I’m anal about starting a series at the beginning, but I don’t care if the series is more like one book chopped into pieces (K.J. Parker’s wonderful Engineer trilogy is a recent example) or more like separate books (Walter Jon Williams’s wonderful Praxis space opera trilogy is a recent example of THAT).

But I do want to know if a book that I’m looking at is in the same world as other books, or shares characters, or whatever. Would it be too much to ask for this to be spelled out in some detail on the back cover? And there’s a special circle of Hell reserved for publishers who truncate an author’s bibliography in the front of a book because earlier works were published by someone else.

This is the sort of information that’s also very helpful if it’s included on an author’s web site. Then it definitely makes me more likely to buy the author’s books.

But, Bob, what about infodumps? Well, Jane, I’m glad you asked me that. Clumsy infodumps are just plain clumsy writing, and clumsy is as clumsy does, as my sainted mother used to say. In her more sober moments, I mean.

(WRT one antagonist for a series, I think it’s probably fruitful to distinguish between antagonists-of-the-moment and überantagonists, don’t you?)

I can only think of two instances off the top of my head where the author did that–both science fiction. One is Asimov; I don’t remember his saying it was his preferred order, but he specifically included a list of all the Robot, Empire, and Foundation books in chronological order, in case you felt like reading them that way. The last time I reread the books, I went ahead and followed that order. I enjoyed it, but then, rereading just isn’t the same. I don’t know how well that would work for me if I were reading them for the first time, going back and fourth between golden age stylistics and those of the eighties.

The other example that comes to mind is Orson Scott Card, who recommends new readers begin with Ender’s Shadow before Ender’s Game, and I’m sorry, but he’s wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. His take on it, as I recall, is that he was a more skilled writer when he wrote ES than when he wrote EG. But ES is based on the assumption that the reader already knows the surprise at the end–at least, it spoils that surprise about two-thirds of the way in. In EG, on the other hand, that surprise has quite an impact on most readers. If you read EG first, you’ll get to have that experience before enjoying ES. If you read ES, though, that experience is ruined for you.

If it’s the same antagonist the whole series, then you’ve really got one long book, haven’t you? (Perhaps Harry Potter is really one long book.)

Brandon Sanderson has been picked by Jordan’s widow to write the final WoT book. Brandon talks about this on his blog (among his own writing projects).

I know what you mean about waiting for a completed story. I have a few I’m looking forward to once they are complete. As for Martin’s however, I’m reading his books in chunks at a time, in-between reading other books. I’m able to retain what’s going on and find that the breaks help since this is one rough and dark series.

Joe -

I understand what you mean. There certainly is an expectation of a lot of time required to read certain stories. And Epic Fantasy certainly has its share of still ongoing door-stopping series that we don’t know exactly when they will end.

As this is a market I’m hoping to someday break into, it stands to reason that I make the time. However, I’m at the point where I wait for a significant number to be published before I start reading these days as there are already so many books in my TBR pile.

And to return back to the actual article, I have to start at the beginning (or at least in order published). If the author lists a preference for what order the series and/or serial should be read I’ll go with that.

As for how the author lets the new reader know what happened in the past, that depends again on how it is done.

Does the Editor have a say in how this is done?

Now, for a limited series, like most of the commenters I won’t knowingly start with one of the middle stories. I want to read from beginning to end as the author intended. Info dumps just don’t give all the info, emotion and nuances of the previous stories. I have only read a few middle books that didn’t have complete story archs within, and found it annoying but it didn’t ruin the experience for me. But I do remember each one. Hmmm.

I also rarely will even purchase a story I know will be a trilogy or limited series until the entire series is published. So I haven’t read Martin or Jordan’s WoT. I will read WoT once the final novel is completed by the ghost writer.

For example:

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a trilogy. Each book, however, had a clearly defined plot that was resolved within the book, while still keeping the larger story arc going.

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a trilogy. However, it is one story told over the course of the three books. Each book has its own story arc as well, but there is less a sense of completion with each novel as there was in the first since Covenant stays in the Land throughout this book. (The first trilogy finds him returned home as a mechanism to bring extra closure (sort of the way Harry Potter’s semester ends at the end of most of the books).)

Then you have Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books. In one sense this is a Series and a Serial in that she has trilogies tell stories set in a specific part of her timeline, spanning hundreds of years.

And while I know it’s fashionable of late to pick on the Wheel of Time and perhaps A Song of Ice and Fire (for the lengthy delay between books these days), I love both. These are huge sprawling epic fantasies that have an incredible amount of activity to follow as they impact the entire secondary world they are set in, and much of their worlds are shown in detail.

Again, I don’t have a specific preference. For me, it all boils down to what works best to tell the story.