I enjoy reading books that are in a series and that you have to read in order.
I'm almost done with one and want to start another, so what are your favorite book series that you couldn't put down and would recommend?

You can give general details, but avoid spoilers!

4/20/2011 8:44:06 AM

do you like the fantasy/sci-fi genre? i know there are nonfiction and non-fantasy fiction series out there, you're going to find most of them to be fantasy/sci-fi

4/20/2011 8:46:39 AM

The Dark Tower

4/20/2011 8:49:07 AM

I read HP and twilight. I realize those probably aren't the type of books you are referring to, but I can handle unrealistic things.

4/20/2011 8:49:13 AM

Just a few off the top of my head:

The Hobbit + LOTR obviously.
A Song of Ice and Fire (even without it being finished).
The Three Musketeers trilogy
CS Lewis' "Space Trilogy"
Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

4/20/2011 9:02:44 AM

well, there are the usual:

wheel of time
sword of truth
song of ice and fire

wheel of time IS good, but it's really good at the beginning, slows down in the middle, and it's picked up since sanderson took over (IMO)

sword of truth was also good, but it stayed better longer and then became tedious about halfway through until the end (IMO)

song of ice and fire is pretty solid all around, but it's not finished, yet

i very much enjoyed robin hobb's "realm of the elderlings" trilogies...when i read them, there were only three trilogies (farseer, liveship traders, tawny man), but there's now a fourth set (rain wild chronicles) that i'll pick up one day

patrick rothfuss' kingkiller chronicle is good, though only two of three are out

i really like scott lynch's gentleman bastards stories, but there are currently only two of the proposed seven that are out (lies of locke lamora and red seas under red skies)...those stand on their own pretty well, IMO

i enjoyed tad williams' shadowmarch tetralogy

i'll come up with others

4/20/2011 9:09:43 AM

I don't know that Scott Lynch can make a seven book series interesting for Locke :/ First book was really entertaining even if it wasn't amazing writing. Second book was ok. I just don't think I'd be that interested for more than another book.

Also, as I've said before, I might give Wheel of Time another try years down the road, but that series is just too long to be "slow in the middle" and "pick up" at book 12 when Sanderson took over

4/20/2011 9:14:51 AM

i'm getting ready to start book 3 of the millennium trilogy. i loved those.

4/20/2011 9:16:28 AM

Song of Ice and Fire, of course.

I also liked the Otherland series from Tad Williams a bit more than Shadowmarch. I did like them both and I do like that Tad Williams actually ends his fucking stories.

4/20/2011 9:18:10 AM

4/20/2011 9:26:58 AM

The Matthew Shardlake Series by C.J. Sansom.

^the latest one I've read

[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 9:33 AM. Reason : Heartstone is next!]

4/20/2011 9:29:58 AM

it's a young adult series, but The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike was my go-to series growing up

4/20/2011 9:30:59 AM

So far I've been reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. 13 Books have been released and the next one is due this year.

http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden




I've also been reading Christopher Moore's books. I don't know if it's a series in the traditional sense. There's a trilogy in the series, but as a whole the 12 books make up more of a universe. His newest book should be out this year too.

http://www.chrismoore.com/books.html

4/20/2011 9:31:01 AM

tripods trilogy by john christopher!

4/20/2011 9:46:09 AM

Dark Tower Books 1-4 are excellent. Goes downhill after that, but atleast the series is complete. It's also fun to read all the tie-ins to the Dark Tower universe (Hearts of Atlantis, Insomnia, Everything's Eventual, Talisman (i think), etc)

If you read Harry Potter and Twilight, you might want to try the Percy Jackson series. Percy Jackson is a Harry Potter ripoff, but it actually pretty entertaining.

[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM. Reason : :]

4/20/2011 9:58:27 AM

For young adult series, can't go wrong with the Ender's game universe. Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and Shadow of the Hegemon are the ones i've read.

The first few books of the Dune series are also good, but I stopped at God Emperor.

I also second the Millennium series, although the author weirdly throws in a lot of sex. Certain lines, or sometimes whole scenes, feel like Mr. Garrison's romance novel in South Park. Otherwise, the series is pretty good.

[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 10:21 AM. Reason : Millenium]

4/20/2011 10:17:21 AM

His Dark Materials was pretty good.
Book of Embers trilogy was okay.
Currently reading The Dark Tower. Really enjoying it.
Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit has been done twice now by me.

4/20/2011 10:31:12 AM

Ill add the dragonlance chronicles and the trilogy of the twins offshoot. Great books

And the belgariad, warning: the belgariad is a little below your reading level

4/20/2011 11:41:06 AM

can comics count?

4/20/2011 11:44:51 AM

dear God dont put yourself through Sword of Truth

4/20/2011 11:46:13 AM

I haven't read many book series since early high school and middle school. But I loved the Redwall series by Brian Jacques.

4/20/2011 11:47:41 AM

Its not really a series, but a pair, and its fucking amazing. Tech/sci-fi

Daemon and Freedom TM

4/20/2011 11:55:42 AM

Animorphs
Aliens Ate My Homework
My Teacher is an Alien
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

4/20/2011 12:04:40 PM

Quote :

"The Dark Tower "

4/20/2011 6:03:44 PM

A Song of Ice and Fire
Harry Potter
Heir to the Empire

Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson looks like it will be one of my favorites, but only the first book (out of 10) has been released so far haha.

4/20/2011 6:24:56 PM

i enjoy several of the series already listed. in addition, i'm a fan of:

- anne mccaffrey's pern and talent series (dragons and telepathy, respectively)
- terry pratchett's discworld novels (rampant silliness and parody)
- kristen britain's green rider series (swords and sorcery...well-told, diverting)
- elizabeth haydon's rhapsody series (more swords and sorcery, also well-told)
- steven erikson's malazan book of the fallen (huge epic fantasy...very well done and provides a nice change of pace from robert jordan and grrm)

4/20/2011 6:44:48 PM

I've heard good things about Malazan, in what way is it a change of pace from GRRM?

4/20/2011 6:54:57 PM

Zahn's Star Wars trilogy is pretty good.


And I was a fan of Ted Dekker's "the Circle" series.

4/20/2011 7:07:01 PM

^^i guess i more meant "while you're waiting for the next grrm book, here's a series that is almost complete."

malazan is also sort of based on politics, though it has more sorcery-type aspects than the song of ice and fire. the first few novels can almost stand alone as separate storylines, but then the characters start to cross between plots and you see how each plot affects the others. the storylines are slowly converging as i get further along.

[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 7:15 PM. Reason : ]

4/20/2011 7:15:25 PM

-The Dark Tower series is brilliant. The final 3 books aren't as fantastic as the first 4, but after nearly getting killed by a drunk driver, I think King felt more like a mere mortal and didn't want to let his fans down by leaving the series unfinished. Book IV, Wizard and Glass, is one of my top 5 favorite books of anything I've ever read. Also, as mentioned, you will find tie-ins to innumerable other King novels. If you look really closely, almost everything he's ever written since the mid 80's (plus a few notable earlier works such as 'salem's lot) is connected to the Dark Tower series in some way.

-The Death Gate cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is pretty fantastic. 7 books, pretty standard fantasy, but well-written and very engaging. I certainly couldn't put it down.

-The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson is excellent, and notable in that it is historical fiction/sci-fi rather than fantasy. Consists of 8 parts, but published in 3 large volumes for convenience's sake. All sorts of actual historical figures appear as characters (Newton, Leibniz, William of Orange, Louis XIV, many others), plus the story is just excellent. Many of the main characters are actually ancestors of the characters in Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon so that makes a logical addition even though it's not part of the cycle, and was in fact written several years earlier.

4/21/2011 10:15:25 AM

I have to say the Dark Tower.

Haven't encountered a series that help me captive and interested until the end like the Dark Tower did.

4/22/2011 2:19:09 AM

thanks to this thread, I bought Dark Tower 1-4 box set for $0.17 on Amazon

4/29/2011 9:09:13 AM

i wish i could devote more time to reading, fiction or non I just have a hard time making time for books.

4/29/2011 9:12:20 AM

Hmmm...I don't get into too many series, but I've done a couple.

I really like Mary Stewart's Merlin series (big fan of Camelot/Arthur/Merlin)...and I thought these were great:

The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
The Prince and the Pilgrim


I also guess it has to be at least three books to be a series, but Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" and "The World Without End" were great.


You might also not consider these a series because you don't need to read them in succession (which I didn't), but they use the same character, keep a timeline, and every now and then they reference something that happened in the past book. But David Liss' books with Benjamin Weaver are excellent!

A Conspiracy of Paper
The Devil's Company
A Spectacle of Corruption


That's about all I got.

4/29/2011 9:16:40 AM

Has anybody done any of the 1632 series? Those aren't the greatest writing, but I am fascinated by the principal of transporting an entire town into the 1600s Europe.

And the series I have read the most in is still the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Some are great (Black Fleet, Thrawn Trilogy, etc.) and some aren't as great, but they have some good shit in there if you like the Star Wars universe.

4/29/2011 9:25:52 AM

Quote :

"i wish i could devote more time to reading, fiction or non I just have a hard time making time for books."

http://www.audible.com/twit2

Free trial with 2 free books. Cancel any time, no commitment. Thank me later.

4/29/2011 9:45:05 AM

The Indian in the Cupboard

4/29/2011 10:22:53 AM

The Dark Tower
The Sword of Truth (for a while anyway)
The Ender Series
The Shadow Series

I read a few YA series this school year that were decent, too.

Chaos Walking
The Hunger Games
Inkheart
Percy Jackson and The Olympians

4/29/2011 10:22:56 AM

The Dark Tower

4/29/2011 10:28:15 AM

The Gap series.

4/29/2011 10:54:58 AM

Wheel of Time
A Song of Ice and Fire
Drizzt Do'Urden (can't really quantify that as a series, just a character)
Elric of Melnibone (same as above)
Lord of the Rings
Sir Apropos of Nothing
Farseer/Tawny Man Trilogies
Dark Tower

4/29/2011 11:01:16 AM

Those books based on the Lord of the Rings movies.

4/29/2011 11:41:17 AM

Quote :

"thanks to this thread, I bought Dark Tower 1-4 box set for $0.17 on Amazon"

Wow, how'd that happen?

4/29/2011 3:35:46 PM

Quote :

"-The Dark Tower series is brilliant. The final 3 books aren't as fantastic as the first 4, but after nearly getting killed by a drunk driver, I think King felt more like a mere mortal and didn't want to let his fans down by leaving the series unfinished. Book IV, Wizard and Glass, is one of my top 5 favorite books of anything I've ever read. Also, as mentioned, you will find tie-ins to innumerable other King novels. If you look really closely, almost everything he's ever written since the mid 80's (plus a few notable earlier works such as 'salem's lot) is connected to the Dark Tower series in some way."

YES!!! And Wizard and Glass is still my most favorite book, I can read it again and again.

Looking forward to checking out some of the other series mentioned here

4/29/2011 5:35:24 PM

List of Dark Tower connections. Some are a bit weak, but I am working through the more significant connections (Black House, Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, and The Stand).

http://www.stephenking.com/darktower/connections.html

[Edited on April 30, 2011 at 12:38 PM. Reason : spoiler alert, link contains spoilers]

4/30/2011 12:38:28 PM

Reality Dysfunction, Foundation, or Revelation Space

4/30/2011 1:26:36 PM

The Girl with Dragon Tattoo series was pretty enjoyable, especially books one and two.

4/30/2011 8:34:30 PM

I was an enormous fan of The Chronicles of Prydain when I was a little kid

4/30/2011 9:10:13 PM

Nobody mentioned some Raymond E. Feist yet? Magician is tight, and the whole Riftwar Saga series is pretty good. At the moment, I'm in the middle of the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, and it's entertaining--alternate history series set during the Napoleonic wars, where countries have dragons for their air force.

My favorite series when I was a little kid was the Song of the Lioness books by Tamora Pierce. I still have them and read back through them every few years.

If you're interested in sci-fi about the terraforming and colonization of Mars, the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is excellent.

4/30/2011 10:30:01 PM

^soon as pug wasn't main char that series went downhill for me

5/1/2011 5:07:24 AM