Series

Series books. Seems people either love them or hate them.

I’m in the former group. If a writer has pulled me into his or her world successfully, I want to stick around for a while. If I’ve fallen in love with the characters, I want to spend more time with them. I look forward to the next installment with an anticipation I used to reserve for Christmas. And I’m devastated when it seems the series is in process of jumping the shark. I become invested.

In order to set this review site apart from the other million or so out there, I'm going to focus my reviews on books that are part of a series. Along the way I may toss a single title review to fill in some gaps and because not everything I read is part of a series. But since many of the books on my keeper shelves are series titles, that's where I will keep my focus.

I consider series books to fit into one of the following descriptions:

* Books that contains stories set in a single universe, where characters appear in more than one book. As the series continues, time moves forward. People change, and the focus of each book usually shifts to a different set of characters. Home of the dreaded sequel bait.

* Books that occur in a single universe but focus only on one or two key characters. Time may or may not move forward significantly, and the main characters may or may not change throughout the course of the series. Think the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich or J.D. Robb’s In Death series.

* Series written with an explicit end in mind after a certain number of books. Trilogies fall into this category, as do the Harry Potter books.

In my reviews, I'm going to offer a series summary. Too, each individual book review will include a Status of the Series, a snapshot of where the series seems to be heading since many series seem to run out of steam way too soon. I'll include all titles in the series, and I'll try to review each one in order that they were published. Reviews of individual books will assume that the previous titles have been read, so there might be spoilers for those earlier titles.