Member: mike61n94w

Ah, I see - more interested in stand-alones or nearly standalones than in series. I like series, up to a point - that point being where there's just too much to take in. Eric Flint wrote 1632 intending it to be a standalone, but people kept asking what happened next. Now it's a series with a dozen co-authors (and no, I'm not exaggerating - most of them are writing short stories or serialized stories rather than novels, but there are easily a dozen-plus people making major contributions to the storyline) and I can't read it. I like many bits of it but there's just too blurry much to take in. But 1632 is still an excellent standalone.

Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde series is also excellent - only three books and she's not writing any more (too many weirdos decided she was either a witch-to-be-burned or a Teacher...ghahh. Idiots). But those three books (and a couple short stories) are very good stories. Children of the Night, Burning Water, Jinx High (in universe order, not publication order).

Aaron Allston has a standalone (so far) in Galatea in 2-D - neat story, I suppose it would be classified as urban fantasy (magic in the modern world), but not a vampire or werewolf to be found. Much more interesting. He also has a duology, Doc Sidhe and Sidhe-Devil, which are a combination of Faerie and pulp - really interesting universe. If you've ever read Doc Savage, it will give you a greater appreciation for Doc Sidhe.

Three more - Jay Williams' Hero from Otherwhere; Lorna Baxter's The Eggchild; and Andy Stone's Song of the Kingdom. These are more or less YA books - shorter than most SF and possibly simpler. But great stories, great universes, and actually some pretty complicated situations.

I'm looking up at my SF shelves and mentioning what catches my eye. I do go in for series a lot - a standalone is frequently slightly frustrating, because I want to know what happened to them after that. But there are some really good single books. What I really like is an author that can write in the same universe without the books being strict sequels - Patricia Wrede has at least five books set in Lyra, with characters mentioning events in other books, but none of the stories are directly related to one another. Fun.

Hope this helps! I can discuss authors and books until the cows come home...

posted by jjmcgaffey at 5:32 am (EST) on Oct 2, 2009

No prob - touchstones are still confusing to me (and the way they don't work makes them annoying as well...sigh).

Hmmm...not sure what you mean by series that took time to take off. Agent of Change was the first of three books that came out within a few years of each other - then Lee & Miller got shaken out of midlist (that is, their publisher decided they weren't moneymakers) and didn't get published for a number of years (something like 15-20). Then fans found them and vice versa, and they found a publisher willing to put out their books - a small press, Ace, and now Baen. They'd been writing all along so the next books came out pretty quickly, now they're back to one book every couple years (in that series, anyway).

Patricia Briggs wrote three series before her breakthrough book, and I like all three of them better than her current urban fantasy series (the first of which was her breakthrough book). Is that what you mean? Or another possibility - James Schmitz wrote Witches of Karres, and no more until he died. The second book in the series, by Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey (and someone else, I think) came out last year or the year before, the third one is due out later this year. Or - Mercedes Lackey wrote Fire Rose for Baen and apparently the series wasn't interesting. That came out in 1996. In 2002, DAW released The Serpent's Shadow, which is in the same universe. The characters don't overlap as they do in the later Elemental Mages books - I mean, the Fire Rose characters don't show up in later books. I presume this is because DAW doesn't own that book and doesn't want to promote another publisher's book. Elemental Mages is now up to 6 books, counting Fire Rose.

Is that the kind of stuff you wanted? I might be able to come up with a few more, though usually if a series doesn't take off it kind of gets abandoned. Which is frustrating if you really liked that universe/those characters...

Yeah, I've got a lot of books. I read fast and I tend to buy so I can re-read (though now I've got read-but-not-owned books in LT as well, so my LT catalog is somewhat larger than my physical one. Not a lot, though).

posted by jjmcgaffey at 12:52 am (EST) on Sep 13, 2009