Oh, that’s half the fun: Flashman requires even more suspension of disbelief {although it is chronologically possible; Fraser’s very careful there} to accept that one man could have stood with The Thin Red Line, charged with The Heavy Brigade and The Light Brigade, been at the Little Bighorn with Custer, served in the Indian Mutiny, the Taiping uprising, the Boxer Rebellion, Isandhlwana, Rorke’s Drift, served on both sides in the Civil War, been with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, been a slaver, fought pirates, done God knows what else, and still have had time to be an omniglot first-class cricketer, horseman and world-class philanderer.
Cornwell cheerfully admitted in an author’s note that Sharpe had absolutely no right to be at Trafalgar, but since he was the author and Sharpe was the hero he was damn well going to put him there, going on to note that at least one man is verifiably known to have been at Trafalgar and Waterloo.
One of my favorite parts has always been the afterward in each book. The books are certainly well researched. At the end I usually find out the most improbable part of the plot was the part Cornwell most closely based on fact.
Effinger’s “When Gravity Fails”, “A Fire in the Sun”, and “Exile’s Kiss” I found really, really well done. Good, unflinching cyberpunk that deals more with social and semi-religious engineering than big guns, all set in a rather chaotic middle-east. I developed even more respect for the series when a friend of mine who grew up in Saudi Arabia said the described local flavor and mindset was very accurate.
Another vote for Pratchett and Hillerman. L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Recluce novels keep getting better, as well.
And I gotta admit, I like Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. They are light, easy reading and I love the fact that his readers are really helping to write the books with the puns that they submit. It’s that collaboration that makes it work.
I will nominate Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. True, she stumbled a bit with The Fiery Cross, but she came roaring back with A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
Now that we’ve gotten all those suggestions, the next question is why?
Why haven’t these authors fizzled? What about the books continues to attract you? If they aren’t just the same book over and over, then how do they change to keep your interest? Is it the interest of the changing background, as in different aspects of war? Do the characters grow and evolve? Can there be a continual set of challenges, as in surprise deaths or new locales or jobs?
In short, what works? I know that there’s been some talk of this, but can we get a lot more?
Well, Pratchett has a wide palate of characters to write about, across a whole world. The city of Ahnk-Morpork continues to evolve, as do its inhabitants. I don’t think he is going to run out of things to write about anytime soon. The characters grow, and what happens in one book effects every book thereafter. That and a wicked sense of humor and humanity keeps the series fresh and interesting after 40 some-odd books.
Keep in mind that the Lensman series as read today is not the order in which it was published. Volumes 3,4,5, and 6 were written first, in order, between 1937 and 1948, each being serialized in Astounding Stories.
Later, Smith re-wrote the 1st volume, Triplanetary, making it a “lensman” book. Originally published in 1934 and also published in Astounding, he wrote it in1948 to make it the “anchor” book for the series.
In 1950, Smith wrote Volume 2, First Lensman, to provide the link from Volume 1 to the rest of the series.