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Has anyone read this yet? I loved magician and a lot of the Riftwar Saga, but kind of lost my way around Prince of the Blood. I'm curious to know if I need to read the rest of the Riftwar books to fully appreciate this one, or does it work with just a few of the first ones?

Val wrote: "Has anyone read this yet? I loved magician and a lot of the Riftwar Saga, but kind of lost my way around Prince of the Blood. ..."

I almost included Magician's End among my Books You're Looking Forward To... entries. But like you, I'm not even close to being current with the lengthy series these days. I'm afraid Feist has simply dragged out the storyline past the point where I'm paying much attention.

After reading the wiki a little, it seems Prince of the Blood is part of an unfinished trilogy anyway - so maybe I can skip that without problem. Legends of riftwar sounds like side stories (I read Honoured Enemy which was quite good though) but that still leaves 10 books till the end :p

I tried to grasp the series a while back. Having read magician (apprantice + master), silverthorn, darkness at sethanon, I saw several books in the store and was at a loss. But thanks to wikipedia I found that the next logical step was to read the Empire trilogy, but I could never quite get past the first chapters of the third book (Mistress of the Empire), and since then I've not read further on any of Feist's works.

I never read the Empire Trilogy and from the sound of it Feist never intended for the characters of that trilogy to be used in the books beyond. I think I might just jump back in from the last trilogy. Feist seems to have made a little mess with all the cancelled books and collaborations in his universe.

The Empire trilogy is only vaguely connected with the events in Midekemia and you can easily skip it if you want. Personally i rather enjoyed it but that's just my opinion.
Prince of the Blood and the Kings Buccaneers are very entertaining books as well. I would suggest you start there.

Prince of the Blood was the one that got me kind of bored ;) possibly because its character were starting to become far removed from the initial cast.

I used to love Raymond E. Feist's books, but the books deteriorated in quality and length considerably over the years. I stuck with them until recently, but most of the last few were disappointing - too short, each book just an instalment advancing the plot a little (and some got a bit repetitive). I've just got the last trilogy to read I think, which I said to myself I would read once the final book was out. The final book is supposed to be quite good, so may be worth it.

If you've only read the Riftwar trilogy (Magician, Silverthorn, Darkness at Sethanon), I wouldn't bother trying to read them all, it won't be worth it and you'll probably be disappointed with many of the later books. If like me you've read a lot more, it may be worth pushing through to the end. Here's my view of the post Riftwar trilogy books and whether they're 'essential reading' or can be bypassed.

Prince of the Blood - This is a real 'filler' book, small scale story, about the only thing of note is that it introduces the character of Nakor who is ultimately one of Feist's more interesting and important characters in the overall saga. He only gets a bit part in this though, being properly introduced in the next book. So you can quite happily skip this book completely.

The King's Buccaneer - Again this is a stand alone book, but it fleshes out the character of Nakor quite a bit more and sets the scene for his Serpentwar Saga. You can skip this book if you want, but it really is one of Feist's better ones and can be read as a standalone book without reading any others of his.

Empire Trilogy (with Janny Wurts) - chunky trilogy which is very interesting as it tells the story of the other side of the Rift. It is quite different from Feist's other books (and most fantasy books in general). They're very good books IMHO, if a bit long winded in places, but can safely be skipped without missing anything important in the overall saga.

The Serpentwar Saga - (starting with Shadow of a Dark Queen) . Four book series, my favourite series after the original trilogy. Most of the original human characters from Magician are now dead, but there's a new set of really good characters, including the return of Nakor. The fourth book is a bit poor, as the main story arc finishes in book 3 strangely enough, so you can probably miss book 4 if you are in a hurry.

After this, the next couple of books (Talon of the Silver Hawk, King of Foxes etc) are quite good but after that he starts to go downhill. The following books can be skipped, as they are just minor filler stories:

Krondor: The Betrayal (1998)
Krondor: The Assassins (1999)
Krondor: Tear of the Gods (2000)
Jimmy and the Crawler (2013)

Honoured Enemy (2001)
Murder in LaMut (2002)
Jimmy the Hand (2003)

All the other series - Conclave of Shadows, Darkwar, Demonwar & Chaoswar - are important to the ever more convoluted overarching plot if you want to understand the final book (with the caveat I haven't read any of the Chaoswar yet, I'm just assuming they're important!)

Sorry, really long post. Hope it is useful!

Thanks for a good summary. Gives me a good idea about which ones to read. Cheers!