Reading order
The Adventures of Tintin reading order
- Tintin in the Land of the Soviets1929
- Tintin in the Congo1931
- Tintin in America1932
- Cigars of the Pharaoh1934
- The Blue Lotus1936
- The Broken Ear1937
- The Black Island1938
- King Ottokar's Sceptre1939
- The Crab with the Golden Claws1940
- The Shooting Star1941
- The Secret of the Unicorn1943
- Red Rackham's Treasure1944
- Every volume in order (24) ↓
1
3
4
5
6
9
10
11
12- 24 volumes
- Volumes
- 1929–1986
- Published
- about 30 h
- Reading time
- Completed
- Status
Quick answer
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Publication order
24 volumes1929–1986Completed
- The albums are numbered, and the order below is that numbering — also the order Hergé drew them.
- Two things are worth knowing before you buy book one.
- The first three are apprentice work: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is a crude political cartoon Hergé kept out of print for forty years, and Tintin in the Congo is a colonial-era book whose racism is not incidental to it.
- Many readers start at Cigars of the Pharaoh, or at The Blue Lotus, where the drawing and the research suddenly become the thing Tintin is famous for.
- Four pairs are two-part stories and have to be read together: Cigars of the Pharaoh with The Blue Lotus, The Secret of the Unicorn with Red Rackham's Treasure, The Seven Crystal Balls with Prisoners of the Sun, and Destination Moon with Explorers on the Moon.
A plan for the whole series
24 volumes, 1,575 pages, about 30 hours. At 45 min a day that is about 6 weeks.
Stages
2 stages, with 1 short book from outside the series between them. You finish around December 16, 2026, 9 days later than in one go.
- Stage 120 habout 4 weeksby November 24, 2026
- 1. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
- 2. Tintin in the Congo
- 3. Tintin in America
- 4. Cigars of the Pharaoh
- 5. The Blue Lotus
- 6. The Broken Ear
- 7. The Black Island
- 8. King Ottokar's Sceptre
- 9. The Crab with the Golden Claws
- 10. The Shooting Star
- 11. The Secret of the Unicorn
- 12. Red Rackham's Treasure
- 13. The Seven Crystal Balls
- 14. Prisoners of the Sun
- 15. Land of Black Gold
- 16. Destination Moon
- BreakMaus · Art Spiegelman · 295 pp. · score 9.0
- The end of the series
We count 1.1 min per page, the pace of an average novel reader. Faster? Move the slider.
≈ next to a page count: a volume with no page count in our data is counted at this series’s average.
Does the series hold up
Shape of the series: even. Volume scores differ by at most 0.3 points. You get the same level from the first page to the last.
Best volume: The Secret of the Unicorn (8.5, 61 ratings). Weakest: Cigars of the Pharaoh (8.3). The series is complete; you can read it start to finish with no waiting. The last volume (8.4) scores close to the series average or above it.
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
The Adventures of Tintin books ranked, best to worst
- 1.The Secret of the UnicornBook 11 · 19438.5
- 2.Red Rackham's TreasureBook 12 · 19448.4
- 2.Prisoners of the SunBook 14 · 19498.4
- 4.Cigars of the PharaohBook 4 · 19348.3
Frequently asked questions
Which Adventures of Tintin book is the best?
By reader score, The Secret of the Unicorn (8.5/10). The lowest-rated is Cigars of the Pharaoh (8.3/10).
Which The Adventures of Tintin book is the longest?
“Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” is the longest at 141 pages; the shortest is “Tintin in America” with 62 pages.