Susan L Markloff

The World of Tilion has become a vast and expansive universe in and of itself. I hadn't intended for it to become quite so large, but some stories demand deeper worlds, and The Human-Born Era is one of them. With the emergence of the parallel side-story novellas found in The Human-Born Chronicles, many people might be wondering where to start, and why I even went about writing a bunch of side-story novellas.

I intended for the HBCs to be read in between The Ties That Bind and The Reflection of the Raidin. The reason behind this is a few simple facts.

1. The character list for the HBE is pretty expansive, and telling tertiary characters' stories rounds out the world and gives the depth that Tilion demands.

2. The Human-Borns all become vital to the story as a whole, and their backgrounds and "origin stories" are telling for what you can expect of them moving forward. The Alpha Team starts to take a back seat as the Human-Borns become more and more the central characters throughout HBE3-5. Giving readers the chance to really get to know these kids was something I wanted to do once I determined my publishing plans.

If you're someone who only wants to read the most-most important books, I would humbly suggest you read all of the HBCs to fully grasp all of the clues that are littered throughout the pages. But, if you want the bare minimum of clues, I would suggest that everyone read Scholar and Requisite, as those are the two with the most information hidden within the pages, and leave it at that.

Technically, you can read any of The Human-Born Chronicles first, as they do all provide basic introductions into the World of Tilion and the general story arc. However, some things will be spoiled for The Ties That Bind if you choose to read the HBCs before reading Ties.