Some might be confused about which order Vreteno Asterism accessed.
You can read titles both vertically (which is, more or less, chronological) and horizontally (which I address as a BoQuS Way). Each path will give you different mysteries to wait for but, as in life, it isn’t necessary to know each and every thing to understand the story you find yourself in.
The stories can be read in any order possible. Even within themselves, the books offer you navigation by which you might skip over parts you dislike or reorder the priority of the plot that interests you the most.
If that’s not the answer that satisfies you, there are different ordering lists by which you might want to abide by.
BoQuS Way is a path you follow me through like you’re reading a huge book as I compose it.
There is always an option to read books in a chronological way but here you must keep in mind that there will be a need to trace back when additional titles appear in earlier Eras.
The start of any series might be the door you entered through.
Saga Former Pawns follows ripples made by one man but each book is a contained story happening in a different place following characters that have no knowledge of events of other books.
If you start with Former Pawns: To Escape, you won’t have prequels, for now. Your climb will be from the time of carriages and first cars towards the stars.
If you start your read with Vestigial Queens: They Will Be Uplifted, things before it will be prequels for you and books after sequels.
They Will Be Uplifted is a good starting point since it is one of the first books that were started. (On the question in which order they were written, that question is impossible to answer because of the discontinuous way of writing where things are started, continued, rewritten and reinterpreted over decades.)
Series that are under the same umbrella title are best read in order.
Sagas Rogue Rooks and Barred Knights are written continuously with the same characters following their timelines closely. They are even intrinsically entwined with each other where Rogue Rooks take place just about two centuries before Barred Knights. They can be read separately or in an interchanging order starting with the first book of Rogue Rooks and then reading the first book of Barred Knights and then continuing in the same order. They will, most likely, be published in such order.
If you start with Rogue Rooks: From Ancestral Ashes, you’ll start on the story on the other side of the stars where interplanetary travel is already possible. Everything before will become prequels for you.
Jumping straight to saga Barred Knights might be a way for you to get interested. It’s a dynamic point of entry where you drop in the middle of conspiracy ready for a fight.
In Barred Knights: Through the Elder Spirit, you will search for a way to eat the cake and have it too. Love is hard in times of troubles but sometimes it’s the only distraction that give us enough patience to withstand limitations.
Saga Stray Bishops will most likely follow different characters as we venture into the future. First two books follow the same characters in the same place.
If you start with Stray Bishops: By Disobeying Rules, your outlook will be from the outside in. Previous places tried to contain the human genome in its purest form.
Saga Just Kings will take us a few steps into the future and remove us even further from humanity. In it, different variations of creatures managed to survive the disease becoming something new. As in any other venture, if you travel far enough you might end up returning to where you started your journey from.
If you choose to start your read with Just Kings: Rescue Them, you’ll find yourself in a completely new place full of strange rules and traps. Luckily, our guides are as charming as handsome. Fingers crossed that the journey won’t be too bumpy as it usually is on unpaved roads.
Of course, you may choose a Saga to stick with and ignore all the rest. Broader knowledge isn’t necessary to understand the human story that is told, the one we can relate to.
Vestigial Queens connect the past and the future making sort of a present-day-vibe on Earth-kind-of-a-place making it familiar enough to connect back to our times. It spawns future installations introducing us to the family that will be our red thread to follow through the ages. Each installation is decades, maybe even centuries, apart. Still, the thread we follow can best be seen in this saga.
If you start with Vestigial Queens, you’ll start the journey to the stars with dwellers of Earth crossing the threshold reluctantly, with regret and distrust of the new lands you’re venturing into.
Wherever you enter, the sense of disorientation and surety that you missed something isn’t a bad thing. We live our lives entering and exiting rooms interrupting moments and finding out only half-truths about events we missed out on.
It’s not necessary to know it all, follow your interests and stop when fatigue catches up with you. Of course, you’re free to return and start somewhere else even if you dislike the first room you stepped into, not all doors lead to the same place.
There are characters in here I loathe dearly but someone else might find them agreeable. There were plot lines that were hard to get through. Also, there were those plots I rushed to find out more about. There are stories within stories to which I return to re-read over and over again.
Our tastes won’t coincide but I try to make all my characters justice staying as neutral as I can. It’s a realm different from our own, strange rules apply but the ability to see the world through a set of eyes that differ from ours is the very thing which makes us sentient beings capable of compassion.