So you want to read the IMMORTAL series
So! You’ve gotten yourself a copy of one of the Immortal series books. It could be one of the novels (hopefully the first one) or one of the novellas. Or, maybe it’s one of the two novella collections (which are duplicative) or the novel collection (which is three novels) or maybe you don’t have any of them yet and want to know where to start.
That this is in any way confusing is entirely my fault. It all made sense as I was writing/publishing, but looking back, I appreciate that it’s… slightly more complicated than it has to be. Hence this blog post, in which I hope to uncomplicate things somewhat.
The Novels
The first thing you need to know is that there are twelve stories altogether: six novels, and six novellas. If you have read twelve stories and find something you think may be a thirteenth, you’re either buying something you’ve already read or someone is lying to you.
(This will remain true up until the day I write another story. If/when that happens, I’ll have to come here and update this post.)
The second thing you need to know is that you should read the novels in order.
Here is that order:
Immortal
Hellenic Immortal
Immortal at the Edge of the World
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things
Immortal From Hell
Immortal: Last Call
It will help, I think, to consider these two trilogies, especially since books 1-3 are bound in The Immortal Series: Volumes 1-3.
The Novellas (five of them)
So far so good! Now it’s going to get complicated.
There are, as I said, six novellas. Five of those novellas can be read in any order and at any time. They are:
Immortal at Sea
Hard-Boiled Immortal
Immortal and the Madman
Yuletide Immortal
Regency Immortal
All of these novellas were written between novels 1-4, so if you’re interested in ingesting them as they were produced, that’s when you should read them. However, it doesn’t matter much, because they don’t directly advance the main story thread that carries through the novels. (I have one caveat to this, which I’ll get to in a minute.)
Where these five novellas get complicated is that after I finished the third one, I thought I was done writing novellas for Adam, and so I put out a small collection of the three, called First Folio. Then two more came along, and I put out a second collection and called it The Immortal Chronicles for all five stories. First Folio is not a new set of stories. It has the same books in it as the larger omnibus.
(Why, you may ask, did I not unpublish First Folio? I like the cover. No, really.)
The Sixth Novella
That brings us to the sixth novella:
Immortal Stories: Eve
The title implies that there will be other “Immortal Stories” books, and that this was just the start of a new line. Well, it was going to be. Eve is the only book written in third person, following someone other than Adam. The plan was to do the same for some of the other characters. The problem became that I couldn’t think of stories for the other characters, and so here we are.
Immortal Stories: Eve is complicated for another reason: unlike the other novellas, it does impact the main story thread in the novels. I wrote it between books three and four (AKA the first and second trilogies) and it should be read then, after Immortal at the Edge of the World and before Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things.
All Together Now
With that in mind, let’s put everything together in one spot.
Read These In This Order
Immortal
Hellenic Immortal
Immortal at the Edge of the World
Immortal Stories: Eve
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things
Immortal From Hell
Immortal: Last Call
Read these in any order
Immortal at Sea
Hard-Boiled Immortal
Immortal and the Madman
Yuletide Immortal
Regency Immortal
Optional reading
Around the same time as I was writing the Immortal series, I also wrote these two books:
Unlike the Immortal books—which, strictly speaking, fit in the fantasy genre—Fixer is sci-fi. However, the border between the two is pretty thin, because there’s no magic in the Immortal series. Because of this, I was able to introduce an ancestor of Fixer’s protagonist, in the novella Immortal and the Madman. And later, the protagonist himself—Corrigan Bain—showed up in one of the novels.
You do not need to read the Fixer books to enjoy the Immortal books. But, you may have more fun that way.
