Start with Out From Boneville and read the nine volumes in order. Bone is one continuous story — fifty-five issues that Jeff Smith wrote and drew over thirteen years — so there is no sub-series to slot in and no chronology to argue about. The only real decision is which edition you buy, and the only real warning is that the book you start is not the book you finish.
That warning first, because it catches people out. Bone is shelved with all-ages comics and the first volume genuinely is a broad funny-animal comedy: three cartoon cousins run out of Boneville and get lost in a valley with a stupid, stupid rat creature and a quiche-obsessed dragon. By volume nine it is an epic fantasy with a war, real deaths and a genuinely frightening antagonist. It remains fine for most readers of about nine and up, but Eyes of the Storm is where a parent reading along should start paying attention.
Which edition
Three exist and all are fine. The nine individual volumes are what this path follows and the easiest to read a bit at a time. The one-volume complete edition is 1,300 pages in black and white, the way it was drawn, and is the purist's choice at the cost of being unwieldy in bed. The coloured volumes are the ones most children's libraries carry, and the colouring is good rather than intrusive. Pick one and stay in it.
Volumes 1 to 3: the valley
Out From Boneville, The Great Cow Race and Eyes of the Storm, about 460 pages and quick ones — Smith's storytelling is unusually clean and the dialogue is sparse, so most readers do a volume an evening. The comedy is at its broadest in the first two. Eyes of the Storm is where the tonal floor drops for the first time.
Volumes 4 to 6: the middle
The Dragonslayer, Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border and Old Man's Cave. Rock Jaw, Master of the Eastern Border is the volume readers most often call the slowest, and they are right — it is a detour with a new cast in the mountains. Read it anyway and read it in one sitting, because it is short and nearly everything in it pays off in the last two volumes. Old Man's Cave is where the series stops being reversible.
Volumes 7 to 9: the ending
Ghost Circles, Treasure hunters and Crown of Horns are one unit, about 520 pages, best read across two or three sittings within a week. This is the darkest stretch by a distance: the valley itself is unmade in Ghost Circles, characters you have known since the comedy volumes are in real danger, and the tone is closer to a siege novel than to the book you started. Crown of Horns should be read in one go — it is the payoff for fifty-five issues and it is paced as a single movement.
Around Bone
Rose is the prequel, painted rather than cartooned by Charles Vess, and it is beautiful. Do not read it first. It spoils the main series and the main series spoils it, and the surprise runs in both directions.
Stupid Stupid Rat-Tails is a hundred pages of tall tales about the Bone cousins' ancestor, readable in an hour and entirely optional. RASL is a different proposition — Smith's adult work, a dimension-hopping art thief, with sex and violence in it. Read it because you liked the cartoonist, not because you liked Bone.
Where to stop
There is no stopping point inside the nine volumes; the story does not resolve until Crown of Horns. If nine volumes is too many, read the first three and treat them as a complete comedy, which is roughly how they were received when they came out. Everything after Old Man's Cave is a commitment. More comics reading orders are on Discover.
Follow the full ordered path here: Bone Reading Order and Reading Guide.
