After this first paragraph, Bill, I said, "Yes, a series.
You've explained why I prefer a series to a
stand-alone."
In response to your "I don't
mean a series" paragraph, I'd say that some series are
essentially a group of stand-alones featuring the same
character. The books can be read in any order, and the
protagonist, the setting, and the outside world change little
or not at all.
Other series are more like epics or
sagas (I'm not an English major), and the people in them grow
and change and disappear and reappear and do something
inevitable and dumb that takes three books to straighten out.
Right now, I'm looking forward to what Nina Zero does next,
for example. That's a series that can't be read in any old
order.
Joy
William Denton asked:
> On the other hand, I do like epics: huge, involved
stories with lots of
> people, spanning years or decades, where you really
get to know people,
> and you don't just see them in a moment of crisis,
you get to see their
> whole lives.
>
> Are there any hardboiled epics? I don't mean series,
where each novel is
> pretty much a self-contained unit, usually with a
hero who gets mixed up
> in a crime and solves it and then goes home. I mean
something like
> Ellroy's LA Quartet, which is the only example that
comes to mind. I
> don't know if he intended it to be four parts when
he started, but it
> hangs together as one big work (albeit one that gets
freakier as it goes
> along) and by the end it's like you've known Pete
Bondurant all your life.
> Same for his next books, AMERICAN TABLOID and THE
COLD SIX THOUSAND, and
> the next one which I think is supposed to wrap up
his history.
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