signature is rigorous magic and avalanche endings, and every volume delivers both at doorstop length.

Five novels are published — The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth (2024), which closes the series' first major arc — plus two interlude novellas, Edgedancer and Dawnshard. The Archive also sits at the centre of Sanderson's connected Cosmere universe, quietly linking to Mistborn, Elantris and Warbreaker.

How to read this series

Read the novels in publication order, slotting the novellas where Sanderson recommends: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, then the novella Edgedancer, Oathbringer, the novella Dawnshard, Rhythm of War, and Wind and Truth. The novellas are short, genuinely relevant side stories — Edgedancer sets up a key character for Oathbringer, and Dawnshard seeds Rhythm of War — but the main novels remain readable without them.

Stormlight is a fine entry point to the wider Cosmere. You don't need any other series first, though Cosmere veterans get extra resonance: a common recommended wider order is Mistborn Era One and Warbreaker before Words of Radiance (one Warbreaker character appears in Stormlight), with Elantris and Mistborn Era Two anytime. Books six through ten will follow a time-skip; book six has no announced date.