Five Hundred Kingdoms
#5503.91 in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 7 books Status Complete 2004–2012 Reading commitment High Mercedes Lackey Last reviewed 2026-08-20
Overview
Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms is Mercedes Lackey's completed seven-novel sequence of fairy-tale retellings (2004-2012, Luna/Harlequin), set in a secondary world shaped by "the Tradition," a semi-sentient narrative force that keeps trying to push real people's lives into recognisable fairy-tale shapes, whether or not that suits them. Each novel follows a different protagonist wrestling with a different tale-type, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, the Snow Queen, and others, with occasional shared secondary characters, including recurring fairy godmothers who work as a kind of magical civil service correcting the Tradition's worst excesses, rather than a single continuing cast. The series opened with The Fairy Godmother in 2004 and closed with A Tangled Web in 2012, and its self-aware treatment of fairy-tale tropes as an active, sometimes coercive force places it alongside other early-2000s metafictional fairy-tale fantasy exploring the mechanics of "story" itself.
Fairy-tale retelling · For Adult
Core Canon: Reading Order (7 works) counts toward ranking
Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms Mercedes Lackey
| Work | Year | Internal chron. | Canon | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | The Fairy Godmother | 2004 | 1 | core | 4.00 (19,594 ratings) |
 | One Good Knight | 2006 | 2 | core | 3.89 (11,154 ratings) |
 | Fortune's Fool | 2007 | 3 | core | 3.87 (9,562 ratings) |
 | The Snow Queen | 2008 | 4 | core | 3.81 (8,140 ratings) |
 | The Sleeping Beauty | 2010 | 5 | core | 4.00 (7,736 ratings) |
 | Beauty and the Werewolf | 2011 | 6 | core | 3.80 (8,052 ratings) |
 | A Tangled Web | 2012 | 7 | core | 3.87 (2,373 ratings) |
A completed 7-book sequence of standalone fairy-tale-retelling novels sharing one meta-fictional secondary world ("The Tradition", a narrative-causality force that pushes real lives toward familiar fairy-tale shapes), published 2004-2012 by Luna/Harlequin.
Quick answers
- How many books are in Five Hundred Kingdoms? Five Hundred Kingdoms's Core Canon is 7 books.
- What is the reading order for Five Hundred Kingdoms? Publication order, starting with The Fairy Godmother. Full list and years in the Core Canon table above.
- Is Five Hundred Kingdoms finished? Complete (2004–2012).
- How much reading does Five Hundred Kingdoms take? High reading commitment (estimated from 7 Core Canon books · ~1,785 pages).
- How is Five Hundred Kingdoms ranked? #550 in this site's official ranking, based on 66,611 reader ratings across 7 Core Canon books. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #550?
Ranked #550 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 3.91 across 7 core books.
- A smaller readership (66,611 ratings), so the score carries less weight of numbers.
- Less than 0.01 behind #549, Krabat (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
Why explore this universe?
Rated · 7 books · Complete · 67k ratings · Ranks #550 overall
Good choice if you want a long-running fairy-tale retelling fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
Publication order (7 Core Canon books)
- The Fairy Godmother (2004)
- One Good Knight (2006)
- Fortune's Fool (2007)
- The Snow Queen (2008)
- The Sleeping Beauty (2010)
- Beauty and the Werewolf (2011)
- A Tangled Web (2012)
Documented internal/story chronology is recorded for every Core Canon book here, and matches publication order exactly, with no divergence to show separately.
Awards (verified)
- No awards found for this universe.
You might also like
Suggestions computed from what Five Hundred Kingdoms and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
- The Singing Hills Cycle Mythic fantasy / Fairy-tale retelling · Ongoing · High commitment · 4.01
- The Elemental Masters Historical fantasy / Fairy-tale retelling · Ongoing · High commitment · 3.97
- Lyonesse Epic fantasy / Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Medium commitment · 4.05
- Malice Duology Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Low commitment · 3.86
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.91 across 66,611 ratings on 7 Core Canon books. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Five Hundred Kingdoms admitted as its own universe (Mercedes Lackey) accepted 2026-08-20
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Rating-platform listing: Five Hundred Kingdoms series Tier 2
- Reference listing: A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms Tier 3
- https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/mercedes-r-lackey/five-hundred-kingdoms/
Last reviewed: 2026-08-20
Rule: Core Canon is all 7 novels of the completed main sequence. No separate Expanded Canon material (short fiction, tie-ins) has been identified.