Ever wanted to read the entire BIONICLE story in one place? Biological Chronicle is the entire thing – books, serials, podcasts, etc, all comics that contain story not covered elsewhere, and links to video content – all combined into a flowing narrative, with typos fixed, formatting made consistent, and minor continuity errors edited out.
This compilation is divided into 10 “Books,” or volumes, each containing roughly one year’s story. You can find details on what is in each book, along with direct links to each one, below.
Note that some books have a “Standard” version and a version with optional extras – the “Standard” versions are heavily recommended for most readers, especially new readers. The versions with extras are for those that want to see every single thing that canonically happened, no matter how insignificant, and also include unofficial fan transcriptions of things like canon videogames – you can find specific details on the extras they include below, in the details for each Book. Rest assured that you’re not missing anything important going with the Standard versions, and the story will be easier to follow than reading the versions with extras.
Download All 10 Books:
PDF — Kindle (AZW3)
or
Click Here to Start Reading Online
You can also download each Book individually, and there are several versions of each Book available for different reading preferences! Click a Book title in the list below to expand it and see all download options, as well as a link to start reading that Book online:
> Book 1: The Coming of the Toa (2001 story)
- Read Online
- “Standard/Recommended:” Has the canon version of the Shadow Toa fight (from the Bionicle Style Guide) – PDF
- Text-Only: No comics. Has the canon version of the Shadow Toa fight. – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Hapka version: Has the original version of the Shadow Toa fight from Tale of the Toa. – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, Hapka version – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- With Optional Extras: Same as the Standard version, plus a written version of the story from the videogame Quest for the Toa (this was omitted from the “Standard” version since it’s a fan transcription and not officially endorsed) – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, with optional extras – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Hapka version, with optional extras – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, Hapka, with optional extras – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
> Book 2: What Lurks Below (2002 story + Bohrok Kal)
> Book 3: The Mask of Light (post-Bohrok Kal 2003 story)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended – PDF
- Text-Only – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- With Optional Extras: Includes a transcription of the events from MNOGII, based on the one from BS01, and a fan-made write-up of the 2003 Flash game “The Legend Continues” (both are not included in above versions for readability and unofficial nature) – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, with optional extras: No comics. Includes the MNOGII and The Legend Continues write-ups – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
> Book 4: City of Legends (2004 story)
> Book 5: Web of Shadows (2005 story)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended: Includes screenshots from the Search for the Mask of Light Animations – PDF
- Text-Only: No comics, or animation screenshots – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- No Animations: No screenshots – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- With Optional Extras: Includes the short story “Protection,” which was excluded from the above versions because it is confusing without the context of the Maze of Shadows videogame. Also includes the comics and MoL Animations – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, with optional extras: Includes Protection, but not the comics or animations. – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
> Book 6: Island of Doom (2006 story)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended – PDF – AZW3
- Text-Only: No comics – PDF
> Book 7: Sea of Darkness (2007 story)
> Book 8: Ignition (2008 story)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended – PDF
- With Optional Extras: includes all Takanuva’s Blog entires (redundant ones were omitted from the Standard release) – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, Standard: No comics. Includes text from Journey of Takanuva, rather than scans – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, with optional extras – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
> Book 9: Journey’s End (2009+2010 story)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended – PDF
- With Optional Extras: includes a written version of the story from the My Lego Network Bionicle campaign. – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only: No comics. Includes text from Early Reader books, rather than scans – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
- Text-Only, with optional extras – PDF
- Above, but without external media links – PDF
> Book 10: Epilogue (unfinished/post-finale serials)
- Read Online
- Standard/Recommended (there are no comics in this one, so there is no separate text-only version) – PDF – AZW3
Changelog
(started 1/26/2020, does not have all updates made before that date)
FAQ:
What are those little QR barcodes that show up in the sidebar sometimes on the PDFs?
Those are video links! They can be clicked (or tapped on mobile) or scanned with a QR scanner using your mobile device, and will take you to a video equivalent of a portion of the text. If they have a bracket, the video will be the same events as the bracketed text. If the QR code is in the upper corner with no bracket, it links to a video equivalent of the entire chapter/section. These links are also in the web version, but are simply embedded in the relevant text.
You say you’ve edited out “minor continuity errors” – what exactly does that mean? Have you changed the story?
Most of the continuity edits were very minor, and were mostly removing small pieces of text (not adding any of my own words). Here’s an example:
This text box is from one of the comics in Book 3. The length of time that actually passed here would later be stated to be less than 1 year, and that new timeline would remain consistent through the end of the story. Removing a bit of the text from this box to make the time that passed non-specific doesn’t contradict anything, and, I would say, doesn’t remove anything from the story – it just makes things less confusing for new readers.
The largest piece of story removed for canon reasons was the fight with the Shadow Toa as written by C.A. Hapka in Tale of the Toa, but I replaced it with a canon version of those events from the official Style Guide (and obviously both versions couldn’t coexist in the story, as they portray the same battle as resolving in two very different ways). Because of how big of an elimination that was, though, I’ve provided alternate versions of Book 1 that contain Hapka’s version of the fight instead of the canon one for those that prefer it.
Why doesn’t this have all the comics?
A lot of the Bionicle comics, particularly in later years, portrayed the exact same events as those in the novels. I’ve chosen to prioritize the novel versions for the most part here, because of the larger amount of detail they have. If you’re interested in reading the comics that aren’t featured here, I recommend checking out the Biomedia Project.
So does the “with optional extras” version have all story media that exists, like all the comics and everything?
No – that’s actually why I changed the name for that version from “Complete” to “with optional extras.” Those versions, like the Standard versions, have no redundancy – the difference is that the “with extras” versions include canon events that aren’t relevant to the story, a lot of which are fan transcriptions of videogame events. There’s not much in those versions that isn’t in the Standard versions, and what little added content they contain is absolutely fine to skip – there’s a reason that the Standard versions are recommended.
What version(s) should I download?
If you aren’t sure, please just go with the Standard/Recommended versions of everything – they’re the best way to experience this whole compilation, and the intended way. The alternate versions primarily exist for those that know from looking at the list which one they’ll want.
What’s up with the titles of these Books? I don’t recognize these names.
These titles were chosen by votes from the Bionicle community, as the best titles to represent each year of the story as a whole. You may have heard the volumes of this collection referred to with different names – they used to have different, one-word names created by me, but after a lot of feedback I decided to open it up to the community to choose new titles.
PDFs are annoying to read on my device – will you ever release this in any other formats?
I’m currently working on MOBI, EPUB, and AZW3 (Kindle) versions of Biological Chronicle, which will hopefully be done before too long. The main obstacle to doing them sooner was that there were a few other major updates I wanted to finish first, as any changes I make after adding new formats will have to be added to that many more files. So to make my work load lighter, I made all the changes I had planned first, before I started making new formats. Also, if there are other formats (besides the three I listed) that you’d like to see this available in, let me know!
I found an error/typo while reading.
Great! Please reach out to me, either at wynn@crosswiredgeeks.com, or on Twitter at @wynnwave, to let me know of any potential issues you’ve discovered (even if you’re not quite sure if it’s really an error)! If possible, the most helpful things you can provide me to let me know where the issue is are 1) the Book it’s in, and 2) the full sentence that the error is part of. The chapter number is also helpful if you have it. If you’ve jotted down the page number, feel free to send that as well, but because the page counts vary so much between different versions, this isn’t always that helpful for tracking down your issue.
Why aren’t there “Previous Chapter” links on the web version?
Honestly, an oversight on my part when making the site. I had assumed that people would only be reading through linearly, so they could just use their browser’s Back button to go to the previous chapter. I’d like to add Previous Chapter links to each chapter in the web version, but it’ll take some time because I have to manually add it to every page (due to my basic site plan). For now, I’d recommend manually editing the url as a makeshift solution – all the chapter urls are structured the same way, so it’s not too difficult to reduce the chapter number by one.
Wasn’t there a PDF containing all 10 Books? Where has that gone?
Yes, there was – unfortunately, as the project progressed, maintaining Word docs that each contained all 10 Books became unsustainable (saving them and converting them to PDF practically crashed my computer). I am looking into a way to provide a single PDF containing all 10 Books by merging the individual PDFs, but the file sizes are so large that most PDF merging programs can’t do it. I’ll do my best to make it happen, though.
Cross-Wired Geeks 