User:Ontos/dubious dates

User:Ontos

 

ARN flavor

 

time metaph

 

Earth

 

headcanon

 

chronolore

 

dubious dates

 

dominiaria

 

HarperPrism

HarperPrism release dates are a mess. Trying to make sense of it all...

The Internet doesn't seem to agree on when these books were released to the public (I'm interested in the month precision). While the books carry the information on their printing dates, which is something one could fall back on, a printing date and a release date are not necessarily the same thing. One could imagine printing being done very late in the month and the book being released in the next one, or the release being postponed for the sake of some corporate schedule, logistics or even a real-life event (Magic related or otherwise).

Also, one can't exclude the possibility that a single book had multiple printings by different (child or sibling) companies. If so, some of this confusion may have been based on that.

If anything, the earliest found printing date for each book would probably be the best way to at least infer the most likely release order (and the release order might help identify some of the erroneous dates). Most sources seem to at least agree on most of that order.

Sources for date comparison

For where it matters, I copied the dates from all of the mentioned sites on 2025-10-23:

Printing order & dates - taken from the books

mtg.wiki printing dates - claimed to be the first printing dates. They can be found in the edit history for each of the novels on this wiki. I decided to add them here, because curiously, some of them are very specific, yet sometimes different from those given in the books or any other comparable date, and they are shown to this day in the novel templates.

• July 2008 edits by The Squirle Master: Arena, Whispering Woods, Shattered Chains, Final Sacrifice, Ashes of the Sun, And Peace Shall Sleep
• February 2018 edit by Hunter: The Prodigal Sorcerer
• May 2018 edit by Hunter: Tapestries
• August 2018 edit by Hunter: Dark Legacy
• May 2018 edit by Yandere-silver: The Cursed Land
• September 2020 edit by Hunter: Distant Planes
• April 2025 edit by Vargheind: Song of Time (before that edit, only the year of 1996 was specified in the template)

mtg.wiki as they currently appear - claim of release dates

wizards.com only gives the year - without any further specification;

in the table, for each book, I've added a number in the bracket behind the year to show the order of that list and make it sortable - for instance 1995 (3) means "the third book from 1995 on the wizard.com list"; while the provided lists doesn't claim to show the exact release order, the ordering of other books on that list strongly suggest that was the intention - the exception being anthologies, listed separately, hence their order is based on letters: (A) & (B)

phyrexia.com bookstore actually leads to the archived pages of the amazon.com shop - almost all the dates it gives are based on that information (except that the archived amazon bookstore has Whispering Woods at 1995-01 and The Cursed Land at 1995-08 -- phyrexia.com's March date for Whispering Woods could be a copying mistake from Shattered Chains... if so, it would be there for almost 2 decades though)

wikipedia claims it gives a release date (nothing retrievable in terms of sources)

goodreads claims publication date

amazon claims publication date

HarperPrism books' "dates" according to...

Printing order (books)	Printing (mtg.wiki)	Title	mtg.wiki	wizards.com	phyrexia.com	wikipedia	goodreads	amazon
1 (1994-11)	1994-09-26	Arena	1994-10-16	1994 (1)	1994-11	1994-11	1994-10-16	1994-10-16
2 (1995-01)	1994-11-23	Whispering Woods	1994-11	1995 (1)	1995-03	1995-01	1994-12-13	1994-12-13
3 (1995-03)	1995-01-27	Shattered Chains	1995-03	1995 (2)	1995-03	1995-03	1995-02-16	1995-02-16
4 (1995-05)	1995-03-23	Final Sacrifice	1995-03	1995 (3)	1995-05	1995-05	1995-05-01	1995-04-12
5 (1995-07)	1995-07-01	Tapestries	1995-07	1995 (A)	1996-05	1996-05	1995-07-01	1996-01-01
6 (1995-08)	1995-09	The Cursed Land	1995-09	1995 (4)	1995-09	1995-08	1995-07-11	1995-07-11
7 (1995-11)	1995-10-12	The Prodigal Sorcerer	1995-11	1995 (5)	1995-11	1995-11	1995-10-12	1995-10-12
8 (1996-01)	1996-06	Distant Planes	1996-06	1995 (B)	1997-04	1996-05	1996-01-01	1997-03-16 1996-01-01
9 (1996-03)	1996-01-26	Ashes of the Sun	1996-03	1996 (1)	1996-03	1996-03	1996-03-01	1996-02-15
10 (1996-06)	1996-06	Song of Time	1996-06	1996 (2)	1996-06	1996-06	1996-05-15	1996-05-15
11 (1996-07)	1996-05-23	And Peace Shall Sleep	1996-07	1996 (3)	1996-07	1996-07	1996-06-12	1996-06-12
12 (1996-12)	1996-11-12	Dark Legacy	1996-12	1996 (4)	1996-12	1996-12	1996-12-01	1996-11-12

Corroboration of the release order

The books didn't only provide the year-month dates of their own printing, but also had lists of books that were already released. Many of them also included books that were soon to be released (marked with an asterisk). Those lists are overwhelmingly consistent with the printing order with one possible anomaly from Final Sacrifice (see the gallery). It's possible that's a mistake or that this scan was based on the book's later reprint.

If we ignore that anomaly for now (Shattered Chains and Tapestries agree that Final Sacrifice is between them), these lists show that the intention of the publisher was to have the titles be available to the readers in that order and also - sequentially.

Unless there's additional evidence of unforeseen delays in the release of these books, these reasons make it more likely than not, that the dates going against this release order (reversing some entries, equalizing others) are wrong.

Gallery

• 
  Final Sacrifice publishing information
• 
  anomalous Final Sacrifice list of released and upcoming books