which hook to change the node order in a view?
You can use View's prerender hook to modify the view's results anyway you want.

For example,

function YOURMODULE_views_pre_render(&amp;$view) {

   if ($view-&gt;name=='xyzzy') {

      // modify/sort the $view-&gt;result array to your heart's content here
      // for example, reverse it...
      $view-&gt;result=array_reverse($view-&gt;result);

   }

 }


Basically $view-&gt;result is an array of row results, so, just go through it and grab the rows you want first, then follow that up with the remaining rows.  

ADDITION:

I created a quick view and did the above reversing and it certainly reversed the order so I am not sure what you are doing ever so slightly wrong to not see similar behavior on your site.