Infinity Ring Books in Order

The Infinity Ring books take James Dashner’s love of puzzles and throw them straight into history. The series is set in a near-future timeline where earthquakes, strange weather, and political unrest are symptoms of something deeper: key moments in the past have been changed, and the world is cracking under the strain.

At the center are three kids. Dak Smyth is a history-obsessed troublemaker, Sera Froste is a science prodigy, and Riq Jones is a teenage language whiz trained by a secret group called the Hystorians. Together they use a handheld time-travel device known as the Infinity Ring to visit “Great Breaks” in history—points where a shadowy organization called the SQ altered events for its own benefit.

In A Mutiny in Time, Dashner’s opening volume, the team travels to 1492 and boards the Santa María, trying to prevent a mutiny that would kill Christopher Columbus and send the timeline spinning even further off course. Each subsequent book by other authors tackles a different era, from Viking sieges to Mongol invasions and World War II espionage, with Dak, Sera, and Riq trying to nudge history back toward something recognizably our own.

Dashner returns to close out the main arc in The Iron Empire. This time the kids are thrown into ancient Greece, where the assassination of Alexander the Great is tied to the very first Break in history. They’re no longer just reacting to emergencies; they’re confronting the roots of the SQ’s power and the possibility that their missions have changed more than they’ve fixed.

Across the series, the tone stays brisk and adventure-heavy: cliffhangers, narrow escapes, and clever uses of half-remembered dates from social studies class. But under the fun there are real stakes—entire civilizations that may never develop, cultures twisted by small changes, and a trio of young travelers who are starting to understand the cost of rewriting the past.

For readers following Dashner’s work in particular, his two volumes bookend the Infinity Ring saga and give you a clear entry and exit point. The shared-world structure means you can keep going with the whole eight-book run if you enjoy the mix of time travel, alternate history, and middle-grade teamwork.