Outlanders books in order

Reading order

Outlanders began in 1997 as a spinoff of the Deathlands universe but quickly established its own identity. Where Deathlands is primarily episodic survival fiction, Outlanders has a more sustained conspiracy mythology at its center. Kane, the series’ main character, is a former Magistrate (the militarized enforcers of the baronies that control post-nuclear America) who discovers that human history was manipulated for centuries by an alien race called the Archons. His defection and the pursuit of that truth drive the series forward across 75 books.

The series was created and largely written by Mark Ellis, which gives it more consistent voice and longer story arcs than Deathlands, where the rotating authorship produces more variation. Kane’s companions Grant and Brigid Baptiste carry distinct personalities across the series, and the relationships between them develop in ways that reward long-term readers. The Cerberus redoubt, the group’s base of operations, becomes a recurring location that grounds the globe-trotting adventures in a home territory.

Readers who come to Outlanders from Deathlands will find a familiar post-nuclear setting but a different storytelling approach, one more interested in revealing the structure of the world than in the moment-to-moment survival of a wandering band. At 75 books, it is a substantial commitment, but the connected mythology means the payoffs accumulate in ways that Deathlands, with its more self-contained episodes, does not quite replicate.