Every book in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, including Wind and Truth (Updated for 2024)

Table of Contents

1. Every book in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, in publication order
2. Elantris
3. Mistborn
4. The Stormlight Archive
5. Standalone novels
6. Arcanum Unbounded
7. What's next for the Cosmere?

From Mistborn to The Stormlight Archive and beyond, Brandon Sanderson's interconnected fictional universe, known as the Cosmere, is one of the most sprawling sagas in modern fantasy. Sanderson has been publishing books since 2005, and many of them all take place in this same setting — albeit on different planets, in different solar systems. But these days, the lines between series are blurring as major storylines collide. The longer the Cosmere keeps going, the more important it becomes to become well-versed in all of it.

Considering that there are more than two dozen stories in the Cosmere to date, that can be a pretty daunting prospect. That's why we've put together this list of every book and piece of short fiction in the Cosmere, to make it easier for you to scope out all the stories you still need to read to get current!

Before we dive right in, a few notes to make navigating this list easier. First, we're only listing published Cosmere works. Sanderson wrote many Cosmere books during his early career which aren't really canon, such as Aether of Night. Those are the sorts of books Sanderson refers to as "Sanderson Curiosities" — novels which are fun to look back on, but will need an update before they actually count toward the current Cosmere.

Second, most of the Cosmere short fiction is contained in a collection called Arcanum Unbounded; we'll be referencing that out of the gate, so that's important! Now, let's start by listing every single story in the Cosmere as it now stands, in publication order, and then I'll explain a bit more about some of the key series.

Every book in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, in publication order

• Elantris (2005)
• The Hope of Elantris — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2006)
• Mistborn: The Final Empire (2006)
• The Well of Ascension (2007)
• The Hero of Ages (2008)
• Warbreaker (2009)
• The Way of Kings (2010)
• The Alloy of Law (2011)
• The Eleventh Metal — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2011)
• The Emperor's Soul — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2012)
• Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2013)
• Words of Radiance (2014)
• Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Altania, Episodes Twenty-Eight Through Thirty — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2014)
• Sixth of the Dusk — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2014)
• Shadows of Self (2015)
• The Bands of Mourning (2016)
• Edgedancer — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2016)
• Mistborn: Secret History — collected in Arcanum Unbounded (2016)
• White Sand — graphic novel (2016-2019, all issues collected in an omnibus in 2024)
• Oathbringer (2017)
• Dawnshard (2020)
• Rhythm of War (2020)
• The Lost Metal (2022)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea (2023)
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (2023)
• The Sunlit Man (2023)
• Wind and Truth (2024)

And that brings us up to date on the Cosmere! As you can see, there are quite a lot of stories in this list. Now, let's go through a few of the big series, because not all of these are created equal.

Elantris

Elantris was Brandon Sanderson's first published novel and the start of the Cosmere proper for most readers. The interconnections between different Cosmere worlds are pretty small at this point in the series, because it was such early days that Sanderson wasn't sure how readers would embrace the interconnected universe aspect of his work. (Quite well, it turns out.)

This story takes place on the world of Sel, which features several countries vying for dominance as well as the titular city of Elantris, a magical metropolis akin to Atlantis. Except by the time of the novel, Elantris has fallen into plague and ruin, and the people who live there, the Elantreans, are treated like lepers and forced into isolation. Sel is also the setting for The Emperor's Soul, Sanderson's Hugo Award-winning novella about a thief and magical forger who is captured and forced to create a new soul for the emperor of the Rose Empire, a nation which doesn't feature in the main book.

Elantris is a great entry point into the Cosmere, and Sanderson is planning to write two sequels to it over the next few years. If this is one you skipped on your initial Cosmere read, now's a good time to get into it. If you do pick this one up, I'd recommend going with the tenth anniversary edition, which features a more robust ending that Sanderson added to improve the book.

Mistborn

Next up we have Mistborn, one of the cornerstone series of the Cosmere. These books take place on the world of Scadriel, where people known as Allomancers and Feruchemists can ingest trace amounts of metal to let them use specialized abilities. Mistborn is the series that shot Sanderson into the public awareness, and caught the attention of Harriet McDougal, the wife and editor of The Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan. It was partially because of Sanderson's work on Mistborn that McDougal approached him about finishing The Wheel of Time after Jordan's death in 2007.

Mistborn is unique among the Cosmere books because it features several distinct "eras," each of which contains new technological advancements and settings as Scadriel evolves toward modernity. The original trilogy began with Mistborn: The Final Empire (later rebranded to just Mistborn), and continued in The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. They begin as a fantasy heist story with a young Mistborn woman who can access all the metal powers of her planet helping to overthrow an evil god emperor, and grows into a clash of biblical proportions by the end. The original trilogy is an epic fantasy with some Renaissance vibes, set in a post-apocalyptic world choked by ashfalls and mysterious mists.

Mistborn Era Two follows the detectives Wax and Wayne three centuries later, when Scadriel is in its Wild West Steampunk phase. By then, the original Mistborn trilogy has become the stuff of legend, forming the basis for Era Two. The most notable thing about the second era of Mistborn books is that it's one of the key sequences when the wider Cosmere starts coming more into focus. The novels of Mistborn Era Two are: The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, and The Lost Metal.

There are also several pieces of Mistborn short fiction collected in Arcanum Unbounded. Not all of those are crucial to read to understand the wider Mistborn story, but the one in particular which I'd consider required reading is Mistborn: Secret History. That novella reveals crucial details about a major Cosmere character and is becoming more and more relevant to the overarching story as Sanderson's universe progresses.

The Stormlight Archive

The Stormlight Archive is the other main pillar of Sanderson's Cosmere, and his most ambitious series by far. It takes place on the world of Roshar, a planet filled with dramatic, rocky landscapes which are wracked by violent storms. This is Sanderson's attempt at doing a massive, sprawling fantasy series in the vein of The Wheel of Time or Malazan Book of the Fallen, where each book spans over a thousand pages and features hundreds of characters. If you like door-stopping tome fantasy books, The Stormlight Archive is for you.

Sanderson has long said that he plans to write 10 mainline books in this series, split into two distinct arcs. As of 2024, the first arc is finally complete with the release of book five, Wind and Truth. When Sanderson eventually returns to Roshar, 10 years will have passed on the planet.

As of this writing, the books in The Stormlight Archive are: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, Rhythm of War, and Wind and Truth. There are also two novellas, which aren't required reading but provide critical information that's relevant to the main series: Edgedancer and Dawnshard.

Another book which is Stormlight-adjacent is the standalone novel Warbreaker. That takes place on the world of Nalthis, which is a Grecian-inspired planet filled with lesser gods who utilize a color-based magic system. Warbreaker is essentially a backstory novel for several characters who appear in The Stormlight Archive, so it's almost a prequel in its own way. Whenever I recommend Stormlight to new readers, I always recommend they read Warbreaker along with it, either before or after The Way of Kings.

Standalone novels

While many of the Cosmere books are part of elaborate series, there are also multiple standalone novels set in Sanderson's universe. That's especially true after 2023, when the author unleashed a barrage of new standalone books as part of his record-shattering "Secret Project" Kickstarter campaign. Not all of these standalones are essential to understanding the wider Cosmere, but if you want to be a completionist, they should be on your reading list.

Let's run through them quickly. Tress of the Emerald Sea is a standalone about a young princess who goes on a daring voyage. Tonally, it's inspired by The Princess Bride and is a light, whimsical tale. It's told from a unique perspective, as a tall tale being woven by a man named Hoid, who is a world-hopper that appears in just about every single one of Sanderson's Cosmere novels in some form or other.

Then there's Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. This one also involves Hoid, and is Sanderson's only story to date set on the world of Komashi. It follows a priestess named Yumi who is responsible for commanding spirits to serve the needs of those around her, and a nightmare painter named Nikaro, who is responsible for capturing the nightmares of the world's residents from a city shrouded in perpetual shadows. They're thrust together to unravel a winding mystery as they seek to find their own senses of renewed purpose away from the roles society has carved out for them.

The Sunlit Man is another Cosmere standalone, and the last of the three "Secret Projects" set in the Cosmere. This one is about a man named Nomad who is stranded on a harsh planet that gets periodically scorched to oblivion by the sun, where the few living people survive in floating caravans. While Yumi and Tress are both true standalones, The Sunlit Man has strong ties to The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn, as well as to the novella Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. This makes it more of a supplementary novel to those other series than a true standalone. Of all the books on this list, I would read The Sunlit Man as one of the last, either before or after Wind and Truth.

Lastly, there's White Sand, which is a very unique case. Sanderson originally wrote White Sand back around the same time as Elantris, but never published it. Nevertheless, many of its characters and its sand-covered, tidally locked world of Taldain are crucial to the wider Cosmere. White Sand was adapted as a series of three graphic novels starting in 2016, which were finally collected into an omnibus in early 2024. As of right now, that's the main way to read it.

However, Sanderson has been very open-handed with letting fans read his earlier, unpublished version of the book. For years, he was giving it out for free when people signed up for his mailing list. But now that Wind and Truth is out, Sanderson is working on a newly updated novelization of White Sand, which will finally bring this long-sought after work into the Cosmere as intended. We'll likely be talking a lot more about this one in the coming years.

Arcanum Unbounded

Last but not least, there's the Cosmere short fiction, "short" being somewhat of a misnomer since we are talking about Brandon Sanderson. We've already talked about a lot of the quintessential Cosmere short fiction in earlier sections, like The Emperor's Soul, Mistborn: Secret History, and Edgedancer. But there are a few others that are important as well, like Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Sixth of the Dusk.

As of this writing, the easiest way to get all of the Cosmere short fiction is to pick up Arcanum Unbounded, a collection which Sanderson released in 2016. This book is the only time that Sanderson printed all those disparate stories, which were published over years, into one volume. Not every story in it is essential — some of them feel like fun little experiments rather than key pieces of Cosmere lore — but as a whole, Arcanum Unbounded is a must-have for Cosmere completionists.

The only Cosmere novella which is not included in Arcanum Unbounded is Dawnshard, the second Stormlight novella which takes place before Rhythm of War. That's because it came out a few years after Arcanum Unbounded. Fortunately, it's available on its own, so if you grab a copy of Dawnshard and a copy of Arcanum Unbounded, you'll have all the current Cosmere short fiction at your fingertips.

What's next for the Cosmere?

That brings us up to date on Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere! If you've already read these books, you may be wondering what's next. After all, Sanderson is an author who's always got plans within plans and a dozen more books in the pipeline.

There are a few projects we know for sure are coming next. The first is another Secret Project book that Sanderson is releasing in 2025 as part of his Words of Radiance leatherbound crowdfunding campaign. Since it is a Secret Project, I won't spill the title here, but you can find it easily enough.

After that is the White Sand novelization, which Sanderson is currently working on. Then, there's Mistborn Era Three, titled Ghostbloods, and two sequels to Elantris. Sanderson has said he plans to put all of those out before returning to The Stormlight Archive for the last five books of that series, and Mistborn Era Four, which will be set in the Cosmere's space age.

We'll have no shortage of Cosmere stories to read for years to come. But in the meantime, there are plenty of Cosmere books to keep us sated. I hope this list helps make this vast fictional universe a little easier to parse. Happy reading!

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