Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | L’assedio | 2001 | K.J. Parker | N/A |
| 2 | Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City | 2019 | K.J. Parker | Buy |
| 3 | The Betrayal | 2010 | K.J. Parker | N/A |
| 4 | How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It | 2020 | K.J. Parker | Buy |
| 5 | A Practical Guide to Conquering the World | 2022 | K.J. Parker | Buy |
The Siege series is set in a declining empire loosely inspired by Byzantium, and each book follows a different narrator dealing with the fallout of political collapse. Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City introduces Orhan, a military engineer who finds himself the unlikely defender of the imperial capital when it comes under siege. The book became one of Parker’s most popular works, earning praise for its first-person voice and the way Orhan solves military problems with ingenuity rather than brute force.
How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It shifts to a con man who gets drafted into impersonating a dead leader, while A Practical Guide to Conquering the World follows a translator caught between civilizations. Each book stands well on its own but they gain depth when read together, as events from one narrator’s story look completely different through another’s eyes. This series is often recommended as the best starting point for readers new to K.J. Parker.