The Cosmere, world by world

Every Shard. Every book.
Every spoiler.

Brandon Sanderson has been writing one long story for over twenty years. Here's how we've organized our nine years of conversation about it.

Read this first

A one-paragraph map.

The Cosmere is Sanderson's shared universe. Before the story begins, a god named Adonalsium is Shattered into sixteen Shards of Power — Honor, Cultivation, Ruin, Preservation, Endowment, Devotion, Dominion, Odium, and more. Mortals take up the Shards and scatter to different worlds. On each world, the Shard shapes its civilization and its magic: Scadrial (the Mistborn books), Roshar (The Stormlight Archive), Nalthis (Warbreaker), Sel (Elantris), and more. A small cast of worldhoppers — most famously Hoid — move between them, and every book is a chapter in a much longer story. Pick any world to start, and we'll meet you there.