Edward Brody Books in Order

If you want the clearest entry point: The Reborn → The Sparrow → The Sands
If you want the full early run: The Reborn → The Sparrow → The Sands → The Arena
After the setup, if you like bigger battles and politics: The Arena → The Omen → The Ascent
If you plan to keep going into the war arc: The Ascent → The Scourge

Edward Brody is from Los Angeles, California, and the short public bio attached to his books describes him as a traveling writer who spends time exploring foreign arts and culture. That image, part California home base, part restless movement, fits the fiction he is known for: stories about people thrown into unfamiliar worlds and forced to learn the rules fast.

Before readers found him through LitRPG, Brody published the science fiction novel Humanity in 2015. It centers on a future where Earth has been destroyed and the surviving human race is viewed with suspicion, which already points toward ideas he would keep returning to later, exile, identity, and the problem of starting over after everything familiar is gone.

Then, in 2017, The Reborn became the opening book of the series most readers know him for.

That novel launched the Eden's Gate series and introduced Gunnar Long, an ordinary man who enters a fully immersive MMO and discovers that Eden's Gate is not something he can simply walk away from. Brody uses the pleasures of role-playing games, classes, loot, leveling, quests, guilds, and dangerous zones, but he keeps the story tied to a basic human problem too: how do you build a real life in a place that first looked like an escape?

The early run of the series, The Reborn, The Sparrow, and The Sands, is where many readers get hooked. Those books mix survival, exploration, friendship, and settlement building as Gunnar makes a home in Edgewood, gathers allies, and turns a borrowed existence into something that starts to feel permanent. There is plenty of combat, but just as much energy goes into belonging.

That balance shapes the whole series.

As the story grows, so does the map. The Arena and The Omen pull Gunnar into larger conflicts involving kingdoms, rival factions, dragons, and the uneasy status of the Reborn, while The Ascent and The Scourge raise the stakes again with mage training, ancient weapons, open war, and harder moral choices. Even when the world gets bigger, Brody tends to anchor the books in practical goals: protect the village, strengthen the guild, rescue a friend, finish the quest, survive the next fight.

The setting choices in Eden's Gate are a big part of how the series works. Edgewood gives the books a home base, while places like Highcastle, the wildlands, and the Wastelands keep opening the story outward. That lets Brody shift from small-scale dungeon danger to political trouble and war without losing the game-world feel that defines the books.

Another recurring thread is Gunnar's search for connection. He is not just chasing experience points. He is looking for Rachel from his old life, figuring out who he can trust, and deciding how seriously to take the people of Eden's Gate as more than NPCs. The question of whether this world is a simulation, a prison, or a home runs through the series alongside the action.

Brody has kept most personal details out of public view, so the available biography is fairly lean. What does come through clearly is the shape of his writing life: a Los Angeles born author, a self-described traveling writer, and a storyteller who found a strong lane in long-form adventure fiction. If you come to his books looking for immersive worlds, momentum, and a hero who has to earn his place step by step, that is the territory he works in.