Start with Magician. Publication order is the correct order throughout Midkemia — Feist never wrote a prequel that rewards being read first — so the only genuinely confusing decision at the start of this series is which physical book to buy, and it catches people constantly.
Here is the trap. Magician was published outside the United States as one enormous volume. The US publisher split it in two, as Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master. The first half covers Pug's apprenticeship and the opening of the rift; the second follows him into captivity on Kelewan. Our catalogue reflects that split, and the record for the first half — Magician / Assassin's Apprentice — is an omnibus that pairs Feist with a Robin Hobb novel, while the second half appears as Raymond E. Feist's Magician Master the Great One. If you find the single-volume Magician, you already have both halves and should not buy a second book. If you are buying the split edition, a plain Magician: Apprentice is the simpler purchase. Getting this wrong is the most common way readers start Feist badly, either buying the same story twice or stopping halfway through what they think is a complete novel.
Stage one: the Riftwar itself
Around 700 to 800 pages, and it does not resist you — this is fast, plain, propulsive fantasy at 30 pages a day. A gateway between the worlds of Midkemia and Kelewan opens a war, and roughly thirty later novels assume you know how and why. Pug and Tomas are deliberate opposites, one becoming a magician and the other inheriting Valheru armour and something close to a god's memory, and that split governs the whole original saga.
The captivity section is the structural hinge of the entire project: the enemy stops being an enemy and becomes a place with its own politics. It is also where the Tsurani, a rigidly honour-bound imperial culture rather than a generic invading horde, become the most interesting invention in the books.
Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon finish the original saga. Both read faster than Magician did; Silverthorn is a tight, conventional quest novel that can be done in a week, and A Darkness at Sethanon opens almost directly out of its ending, so read them back to back.
The Empire trilogy: the best of Midkemia
Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire and Mistress of the Empire, written with Janny Wurts, run entirely on Kelewan and follow Mara of the Acoma through Tsurani politics. Many readers — including a good number who are lukewarm on the rest of Feist — think this is the best work in the whole of Midkemia, and the reason is that the Tsurani honour system built in Magician turns out to support a genuinely dense political novel.
They are long: 448, 691 and 676 pages, and denser with manoeuvre than anything in the original saga, so 30 pages a day rather than the 50 you may have managed earlier. Read all three in order and without a break. This is one continuous story.
The bridge books, and where to stop
This stage is explicitly optional and is designed to be abandoned partway. Read Prince of the Blood first; if it does not hold you, skip The King's Buccaneer and go straight to Shadow of a Dark Queen, which is the real test — it opens the Serpentwar Saga, the next major sequence, and if that does not grip you, the remaining twenty-odd Midkemia novels will not either.
Stopping after the Empire trilogy is a completely legitimate way to read Feist, and it is what this order recommends for most readers. You will have the war, the best books in the setting, and no obligation to a thirty-volume commitment.
If you want the other end of the political-fantasy spectrum, the Vorkosigan Saga does something comparable in science fiction. More reading orders are on Discover.
Follow the full ordered path here: Riftwar Reading Order: Where to Start.
