Runemarks Books in Order

Runemarks is Joanne M Harris’s main doorway into her Nine Worlds myth cycle, a fantasy sequence that pulls Norse legend into a post-Ragnarok landscape shaped by religion, power, and the old argument between Order and Chaos. These books are full of gods, runes, tricksters, and prophecy, but they move with the energy of adventure rather than the weight of homework.

The world comes first. Five hundred years after Ragnarok, the old gods are no longer openly worshipped. Magic has been outlawed. A new religion called the Order wants certainty, control, and the end of dangerous old stories. That makes the setting feel half mythical, half political. Harris is interested not only in monsters and wonders, but in who gets to decide which stories are respectable and which ones must be erased.

At the centre of Runemarks is Maddy Smith, a girl marked out from the start by the rune on her hand and by the fact that nobody in her village quite trusts her. She is curious, stubborn, and much more powerful than she understands. Through Maddy, Harris gives you the world from ground level, a place of gossip, outlawed magic, hidden parentage, goblins, old gods in reduced circumstances, and the constant sense that something buried is waking up again.

Then Runelight widens everything. The aftermath of the first book does not bring peace so much as a bigger, stranger conflict. Maddy is no longer the only figure who matters. Her twin sister, Maggie Rede, comes into focus, and the battle between old powers and new forms of destruction becomes more personal as well as more cosmic. Harris lets the mythology expand, but keeps it anchored in family bonds, divided loyalties, and the awkward fact that saving the world is rarely neat.

Loki is everywhere, even when he is not centre stage.

That is worth knowing, because the wider Nine Worlds sequence also connects to The Gospel of Loki and The Testament of Loki. Those books shift the viewpoint to Loki himself, but they live in the same imaginative territory. If you want the cleanest route through this world, start with Runemarks, then Runelight, and only after that branch into the Loki books.

The tone here is adventurous, witty, and myth-heavy, but not solemn. Harris likes gods who sulk, schemes that misfire, and ancient powers that still behave like difficult people. If you want fantasy with real narrative momentum, strong character voices, and mythology treated as a living, unruly thing, this is one of the best places in her bibliography to begin.