Opar Books in Order

The Opar books let Farmer move backward instead of forward. Rather than taking Edgar Rice Burroughs's lost city as an old ruin, he reimagines it in its living age, set against the larger prehistoric empire of Khokarsa in ancient Africa.

Hadon is the main figure at the center of the first two books. He begins as the kind of hero who wants glory, rank, and a chance to prove himself in public competition. What complicates him is the world around him, because personal ambition quickly gets swallowed by civil war, priestly conflict, dynastic struggle, and prophecy.

The setting does a lot of the work. Khokarsa is not generic lost-world scenery. It feels built from old religions, old loyalties, and old geography. Opar matters because it sits inside that larger system, not outside it, and the series keeps pulling the action between intimate stakes and empire-sized ones.

These books read like muscular adventure. There are escapes, battles, journeys, and political turns, but there is also a lot of careful background humming underneath them. If you want Farmer in full lost-civilization mode, with ancient history treated as both playground and puzzle, this is where to look.