Derrick Smythe Books in Order

If you want the main epic fantasy arc: The Other Magic → The Other Way → The Other Battle
If you want the full published reading order: The Other Magic → To Earn the Sash → The Other Way → To Wield a Plague → The Other Battle
If you want villain and Klerol backstory first: To Earn the Sash → The Other Magic
If you want a standalone side adventure before the series: To Wield a Plague → The Other Magic

Derrick Smythe grew up in Mexico, in upstate New York, and fantasy got to him early. He has said he spent childhood summers charging through the woods with his brothers, carrying sharpened sticks and pretending the trees hid elves, dwarves, and magic.

Books came with that territory. An eighth grade English teacher, Ms. Ryan, told him he had real writing talent, and that bit of encouragement stuck. He took writing more seriously after that, not as a passing hobby but as something he could keep improving for years. He later said that the appeal of writing felt a lot like sports: raw talent helped, but the real progress came from putting in the work.

Another turning point arrived while he was finishing his undergraduate studies at SUNY Oswego. A friend asked him to return Raymond E. Feist's Magician, and Smythe read it before handing it back. That novel sent him straight back into the kind of sweeping adventure fantasy he loved, and soon he was sketching maps, inventing histories, and building the world that would grow into The Other Magic. He did not simply imagine a plot. He started drawing a world map and writing small histories for different peoples, which says a lot about the kind of fantasy writer he was becoming.

He did not race to publication. He joined a local writers' group, kept drafting, and scrapped or rewrote early versions until the story finally matched what he had in mind. By the time The Other Magic appeared in 2019, he had spent years learning both the craft side of writing and the practical side of putting a book into the world. He chose the independent route and spent a long stretch getting the surrounding pieces right, from editing and cover art to maps and production.

It was a slow build.

That debut paid off. The Other Magic became an Amazon bestseller and picked up a run of indie awards and honors, and Smythe kept expanding the same world with To Earn the Sash, The Other Way, To Wield a Plague, and The Other Battle. Across those books, he returns to a few things again and again: dangerous power, pressure from religion and empire, and characters who have to make hard choices before they understand the full cost. The books later reached audio listeners too, which helped the series travel a bit further.

What stands out in his fiction is the mix of scale and closeness. The Passage to Dawn novels move through multiple viewpoints and a big secondary world, but the stories stay anchored to people like Kibure, Sindri, Aynward, Dagmara, and Dwapek as politics, prophecy, and war close in around them. The companion stories narrow the lens and give extra weight to figures such as Grobennar, Rajuban, and Dwapek, showing how much was already in motion before the main trilogy opened. Even when the cast gets large, he seems most interested in how institutions push ordinary people into difficult roles.

Smythe has also been open about how ordinary life fits around the work. At the time his first novel launched, he was teaching social studies and Advanced Placement United States History, and in interviews he has described getting up around 4:45 in the morning to write before the rest of the house woke up. It is a very unglamorous routine, which may be why it feels believable.

He likes big worlds, but he built his career the patient way.

He still lives near his hometown in upstate New York with his wife, Kelly, their four children, and an Australian Shepherd named Magnus. When he is away from the page, he likes hiking in the Adirondacks and traveling. The writing life and family life seem to run alongside the books rather than apart from them, which feels fitting for a fantasy writer whose stories are so full of long roads, hard work, and stubborn hope.