Reading order
Dalemark Quartet reading order
- 4 volumes
- Volumes
- 1975–1993
- Published
- about 23 h
- Reading time
- Completed
- Status
Quick answer
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Publication order
4 volumes1975–1993Completed
- Diana Wynne Jones’s four loosely linked fantasy novels about Dalemark, a land split between a free North and a harsh, earl-ruled South.
- Cart and Cwidder follows Moril, son of a family of travelling singers, whose father’s old instrument holds more power than anyone suspects; Drowned Ammet follows a boy drawn into a rebel plot; The Spellcoats jumps into the distant past, told by a girl who weaves her story into coats.
- The Crown of Dalemark, written fourteen years later, ties everything together.
- Thoughtful, less playful than her other books.
- No book has enough ratings yet.
- Read in order.
A plan for the whole series
4 volumes, 1,267 pages, about 23 hours. At 45 min a day that is about 4 weeks.
Stages
2 stages, with 1 short book from outside the series between them. You finish around December 3, 2026, 4 days later than in one go.
- Stage 115 h19 daysby November 17, 2026
- Short breakThe Fire Next Time · James Baldwin · 120 pp. · score 8.8
- Stage 29 h12 daysby December 3, 2026
- The end of the series
We count 1.1 min per page, the pace of an average novel reader. Faster? Move the slider.
How this plan is calculated
The plan comes from the pages and ratings of each volume: we split the series into stages of about three weeks’ reading, size each break to the stage before it, and read the chance of finishing from how many readers rate the last volume compared with the first. How we work out the plan →
Every volume in order
No volume in this series has enough ratings to enter a ranking yet, so the list carries no scores — the order and the volumes are still complete.
Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 29, 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which Dalemark Quartet book is the longest?
“The Crown of Dalemark” is the longest at 474 pages; the shortest is “Cart and Cwidder” with 193 pages.
What should I read after Dalemark Quartet?
Other series by Diana Wynne Jones: Chrestomanci series, La Trilogie de Hurle.
