Katrina Baker Books in Order

Katrina Baker is one of Harrison's more unusual blends because it starts with a superpowered modern protagonist and then throws her into a secondary-world fantasy setup. Katrina is a super with mental abilities, but in Banished she is ripped away from modern life and dumped into a realm filled with magic, gods, and hostile nonhuman powers.

That fish-out-of-water angle gives the series much of its charm. Katrina is not entering a fantasy world as a blank slate. She brings modern habits, modern expectations, and a very different moral framework with her. Then the books keep raising the pressure through Elven Blight, Goblin Queen, Dwarven Steel, and Lady of Trelin, where survival turns into politics, leadership, and war. The portal premise never really disappears. It just becomes part of a much bigger conflict.

So the series offers two pleasures at once, a capable protagonist adapting to a strange world, and a fantasy realm that keeps getting more complicated the longer she stays in it.