Below is the complete list of Throne of Glass books in reading order, presented in publication order for the series by Sarah J. Maas. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
Throne of Glass Series
- Throne of Glass (2012)
Book details - Crown of Midnight (2013)
Book details - Heir of Fire (2014)
Book details - Queen of Shadows (2015)
Book details - Empire of Storms (2016)
Book details - Tower of Dawn (2017)
Book details - Kingdom of Ash (2018)
Book details
Throne Of Glass Short Stories Series
- The Assassin and the Pirate Lord (2012)
Book details - The Assassin and the Healer (2012)
Book details - The Assassin and the Desert (2012)
Book details - The Assassin and the Underworld (2012)
Book details - The Assassin and the Empire (2012)
Book details
Throne Of Glass Collections Series
- The Assassin’s Blade (2015)
Book details
About Throne of Glass Series
Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series is where her career as a major fantasy novelist truly begins, but it is also a series that changed shape as it grew. What starts with the premise of a deadly young assassin in a royal competition widens, book by book, into a much larger fantasy epic involving kingdoms, ancient powers, contested bloodlines, war, and sacrifice. That expansion is one of the defining features of the series, and it is also the main reason reading order matters. These books were built to escalate. Character histories, political tensions, and long-buried revelations gather force over time, so the experience is much richer when the series is read in sequence rather than approached as isolated fantasy adventures.
At the center of the series is Celaena Sardothien, one of Maas’s most recognizable protagonists. In the earliest books, she arrives as a figure of confidence, secrecy, and survival, but the series steadily reveals that her story is far larger than her reputation alone suggests. Maas uses that gradual disclosure well. Celaena is not a static heroine dropped into a changing world; she is the means by which the world itself opens up. As her past, loyalties, and responsibilities become clearer, the series shifts from court-centered intrigue into a more expansive struggle over power, identity, and destiny.
That widening scale is one of the pleasures of Throne of Glass. The early novels have a tighter shape, with palace politics, rivalry, and hidden danger driving the momentum. Later entries become much broader in scope, bringing in multiple regions, larger casts, and parallel storylines that deepen the sense of a continent in crisis. Maas clearly enjoys the movement from intimate tension to full epic reach, and the series is stronger for it. The emotional scale grows with the political scale, which is why the later books feel like culmination rather than mere continuation.
Publication order is especially important here because Throne of Glass includes material that can tempt readers to rearrange the sequence. The collection The Assassin’s Blade, made up of prequel novellas, is the most common source of that confusion. Chronologically, those stories come earlier in Celaena’s life, but they are often more effective once a reader already has some grounding in the main series. Their emotional impact depends in part on understanding who Celaena is before stepping backward into formative episodes from her past. In other words, chronology and reading experience are not quite the same thing here, which is why publication-aware reading remains the safer guide.
Another reason order matters is tonal development. Throne of Glass begins with a stronger young adult fantasy feel, but the series steadily becomes denser, darker, and more emotionally layered. Maas’s later strengths are already visible in the early books—romantic intensity, dramatic reversals, mythic stakes, and characters pushed to extremes—but they become much more pronounced as the series progresses. Read in order, that transformation feels organic. The books do not abandon their original identity so much as reveal how much larger it was from the start.
The series also matters in Sarah J. Maas’s bibliography because it shows her as a long-form fantasy architect before A Court of Thorns and Roses became the cultural phenomenon most people now associate with her name. Throne of Glass is where many of her signature habits are first developed at scale: layered reveals, emotionally charged alliances, heroines carrying enormous burden, and a willingness to let personal relationships shape the fate of entire kingdoms. It is a fantasy series that begins with one young woman’s survival and ends in something much closer to national and mythic reckoning.
Taken as a whole, Throne of Glass is best understood as a true growth series. It grows in world, in cast, in consequence, and in emotional weight. That is exactly why reading order matters so much: each book does not simply add another chapter to the story, but changes the meaning of what came before.