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The official site provides the recommended reading order for Raymond E. Feist's "Magician" series / Riftwar Universe.

I've read the first three (Magician, Silverthorn, Sethanon) and have just had a friend loan me the Riftwar Legacy / Krondor trilogy (Krondor: Betrayal, Assassins, Tear of the Gods).

There are three books in between (Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire) that I was unaware of. Can I skip these three books and come back to them later? What will I miss? (if it's possible to answer without spoilers anyway!)

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    Finally, a Krondor series question:-)
    – PearsonArtPhoto
    Apr 23, 2011 at 13:07
  • dont forget the games!! for the love of all that is good dont forget the games! Betrayal at Krondor: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal_at_Krondor And Return to Krondor: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Krondor First one was novelised (and therfore cannon) the other one i dont know. But playing the game after i read the book was a WHOLE different kind of experiance! I believe GOG still have the first game available.
    – Cherubel
    Oct 10, 2018 at 8:20

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One of the nice things about the Krondor series, is that most of the books fall into specific time periods, that tend to be many years apart. Well, there's a trilogy in the same time period, but different trilogies will fall apart.

I believe that it is possible to read the Legacy trilogy without missing a significant amount from the Empire series. There will be a few key points that you will lack some understanding, especially in the first book (Betrayal at Krondor), if you haven't read the Empire series first.

So, in short, if you can get a hold of the other books somehow first, then you will be better off as a whole, but if you can't, you won't miss too much, but might have a few problems understanding a few things that occur.

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Yes. You could skip both Daughter of the Empire and Mistress of the Empire from the list and be none the worse for the wear. Indeed, when I read them in the published order they were not available in the order recommended. However, if you fail to EVER read them, you would be doing yourself a grave disservice. They are wonderful books.

The Empire Trilogy of books, Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire, and Mistress of the Empire were written by Raymond Feist and in conjunction with the highly talented, Janny Wurts.

A synopsis of the books says:

  • The trilogy traces the story of Mara of the Acoma's rise to power from a convent novitiate to the most powerful woman in the fictional world of Kelewan. These three books are contemporary to Feist's original Riftwar Saga and feature some crossover characters, mainly from 1982's Magician (Pug, the protagonist of Magician, appears twice in 1990's Servant of the Empire and once in 1992's Mistress of the Empire).
  • Mara struggles to rule her family after her father and brother are killed in a trap by the Minwanabi, one of the most powerful families in the Empire and longtime enemies of the Acoma. Mara quickly learns how to play the Game of the Council with skill and challenges the binding traditions of her world.

The series discusses the Riftwar but from the other side of the Rift on the planet Kelewan. A world of intrigue, magic, treachery and duty, it is an absolute pleasure to read. The stories revealing why and how the people of Kelewan came to be invading Midkemia and the underlying secrets of how and why the culture of Kelewan was the way it was.

Told from the point of view of Lady Mara of House Acoma, the story is rich in political intrigue and cultural development and definitely worth the effort both for the quality of the writing and for the addition to one of the finest magical sagas to ever hit the page. I have a preference for the earliest books of the Riftwar and these tales and consider them the best (the first seven) of the entire series.

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    +1, even if the books aren't necessary for understanding plot points, they are perhaps Feist's best, and grant a great understanding of the culture on Kelewan, which adds character to all the interactions with the Kelewanese (sp?).
    – DCShannon
    Aug 16, 2016 at 17:03
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I haven't read the Magician set of the Riftwar books, but I have read the Empire books. Each book doesn't stand on it's own so well, but in general, the trilogies stand alone (I read Empire with no knowledge of the rest of the Riftwar saga, it all made sense)

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I wasn't going to read the Empire trilogy. But I'm nearly at the end of the first book and I'm of the opinion it is probably better than Magician. You should read it.

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    Hiya, and welcome to the site! It would be great if you could expand on this answer a little. Can you comment at all on whether the person asking the question could skip the series and still understand the plot, or why that might be a bad idea?
    – Adele- Nexus of Potlucks
    Oct 10, 2018 at 3:57
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I'm sure long past now you've made the decision (this topic is 4 years old as I type this), but for anyone else wondering the same thing, the "Empire" books can if you want be completely ignored and never read at all. They don't affect the main series at ALL, even though the main series affects them very strongly.

But... they are the best written books in the series. Skip them if you only care about the main series story, but not if you actually want to read three really good books.

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    This is already expressed in most of the answers above.
    – Daft
    Jun 2, 2015 at 13:47

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