Start with Wolf Brother and read in publication order. There is no chronological alternative here — the books run forward, each one picks up close behind the last, and the sequence is simply the order they were written.
The one thing worth knowing before you commit: the series is really two arcs. Wolf Brother, Spirit Walker (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #2), Soul eater (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #3), Outcast, Oath breaker and Ghost hunter were published between 2004 and 2009 as a single planned six-book story, and Ghost hunter ends it properly. The Viper's Daughter, Skin Taker and Wolfbane arrived from 2020 onward, more than a decade later, and are a second arc set shortly after the first. Stopping after Ghost hunter is a complete reading. Most people who continue are glad they did, but nothing is left hanging.
What the setting is
Six thousand years ago, in the forests of Mesolithic Europe. Torak is twelve when his father is killed by a demon-possessed bear and he is left alone. He falls in with a wolf cub, and then with Renn, a girl from the Raven Clan. Michelle Paver researched the period seriously and it shows in the texture — everything is made from something, food is a constant problem, and the spiritual world of the clans is presented as their reality rather than as superstition to be corrected.
The wolf chapters are written from the wolf's point of view, in the wolf's sensory terms, and they are the thing readers remember. They are also the thing that occasionally makes adults assume the books are younger than they are.
The first arc, book by book
Wolf Brother is the demon bear and the first separation from Wolf. Spirit Walker (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #2) takes Torak to the Seal Clan islands and introduces the sickness plot. Soul eater (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #3) moves north into the ice and is the bleakest of the six. Outcast is the one most readers name as the strongest: Torak is exiled by his own people and the book is about being cast out rather than about a quest. Oath breaker and Ghost hunter run the endgame against the Soul-Eaters, and Ghost hunter closes it.
The second arc
The Viper's Daughter shifts the centre of gravity toward Renn, which is a deliberate correction and a welcome one. Skin Taker and Wolfbane follow. These three are written for the readers of the first six grown a little older; they are darker in places and assume you remember the earlier books in some detail. Read them in order, and read them only after Ghost hunter.
Paver's other books, which are not this series
Gods And Warriors is a separate children's series set in the Bronze Age Mediterranean — different world, different characters, roughly the same reading level. Only its first book is on this path; there are five in total.
Dark Matter, Thin Air and Wakenhyrst are adult novels and should not be handed to a nine-year-old who liked Torak. The first two are ghost stories set on polar and Himalayan expeditions and are genuinely frightening; Wakenhyrst is a Gothic novel set in the Suffolk fens. They share Paver's research habit and her interest in isolated landscapes, and nothing else.
For the adult choosing these for a child
The books are commonly shelved from around nine upward. The violence is real and not stylised: animals are hunted and killed and eaten, people die, Torak is starving and injured for large stretches, and the demons are frightening rather than comic. Soul eater in particular is grim. Whether that suits a particular reader is a judgement about that reader, not about an age. Reading the first one first is the cheapest way to find out. More series reading orders are on Discover.
Follow the full ordered path here: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Reading Order: Where to Start.
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