Reading order
Rats reading order
1
2
3- 7.57.5 / 1074 ratings
- Score
- 3 volumes
- Volumes
- 1974–1984
- Published
- about 15 h
- Reading time
- Completed
- Status
- Horror
- Genre
Quick answer
Publication order
3 volumes1974–1984Completed
- Three books, ten years apart, and each one widens the frame: The Rats is a London horror novel, Lair moves to the forest, and Domain is what happens to the city after the bombs, with the rats waiting underneath.
- Read them in order — Domain in particular pays off the first two.
- Herbert also wrote a fourth, The City, in graphic-novel form; it closes the story but reads nothing like the novels.
A plan for the whole series
3 volumes, 844 pages, about 15 hours. At 45 min a day that is 21 days.
Stages
This series fits in one stage. You finish around November 19, 2026.
- Stage 115 h21 daysby November 19, 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
Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 29, 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which Rats book is the longest?
“Domain” is the longest at 412 pages; the shortest is “The Rats” with 188 pages.