Sins of Our Ancestors Books in Order

Sins of Our Ancestors is Baker's dystopian side at full strength. The series opens in a world warped by the Tercera virus, where touch is dangerous, old social rules have collapsed, and teenagers grow up under fear, surveillance, and rigid control. Ruby Behl lives in Port Gibson and wants things that should be ordinary, a future, a little freedom, maybe a kiss from the boy she has always liked. In this world, even that can become catastrophic.

Nothing about Ruby's life stays ordinary for long.

Ruby is the heart of the series. She is smart, impulsive, loyal, and constantly forced to make decisions before she has enough information. Wesley and Sam shape the emotional center around her in very different ways, but the bigger engine is Ruby's link to the virus itself. As the books unfold, she is pulled into questions about her parents, the origins of the disease, the people in power, and what it would actually take to save the Marked rather than simply control or eliminate them. The series uses romance and personal loyalties well, but it never forgets that whole communities are at stake.

The setting matters a lot here. Port Gibson and the wider broken world feel closed in, suspicious, and tense. There are leaders who claim to protect people while building their authority on fear. There are factions, quarantines, and long-buried secrets. Later books expand that world beyond the first crisis, showing what happens after a villain falls and people still have to live with the system that produced him. That is part of what makes Renounced and even the side-story novella Reclaimed feel worthwhile. They are not just add-ons. They ask what peace and purpose look like after survival mode ends.

Tone-wise, this is fast YA dystopian fiction with a strong romantic thread and a mystery spine. Baker likes to keep the emotional stakes close to the body, who is sick, who is safe, who is lying, who will be lost next. That keeps the books readable even when the world-building gets bigger. The science fiction element is there, but the series works best as a story about power, sacrifice, and the way fear can twist love into control.

If you want the cleanest entry point into Baker's early work, this is one of the best places to start. Read it in order, beginning with Marked. The books build directly on one another, and much of the fun comes from watching Ruby go from a teenager trapped inside someone else's rules to a person forced to decide what a better world should even look like.