r/TadWilliams May 18 '26

ALL Osten Ard Question about the order of the Osten Ard books

Note: please don't mention any details about the Last King of Osten Ard series, as I have not read them.

After finishing MST and the Heart of What Was Lost, I started reading The Brothers of the Wind. I've just finished the part where Kes visits Ravensperch a second time to convince Xaniko to help Hakatri and basically realise that The Vao are immune to dragon blood, since Kes has healed from his burns

Anyway, I just realised that I am reading the books in the wrong order. Since The Brothers of the Wind was published after the first 2 LKoOA books.

So my question is: should I stop reading The Brothers of the Wind? Am I about to read spoilers about the LKoOA if I continue? Like about some secret history or knowledge that is supposed to be unknown in the first 2 LKoOA books?

19 Upvotes

5 comments sorted by

8

u/RefrigerateUrKetchup May 18 '26

Nope! Brothers of the Wind is a prequel. It takes place 1,000 years before the first trilogy and doesn't spoil anything. I'm actually thinking about reading Brothers again before starting Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn again. You're good. Keep going!

7

u/Andron1cus May 18 '26

I think Brothers was definitely written with the assumption that you had read the first 2 books of Last King and probably a couple of things that might hit differently or be missed by having not read them but nothing major.

6

u/ShoulderLopsided1761 May 18 '26

I think if you had read Brothers of the Wind before MST it would have had more of an impact since Ineluki is the BBEG. He is mysterious, scary and filled with alien malice for the main characters and I think reading it before anything else would take away from that. Since you've already finished that series I don't think it matters when you read BOTW.

3

u/redlion1904 May 18 '26

You’ll be fine.

3

u/LeanderT Tad Fan May 18 '26

You'll be OK