Raymond E. Feist books have been the genre’s great on-ramp for over forty years, and the machine is still running: Magician (1982) remains the novel a whole generation names as their first fantasy after Tolkien, the Riftwar Cycle it launched ran to thirty books before closing in 2013, and Feist, now in his eighties in San Diego, is mid-trilogy on something his long-haul readers waited decades to see, a new saga openly built to stitch his second world back into Midkemia, with familiar names on Sorcerer’s Isle and book two slated for this year. The Riftwar Saga holds its entry on my best fantasy books pillar and the shelf anchors my classic fantasy list, and what this page adds is the honest map, because thirty-plus books is a country, and not every province deserves equal time.
Fiction by René Rehn
The short version
Magician first, always, and it satisfies alone if you let it. Then the rest of the Riftwar Saga, then the Empire trilogy, which is the shelf’s secret masterpiece. After that, choose: Serpentwar for the second peak, the middle sagas only if you’re in love, and the Firemane-into-Dragonwar line for what he’s building right now. The catalog is huge and its quality honestly varies, and this page will say where.
Magician and the Riftwar Saga
Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon. 1982 to 1986. The evergreen door.
The premise built the on-ramp: Pug, an orphan doing scullery work in the castle of Crydee, is taken as apprentice by the magician Kulgan just as a rift tears open between worlds and the Tsurani, an empire from an alien Kelewan, invade Midkemia with bronze weapons and battlefield sorcery. Pug’s road runs through capture, slavery on the far side of the rift, and training in a magic his home world has no word for, while his friend Tomas inherits a power with a much older pedigree, and the war grinds across a decade.
It’s the great both-sides epic of its era, boy’s-adventure warmth over genuinely big machinery, and the structural trick still lands: by splitting Pug and Tomas onto diverging power curves, one earned in an enemy’s academy and one inherited from something ancient, the saga gets to be a war story and two very different wizard stories at once, and its origin story is genre folklore: Midkemia began as the shared D&D world of Feist’s California gaming table, later published as game material in its own right, which is exactly why the geography, economics, and garrison rosters feel load-tested rather than painted on. In US printings Magician sometimes splits into Apprentice and Master, one book in two covers, a purchasing footnote worth knowing. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon complete the opening saga, tighter and darker by turns, and the whole three-volume run remains the correct first purchase.
The Empire Trilogy
Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire, Mistress of the Empire. With Janny Wurts, and say her name.
The best books bearing Feist’s name are half someone else’s, and the shelf’s devoted have been saying so for thirty years. Co-written with Janny Wurts, the Empire trilogy crosses the rift permanently and tells the Tsurani side: Mara of the Acoma, seventeen and suddenly Ruling Lady of a nearly extinguished house, playing the Game of the Council, an aristocratic murder-sport with etiquette, against enemies who erased her family.
It’s political fantasy of a precision the main line never attempts, honor culture examined rather than assumed, and Mara belongs on any shortlist of the genre’s great operators, a protagonist who wins with wits, marriages, grain contracts, and nerve in a world where a misplaced syllable can be a death sentence, and the trilogy’s slow escalation from survival to reformation is among the most satisfying arcs the whole era produced. The standing verdict this page happily co-signs: if Magician is the door, this is the treasure behind it, and Wurts’s co-credit is load-bearing, not decorative.
The sprawl, mapped honestly
Serpentwar, Krondor, the middle sagas, and one haunted house.
After the opening movement, the honest contours. The Serpentwar Saga, opening with Shadow of a Dark Queen, is the consensus second peak, a generation on, new soldiers, the Cycle’s biggest war, and the arc long-haul readers defend hardest after Empire. The Riftwar Legacy exists substantially because of a video game, and the game deserves the nod: Betrayal at Krondor (1993) remains one of the most beloved RPG adaptations of any book world.
From the Conclave of Shadows through the Darkwar, Demonwar, and Chaoswar sagas, the honest note is that the machine ran faster than it ran deep, arcs compress, familiar beats recur, and the fair framing is completists’ country with real high points, until Magician’s End (2013) closed the entire thirty-book Cycle with a finale that sent the fandom off moved and satisfied. Off to one side sits Faerie Tale, his 1988 standalone, a contemporary dark-fantasy novel about a family, a farmhouse in upstate New York, and the very old things in the woods behind it, real teeth, real dread, and a cult following that considers it his most underrated hour.
Firemane and the Dragonwar: the current line
King of Ashes through A Darkness Returns, and the stitch in progress.
The Firemane Saga (2018 to 2022, complete) opened a second world, Garn: a murdered royal line, its hidden last scion Hatushaly raised by a nation of spies and assassins, and a continent sliding into religious war under the Church of the One, earning a Booklist star for the opener and a full trilogy’s room to breathe.
Then the reveal of the current project: A Darkness Returns (August 2024) opens the Dragonwar Saga by carrying Hatu, his wife Hava, and their dubious friend Donte through a rift to Midkemia itself, guests on Sorcerer’s Isle of magicians whose names, Magnus, Nakor, Pug, need no introduction to anyone who’s read this far, while the Void, the old destroying force behind the Cycle’s worst days, stirs on both worlds. Feist has confirmed the project grew from two books to a trilogy, book one opens with a genuinely useful “Our Story So Far” for newcomers, and the second volume is slated for this year, date pending. Two worlds, one shelf, and the door from 1982 turning out to open onto all of it.
A note on where to actually start
Magician, in whichever cover-count your shop sells it, then straight through the saga, then Empire before anything else, because Mara is the payoff too many readers never reach. From there the honest map above holds, peaks at Serpentwar and the finale, valleys in the middle, and a live new line for whenever you catch up. The Raymond E. Feist books built the on-ramp half the modern genre drove in on, and forty-odd years later the tollbooth is still staffed by the man himself, waving the next generation through toward Crydee. Start where everyone starts, the apprentice and the rift. It still works, forty years of readers deep.
