The Great Game Books in Order

The Great Game begins in 1914 with Edward Exeter, an English schoolboy on the edge of war and adulthood, but that is only half the story. Somewhere beside ordinary reality lies another world, often called Nextdoor, where gods are real, prophecy has teeth, and Edward has been marked for a destiny he neither asked for nor understands.

That double setting is what gives the trilogy its character. On one side you have public schools, friendship, suspicion, and the outbreak of the First World War. On the other you have rival deities, magic, sacrifice, and the possibility that Edward may become a liberator or a disaster. Duncan keeps the two threads talking to each other, so the books feel both historical and fantastical at once.

Fate is the big subject here.

Edward is not simply walking through a portal and learning swordplay. He is being pulled by history, by prophecy, and by other people's plans. The tension comes from how little freedom he seems to have, and how hard he still tries to act decently inside that trap. The trilogy gets stranger and more ambitious as it goes, but it never loses sight of one young man trying to work out what kind of person he wants to be.

Readers should expect a clever, slightly offbeat fantasy rather than a standard quest. The pleasure is in the collision between wartime Earth and divine politics next door. If you like parallel worlds, prophecy stories, and fantasy that uses real history as part of its pressure cooker, this series stands out.