Jon Hollins Books in Order
Part ofTim Pratt Books in OrderExplore Jon Hollins books in order, with short summaries, series background, and help choosing where to start with his comic fantasy adventures.
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Jon Hollins books in publication order
10 books
No Hero
by Jon Hollins
2011
Oxford detective Arthur Wallace prefers action-movie heroics to real danger, but a secret government agency wants his help fighting creatures from another dimension. Recruited against the tentacled Progeny, he faces threats that ordinary police work never prepared him for.
The Book of Cthulhu
by Tim Pratt
2011
This anthology gathers modern takes on Lovecraftian horror, from quiet encounters with the uncanny to full-scale cosmic dread. Its stories explore what happens when old gods and forbidden truths intrude on ordinary lives.
The Best of Electric Velocipede
by Ken Liu
2012
Thirty-four stories and poems drawn from Electric Velocipede's twelve-year run bring together speculative work by many contributors. The anthology includes an editor's foreword and an introduction, gathering selections from a magazine devoted to unusual science fiction and fantasy.
The Book of Cthulhu II
by Tim Pratt
2012
A wide-ranging anthology of new cosmic-horror stories inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos. The collection sends writers toward forbidden knowledge, ancient beings, and the terrible costs of looking too closely.
Yesterday's Hero
by Jon Hollins
2012
Arthur Wallace's work for Britain's paranormal agency brings zombie dinosaurs, Russian cyborg wizards, and a threatening new co-director. Investigating a plot to recreate Chernobyl in London, he must confront occult science while keeping his troubled team together.
Anti-Hero
by Jon Hollins
2015
An attack by monstrous machines sends Arthur Wallace and his team to Area 51 with the peculiar Agent Gran. Their investigation leads toward spore zombies and a new version of Clyde whose plan to save the world threatens humanity.
Broken Hero
by Jon Hollins
2016
Arthur Wallace must manage a growing collection of supernatural crises, including an adolescent demigod, a renegade Nazi clockwork army, and a Nepalese death cult. Personal problems within his team complicate efforts to prevent a magical bomb from destroying reality.
Fool's Gold
by Jon Hollins
2016
Dragons rule the land through overwhelming power and punishing taxes, leaving their human subjects little freedom. A group of unlikely misfits decides to challenge that arrangement by joining forces to steal some of the wealth their rulers have accumulated.
False Idols
by Jon Hollins
2017
The unlikely rebels who overthrew Kondorra's dragon rulers are now wealthy and celebrated, but their victory offers little security. Discovering that those dragons were only part of a much greater force, they confront a threat extending across the world.
Bad Faith
by Jon Hollins
2018
Will and his companions have earned fame fighting the dragons that once ruled them, but their campaign has angered the gods. Facing divine enemies, the former dragon slayers must consider seeking help from the creatures they fought to overthrow.
Jon Hollins books in chronological order
Series background & context
Jon Hollins writes comic fantasy with a taste for capers, bad plans, and people who are trying to survive worlds built by much more powerful beings. His main sequence is the Dragon Lords trilogy, which begins with Fool's Gold and continues through False Idols and Bad Faith.
The basic setup is gleefully rude to the usual fantasy hierarchy. Dragons have ruled for a very long time, they have amassed enormous wealth, and most ordinary people have little reason to think the arrangement will change. Then a few thieves, mercenaries, and assorted troublemakers see an opening.
Naturally, it gets complicated.
The books follow a growing resistance to dragon rule, but they do not treat rebellion as a clean march toward glory. Hollins makes room for greed, fear, rival agendas, magical disasters, and the very practical question of how a ragtag group is meant to fight creatures with money, armies, and wings. The action is broad and energetic, with heists, escapes, fights, and schemes that can turn sideways fast.
Will is at the heart of the series, though the story expands around a larger cast as the stakes grow. He begins as someone used to getting by rather than leading a revolution. That makes him a useful guide through the early books, because he sees the absurdity of the world even while he is forced to take its dangers seriously.
The jokes are part of the machinery.
Hollins uses familiar fantasy materials, ancient gods, monsters, prophecies, heroic quests, and turns them into opportunities for sharp dialogue and increasingly messy consequences. But the trilogy still has an ongoing arc. Each installment pushes the struggle with the dragons further, adds pressure to the alliances holding the heroes together, and asks what happens after people decide the old rulers have to go.
This is a good series for readers who want fantasy that moves quickly and does not stand on ceremony. Start with Fool's Gold, since it introduces the world, the crew, and the first crack in the dragons' control. Read in order after that, because the victories and betrayals carry forward.
Expect battles and jokes in roughly equal measure, with a real rebellion underneath the chaos.
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