Stairway to Forever Books in Order

Stairway to Forever is Robert Adams doing portal fantasy in his own rough, adventurous way. The series begins when Fitzgilbert, known as Fitz, moves into an isolated, half-ruined house built on an earthen mound. Underneath it he finds a hidden stone passageway, steps through it, and drops into another world. From there the story opens out into something part quest tale, part lost-world fantasy, and part strange cosmic assignment.

At first the new world looks almost empty. There is shoreline, sand, inland waste, and a feeling that Fitz has walked somewhere he was never meant to find. That quiet does not last. He soon learns that he has been brought there for a reason, and that he will not be making the journey alone. One of the fun things about the series is the company Adams gives him: a Norman knight pulled from the eleventh century, a 1950s jazz musician trapped in a very unusual body, and other figures tied to powers much older and larger than Fitz understands.

It is a stranger series than Horseclans.

Where the earlier books lean on campaigns, clans, and post-apocalyptic politics, Stairway to Forever leans into hidden realms, old gods, inherited destinies, and the unnerving feeling that the rules of the world are only being explained one piece at a time. Fitz is not a chosen hero in the shiny fantasy sense. He is tired, battered, and not especially eager to be important. That reluctance gives the books some of their personality. He would like a quieter life. The forces around him have other plans.

In The Stairway to Forever, the focus is on discovery, survival, and the first hints that Fitz's role in this world is much bigger than he guessed. Monsters and Magicians broadens the picture. Fitz gains power, but power brings duty, and duty starts to look a lot like kingship. The dangers also grow larger, with warfare, monsters, magic, and clashes that pull together people and forces from wildly different times and places.

That mix is the series' real draw. Adams throws Norman crusaders, modern sensibilities, ancient powers, and weird landscapes into the same pot and lets the tension build from there. If you like portal fantasy that feels a little raw, a little military, and very willing to get odd, these books have a lot of charm.

The one catch is that the series was left unfinished. Adams completed The Stairway to Forever and Monsters and Magicians, and a third volume, Guideposts To Danger, was announced but never completed before his death. So readers should go in expecting an open road rather than a neatly closed ending. Even so, the two finished books offer a vivid setup, a memorable hero, and one of Adams's most unusual fictional worlds.