Of all my favorite books in series, few compare to the Aubrey/Maturin saga
by Patrick O’Brian. Twenty one volumes, but really just one long novel and story, thousands of pages long.
I’ve read it though three times and I’m sure I’ll visit it again.
And again.
If you can find a writer of a great series while the books are being written then you must follow along at the writer’s pace. There’s a rhythm in that. There are also discoveries to be made when you read a series as a whole. You can see a hero transform, like Travis McGee
or Matthew Scudder. You can sink into the atmosphere and return once again to old friends. You can see an idea unfold and develop.
Can you read Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series and not have your sense of storytelling altered? Read the following series, the Book Of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun and you’ll have your ideas about persona and perspective completely shifted as well.
Spend a long time over a good series with any author, any really good author, and your view of the world with shift and change.
That is real and lasting power.
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