Below is the complete list of The Valtain Testaments books in reading order, presented in publication order for the series by Carissa Broadbent. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
The Valtain Testaments Series
- Shrouds of Silver (2019)
About The Valtain Testaments Series
The Valtain Testaments occupies a small but interesting corner of Carissa Broadbent’s bibliography. Unlike Crowns of Nyaxia or The War of Lost Hearts, this is not a large multi-book saga with a long internal arc. In practice, The Valtain Testaments is a single-book series label attached to Shrouds of Silver. That makes it one of the easier entries in Broadbent’s reading order to place, but also one of the easiest to misunderstand. The title sounds like the beginning of a broader fantasy sequence, yet what readers actually have is a standalone novel carrying its own series banner.
That distinction matters because it changes how the book is best approached. Shrouds of Silver is not the foundation of Broadbent’s most prominent connected world in the same way that Daughter of No Worlds anchors The War of Lost Hearts, nor is it part of the more widely known vampire-centered architecture of Crowns of Nyaxia. Instead, it belongs to Broadbent’s earlier period as a fantasy writer, when many of the instincts that would later define her work were already visible but had not yet taken the same large-scale form. Readers coming to it after her later successes will often recognize familiar traits: emotionally intense fantasy, strong romantic pressure, dangerous power structures, and characters pushed hard by violence, loyalty, and survival.
Because The Valtain Testaments consists of a single novel, publication order is straightforward, but the value of reading it in the broader context of Broadbent’s work depends on expectations. This is not a subseries that unfolds across several installments, and it does not require the same kind of careful sequencing that her bigger projects do. Its importance is more bibliographic than structural. It shows another piece of her development as an author and gives a useful sense of the range she was exploring before her later fantasy series reached a much wider audience.
What makes the book worth noting is that Broadbent’s strengths were already present in embryonic form. She has always been drawn to stories where intimacy and danger are tightly intertwined, and where emotional stakes matter because the surrounding world is unstable, hierarchical, and costly. Even in her earlier fiction, relationships tend to be shaped by pressure rather than existing beside the plot as a separate strand. That quality would become one of the clearest signatures of her later work, and Shrouds of Silver is part of that lineage.
It is also worth clarifying that readers sometimes expect a more elaborate franchise history than actually exists here. With a name like The Valtain Testaments, it is easy to assume there are companion volumes, later continuations, or a hidden internal sequence. There is not, at least not in the sense implied by a conventional fantasy series label. This is better understood as a standalone novel placed under a series heading rather than as an unfinished epic awaiting multiple follow-ups.
For that reason, this entry in a reading order serves a different purpose from Broadbent’s major series pages. It is less about navigating a complex fictional architecture and more about locating one early work accurately within her career. Readers exploring everything she has published may find it rewarding as part of that fuller picture. Readers interested only in her major ongoing fantasy worlds may see it more as a side path than a central route. Either way, the cleanest understanding is the right one: The Valtain Testaments is a single-book series label, and Shrouds of Silver stands as its entire core.