The Order of the Air Books in Order

The Order of the Air is historical fantasy with propellers, bad weather, and old gods that would really prefer not to stay buried. Set in the 1930s, the series follows the people around Gilchrist Aviation, an aviation business that keeps stumbling into occult trouble at exactly the moment when simply keeping the business alive is hard enough.

That mix is the hook.

The cast includes pilots, mechanics, owners, veterans, and other working adults who feel like they belong to the Depression before they belong to fantasy. Their planes need fuel. Their business needs money. Their personal lives are complicated. Then something uncanny appears, often tied to history, archaeology, folklore, or the debris of older powers, and suddenly the line between practical problem and supernatural crisis disappears.

The books travel well. Lost Things begins with the draining of Lake Nemi and an ancient mystery surfacing with it. Steel Blues turns an air race into a high-stakes tangle of sabotage and the uncanny. Silver Bullet heads into winter crashes and the Rockies. Wind Raker carries the story into the Pacific. Oath Bound reaches Ethiopia as Fascist aggression spreads and old obligations come due.

The aviation detail gives the series its rhythm.

These are not stories about glamorous chosen ones. They are stories about skilled people doing a job, often underfunded and overtired, while history gets stranger around them. Scott and Graham are especially good at making friendship, attraction, and loyalty feel inseparable from the work. The found-family element is strong, but it is not sentimental. People argue. They make mistakes. They keep showing up anyway.

If you want occult adventure with a period feel but without a layer of artificial polish, this shelf delivers. It has travel, ghosts, relics, curses, political menace, and a cast that feels grounded enough to carry all of it. Think old pulp adventure with better emotional wiring and much better queer subtext, or text, depending on the book.