Mithgar: The Iron Tower Books in Order

The Iron Tower trilogy is where Mithgar first stepped onto the shelves, even though the world has since grown well beyond these three books. Originally published as The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day, the series tells the story of the Winter War, when the dark mage Modru of Gron nearly broke the Free Folk and plunged the land into permanent night.

The story begins in The Dark Tide with an unnaturally long, bitter winter and terrifying news: wolf like Vulgs are attacking Warrow farms in the Boskydells. In response, the young men of the wee folk train as Thornwalkers to guard their borders. Tuck Underbank, Danner Bramblethorn, and their friends march out expecting local patrols and instead find themselves pulled into a desperate effort to aid King Aurion of Challerain Keep against Modru's rising armies.

Shadows of Doom widens the canvas. Princess Laurelin is abducted by Modru's servants and taken to a fortress where she witnesses torture and cruelty, her fate uncertain. Tuck and the wizard Galen make the hard choice to seek allies rather than attempt a suicide rescue, traveling with a guide named Brega into the abandoned Dwarf stronghold of Kraggen Cor. Back in the Boskydells, Patrel Rushlock and Danner return home only to find it ravaged, and must fight to reclaim their homeland from Foul Folk.

In The Darkest Day, all of these threads converge. Modru moves to bring his exiled master fully into Mithgar, using a sinister stone to cast the world into rolling darkness so that his forces can march without fear of the sun. The Free Folk gather for a final stand, and Tuck, Merilee, Danner, and their remaining companions face devastating losses and high risk infiltrations as they try to break the siege from within.

Although the trilogy has often been compared to Tolkien because of its races and structure, it also has its own distinct flavor. McKiernan puts the Warrows at the center of events, giving the smallest people the heaviest burdens, and keeps the pace brisk, with battles and hard decisions never far apart. Later Mithgar books frequently look back to the Winter War as a defining moment, so readers who start here will recognise names, places, and scars echoed throughout the rest of the series.