Time travel has always been my favorite genre of storytelling. Devouring every time travel book, movie, TV series, or comic strip I’ve come across in my life got me thinking a lot about cause and effect, chicken and egg, before and after. I eventually came to realize the literary world of prequels and sequels with multiple book series didn’t always have to be read in the order of release, especially if, as a reader, you had a late start that was still “new to you.”
Sequel/prequel/sidequel/timequel: reading a series out of order is a whole new type of adventure.
It’s hard to call any David Mitchell book a “sequel” since he writes in one big interconnected universe spanning multiple time periods, but Slade House was my entry point into his wonderful world, and I haven’t looked back.
Short and eerie, the five interconnected short stories (each set 9 years apart) making up his seventh novel serve as a perfect standalone primer to Mitchell’s special brand of magical realism and recurring characters.
'One of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any, country' Independent 'Deliciously creepy' SUNDAY TIMES
'Irresistible' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'Manically ingenious' GUARDIAN
The chilling seventh novel from the critically acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it…
Like many kids, I devoured The Chronicles of Narnia in grade school.
I loved each story equally, but The Magician’s Nephew blew my pre-teen mind while introducing me to the concept of a prequel. It comes both after and before the other books?!?!?
Years later, a change in publisher controversially re-sequenced the series chronologically and “officially” moved this novel from sixth to first. I’m not going to definitively say you should read this one before the rest, but under the spirit of this list’s theme, you certainly can do so without ruining your enjoyment of the rest of the series.
(This is also the chronicle I’ve re-read the most.)
A beautiful paperback edition of The Magician's Nephew, book one in the classic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. This edition is complete with cover and interior art by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.
On a daring quest to save a life, two friends are hurled into another world, where an evil sorceress seeks to enslave them. But then the lion Aslan's song weaves itself into the fabric of a new land, a land that will be known as Narnia. And in Narnia, all things are possible.
The Magician's Nephew is the first book in C. S. Lewis's classic fantasy…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I loved how this sequel to tech startup workplace culture parody The Circle is a lot like starting any new job in real life.
Your coworkers may know legends of a corporate past you aren’t yet privy to. In time, these stories will emerge as a prequel from your point of view, whereas your own presence on the payroll is a sequel for those who have more tenure.
How’d this person get promoted? What was the company like in the scrappy startup days before the merger? You don’t know about the second annual holiday party scandal? Have I got a story for you…
From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle comes an exciting new follow-up. When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous—and, oddly enough, most beloved—monopoly ever known: the Every.
Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire at the Every. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Makazian, they look for the Every's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity…
Yes, I’m suggesting reading the fourth volume of the epic Dark Tower saga first.
Typically, medieval-ish fantasy isn’t my thing, but in Stephen King’s hands, the world simply sucks you in. It’s commonly cited as one of King’s best works for a reason.
Caveat: While this book is largely a standalone 700-page flashback to the main character’s younger days, you could skip the first 70 pages, resolving the previous book’s cliffhanger before the story within a story kicks in. But it might also be fun to arrive en medias res to read the resolution and spend a three-book flashback figuring out how you got there.
You can’t read all 7.5 Dark Tower books out of order, but dropping out of the timeline for this one is worthwhile.
WIZARD AND GLASS is the fourth volume in Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.
In the fourth novel in Stephen King's bestselling fantasy quest, the Dark Tower beckons Roland, the Last Gunslinger, and the four companions he has gathered along the road.
In a terrifying journey where hidden dangers lurk at every junction, the pilgrims find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, that has been ravaged by a superflu virus.
While following the deserted highway toward a distant glass palace, Roland recounts…
When an EMP brings down the power grid, Dr. Anna Hastings must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology. She joins devoted father Mark Ryan and his young daughter on a perilous journey across a thousand miles of backcountry trails.
I’d never heard the term “epistolary novel” prior to reading Michael Kun’s The Locklear Letters, but was immediately smitten with the concept of telling a story solely through a series of letters and/or emails sent by the narrator.
This sequel follows the same template and the same protagonist a decade down the line. I liken it to finding a boxful of letters and using them to piece together a hilarious comedy of errors. Maybe you’ll keep digging and find an older box later, or maybe the archivist kept orderly annals, allowing you to move forward through the years.
Sequencing doesn’t matter, but the written words will leave you in stitches.
Sid Straw, the author of the correspondence that forms Everybody Says Hello, isn t Everyman, but he is someone everyone knows. He tries just a little too hard, says just a little too much, and that extra effort and those extra words are often his undoing. If only Sid could get out of his own way, his life would be wonderful. While Sid Straw may frustrate you at times, you ll end up rooting for him the same way you root for your own equally imperfect friends.
Teenage musician Local Boy was the biggest folk rock sensation of the '70s—or at least that’s what the time travelers told him. His former fame was undone for the sake of the continuum, leaving him to mow lawns and dream about what might have been. But there’s one song he still needs to sing. Local Boy gets a second chance at fame when his future self arrives with an offer he can't refuse—until another time traveler shows up with a more compelling offer involving a number of musicians dying at the same young age of 27.
Local Boy Done Gone is a standalone sequel/prequel/sidequel/timequel to Timely Persuasion. Readers are encouraged to read in either order.
"Is this supposed to help? Christ, you've heard it a hundred times. You know the story as well as I do, and it's my story!" "Yeah, but right now it only has a middle. You can't remember how it begins, and no-one knows how it ends."
It began with a dying husband, and it ended in a dynasty.
It took away her husband’s pain on his deathbed, kept her from losing the family farm, gave her the power to build a thriving business, but it’s illegal to grow in every state in the country in 1978.…
