Roger Taylor Books in Order
Explore Roger Taylor’s books in order, from Hawklan and Nightfall to the standalones, with short summaries, series guides, and help on where to start.
Last updated: July 5, 2026
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Publication Order
15 books
The Call of the Sword
by Roger Taylor
1988
Healer Hawklan arrives at the abandoned keep of Anderras Darion with no memory of his past, only a growing sense of ancient power. As corruption spreads through Fyorlund, he is pulled toward a war that may explain who he really is.
The Fall of Fyorlund
by Roger Taylor
1989
Darkness spreads across Fyorlund as King Rgoric falls deeper under Dan-Tor’s influence and old safeguards are stripped away. Hawklan must decide whether he is truly a healer, or the one man who can stand against the coming night.
The Waking of Orthlund
by Roger Taylor
1989
Fyorlund has fallen, Dan-Tor rules, and the free lands are scrambling to survive. While Queen Sylvriss rallies exiles, Hawklan lies trapped in a coma and an ancient race stirs in the mountains.
Into Narsindal
by Roger Taylor
1990
Dan-Tor has retreated to Narsindal, where Sumeral’s power waits behind him. As the free peoples try to forge one last alliance, Hawklan and Gavor head toward the heart of the darkness and the secret buried in Hawklan himself.
Dream Finder
by Roger Taylor
1991
In the prosperous city of Serenstad, the fading Guild of Dream Finders gets one last chance when Duke Ibris is plagued by disturbing visions. Antyr and his companion Tarrian are drawn into a struggle that reaches from dreams into war and darker powers.
Farnor
by Roger Taylor
1992
Farnor Yarrance’s quiet valley life shatters when hunted strangers arrive from the south and something dreadful closes in from the north. Forced into the Great Forest, he begins to uncover powers in himself that he never wanted.
Valderen
by Roger Taylor
1993
As Rannick grows more unstable and dangerous, the valley can only watch events slide toward ruin. In the Great Forest, Farnor survives with the Valderen, but grief and rage may make him as frightening as the forces he hopes to fight.
Whistler
by Roger Taylor
1994
Ominous clouds change Brother Cassraw into a fierce religious zealot, threatening the balance of Canol Madreth and beyond. His friend Allyn Vredech must face a crisis of faith, sanity, and world-shaking power.
Arash-Felloren
by Roger Taylor
1996
In the ancient city of Arash-Felloren, a street thief named Pinnatte is marked for a grim destiny while dangerous changes spread through the crystal workers’ order. When Atlon learns what is really being set in motion, he has almost no one to trust.
Ibryen
by Roger Taylor
1996
Driven from his ancestral land by the Gevethen, Count Ibryen fights a losing war from the mountains. A mysterious call sends him into stranger realms in search of another way to resist an enemy tied to something even darker.
Caddoran
by Roger Taylor
1998
A ruthless commander plans to seize power in Arvenstaat, but his young messenger Thyrn senses the truth beneath the scheme and flees. Hunted into the mountains, Thyrn becomes the only one who can feel the darker force feeding that ambition.
The Return of the Sword
by Roger Taylor
1999
Years after Sumeral’s fall, travellers return with stories that should not fit together, but do. Old characters converge, buried threats reawaken, and the wider Hawklan world finally starts to reveal the shape of its greatest danger.
Aikido - More than a Martial Art
by Roger Taylor
2011
Taylor looks at aikido as more than a set of techniques, linking physical practice with discipline, outlook, and everyday conduct. It is a concise nonfiction companion from a writer who also taught and studied the art.
The Keep
by Roger Taylor
2011
Deep in the mountains, Josyff is sent to work on a vast and deeply unsettling keep under the New Order. Strange dreams, shifting spaces, and the arrival of Adroyan and Esyal push the story toward psychological fantasy and dread.
Newman
by Roger Taylor
2022
When John Newman takes control of the family business, he also inherits a secret with consequences far beyond the family itself. What follows is a crime-tinged story of corruption, pressure, and responsibility on a much larger scale.
Where should I start?
For the core Hawklan story: The Call of the Sword → The Fall of Fyorlund → The Waking of Orthlund → Into Narsindal → The Return of the Sword
If you want the wider Hawklan world: Dream Finder → Whistler → Ibryen → Arash-Felloren → Caddoran
If you prefer a tighter two-book arc: Farnor → Valderen
If you want the non-Hawklan novels: The Keep → Newman
Author bio
Roger Taylor was born in Heywood, Lancashire, in 1938. He spent much of his working life as a chartered civil and structural engineer, while building a second life as a novelist and nonfiction writer. He later lived on the Wirral, and he died in 2023.
He did not arrive as a young publishing prodigy. Between 1983 and 1986 he wrote four books, collected a sizable stack of rejections, and kept going. The breakthrough came when his third manuscript was accepted and then divided into two novels, published as The Call of the Sword in 1988 and The Fall of Fyorlund in 1989.
He stuck with it.
Those books opened the door to the world he became most closely linked with, the sprawling Hawklan setting. The core run moves from The Call of the Sword and The Fall of Fyorlund through The Waking of Orthlund and Into Narsindal, before reaching its larger payoff in The Return of the Sword. On the surface, these are classic epic fantasies with lost memories, ancient powers, dark forces, and threatened kingdoms. Underneath that, Taylor is often just as interested in duty, conscience, political pressure, and the uneasy line between healing and violence.
He kept widening that world rather than simply repeating himself. Books such as Dream Finder, Whistler, Ibryen, Arash-Felloren, and Caddoran are set in the same universe but shift the focus to different countries, customs, and kinds of protagonists. The two-book Nightfall story, Farnor and Valderen, does the same on a more intimate scale. Instead of staying close to kings and battlefield leaders, Taylor often writes about priests, guild members, refugees, wanderers, uneasy allies, and people who discover that the wider world is stranger than they thought.
That range fits the rest of his life too. Alongside fiction, he wrote Aikido - More than a Martial Art. He practiced and taught aikido, enjoyed shooting rifles, pistols, and shotguns, and was also a keen piano player, even if he was frank about not being especially polished at it. Those details feel very Taylor somehow. His books are full of discipline, tension, control, imbalance, and the question of what a person does with power once they find it.
He kept writing.
After the main fantasy run of the late 1980s and 1990s, he returned with The Keep, a stand-alone fantasy novel outside the Hawklan world, and much later with Newman, a crime novel published in 2022. That late change of direction says something useful about him. He was not only the author of one long fantasy project, but someone willing to try a different kind of story after decades of being known for swords, keeps, and dark powers.
Taylor never became one of the biggest commercial names in fantasy, but readers who find him often stay for the scale of the worldbuilding and the seriousness of the ideas beneath it. His novels are patient, wide-ranging, and unhurried in the old-school epic fantasy way. If you like fantasy that takes its setting seriously, lets mysteries build over time, and makes room for both battle and reflection, Roger Taylor is an easy writer to keep exploring.
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