JR Mathews Books in Order

JR Mathews spent years working as a public defender in a major U.S. city while carrying around the old wish to write fantasy and science fiction. He had been a genre reader for most of his life, but writing kept getting pushed aside by work, stress, and the usual noise of adulthood.

Then 2021 changed things.

During the pandemic, and deep into burnout and depression from a job he has described as already stressful, he sat down and started writing for the first time in almost twenty years. The result was Jake's Magical Market, a debut novel that begins in a neighborhood grocery store and then tips hard into apocalypse, monsters, gods, and a card-based magic system.

He released the book in October 2021 without expecting much. By his own account, he thought maybe a small number of people would read it. Instead it found an audience fast, and Mathews suddenly had to learn the business side of self-publishing while still juggling his day job. That surprise success eventually let him step away from public defense and write full-time.

Not a bad career pivot.

His next big swing was Portal to Nova Roma, a series about Alexander, a rogue AI who escapes Earth for an alternate Constantinople where magic is real and monsters have torn civilization apart. It is a very Mathews kind of setup: a huge genre premise, a lot of careful system thinking, and a character who has to build something lasting in a broken world instead of just surviving the next fight.

The historical side of that series did not come out of nowhere. Mathews studied history as an undergraduate, with a focus on the Byzantine Empire, and one of the highlights of those studies was a trip to Istanbul to see the Theodosian Walls. He has said that his fascination with Constantinople sat in the back of his mind for years before it finally clicked with his love of LitRPG and portal fantasy. He and his wife even bounced title ideas around on their daily walks before Portal to Nova Roma finally clicked.

You can see his interests clearly across Portal to Nova Roma, Portal to Nova Roma: Venice, and Portal to Nova Roma: The Rhine. He likes broken worlds, practical magic, systems that shape daily life, and protagonists who have to learn what power is actually for. Sometimes that means cards and shopkeeping. Sometimes it means legions, sea lanes, and city walls.

Readers usually come to Mathews for momentum, progression, and big ideas, but his books also make room for planning, logistics, and downtime. He has named writers like L.E. Modesitt Jr., Lois McMaster Bujold, and Tad Williams as major influences, and that mix makes sense. His stories enjoy the build-up as much as the payoff, and they tend to care about grief, loyalty, rebuilding, and the work of making a place worth living in.

These days, Mathews writes full-time. The public version of his bio is still pretty short, but the books themselves give a solid sense of his lane: game systems, ruined worlds, odd humor, and people trying to hold on to their humanity when everything around them has gone strange.