# What is the best written series of books ever? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 15, 2012, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854 "2012-03-15T12:18:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![vislor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vislor/32/5933_2.png) [@vislor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vislor)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/61 "2012-03-16T14:48:18Z")
> [@kjckjc](#): > > _The Dresden Files_ I think this needs more as they have become my top books. Butcher wrote the first three books and by that point had plotted the series out for twenty when he finally got published. After getting published, he realized the limitations of that and has redone his ideas to twenty two or twenty four books total in the series. There is a real sense of progression and plans in the books. They hold up well to re-reads and you see how much Harry has changed over the course of the books. It’s all well done makes sense. For me, the next book can’t come fast enough! I would then say that Butcher’s Codex Alera might meet the criteria. Butcher planned out and wrote a six book fantasy series, planned from beginning to end. I wanted more Dresden files, so it took me a while to get into them, but they do well on their own. My wife got on an Urban Fantasy kick and had me read the best of them, so I offer those up here as well. Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassin series had a very good five book arc that finished up and is now starting a new arc. I have enjoyed that. Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series has been a good, ongoing series that either has a plan or she’s good at connecting things later. Mark Del Franco’s Connor Grey series has been another really good urban fantasy series. He has also started another series in the same universe that have been good. I don’t think any of these are completed series and that seemed to be part of the OP’s criteria but these are unknown at this time as they are current! I really liked Tanya Huff’s vampire series (Blood books) from the 90s and then the Smoke and Mirrors series after that. While the stories themselves are good to excellent (never saw much of the TV series that was attempted several years ago), they are already getting a bit dated to a modern reader. I do think my other suggestions are the best and I didn’t include every series my wife and I have found, only the ones that I have enjoyed the most. vislor ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/62 "2012-03-16T15:32:18Z")
C.S. Forester’s ‘Hornblower’ series traces the naval career of one man. It’s also beautifully written (as one reviewer said “you can taste the salt spray across the deck”.) Although the Lensman series is easy to read, it’s surely not ‘really good within its genre’? If you allow such books in, doesn’t the Gor series count? It combines fantasy with erotica… > **[Gor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor)** > > Gor (/ˈɡɔːr/) is the fictional setting for a series of sword and planet novels written by philosophy professor John Lange, writing as John Norman. The setting was first described in the 1966 novel Tarnsman of Gor. The series is inspired by science fantasy pulp fiction works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as the Barsoom series. It also includes erotica and philosophy content. The Gor series repeatedly depicts men abducting and physically and sexually brutalizing women, who grow to enjoy their submi... ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/63 "2012-03-16T15:46:30Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > They’re good up to Executive Orders, though many Dopers won’t like the politics espoused therein. Rainbow 6 onwards is best avoided. Interesting. **Rainbow Six** is the only Clancy I’ve ever read, and I totally planned to keep it that way. Hearing that it’s among his worse works makes me think of giving him a second chance. If the next one is as fetid as Rainbow Six, he’ll not get a third chance. Any suggestions for what would be the best one to try? I totally don’t give a crap if it’s out of order. ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/64 "2012-03-16T15:53:18Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Interesting. **Rainbow Six** is the only Clancy I’ve ever read, and I totally planned to keep it that way. Hearing that it’s among his worse works makes me think of giving him a second chance. If the next one is as fetid as Rainbow Six, he’ll not get a third chance. Any suggestions for what would be the best one to try? I totally don’t give a crap if it’s out of order. Any of the early Jack Ryan stuff. “Patriot games” maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/65 "2012-03-16T15:54:54Z")
3suggestions from the Mystery/Detective genre: Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlin’s novels. The L. Ron Hubbard mention above was a whoosh, please? Connelly is a very competent craftsman - he used to have the crime beat at the LA Times. Burke and Mosely are both exceptional writers. Each of these series are different worlds I’ve become immersed in; and when I emerged I found my outlook subtly, but apparently permanently, altered… ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/66 "2012-03-16T15:57:39Z")
Seldom Seen - McGee is a good one, I’d forgotten. BTW, it was pretty well established that there never was that rumored ‘last’ book - that was a not so subtle negotiating threat that MacDonald used on his publisher around contract time… ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/67 "2012-03-16T16:06:58Z")
> [@glee](#): > > Although the Lensman series is easy to read, it’s surely not ‘really good within its genre’? > If you allow such books in, doesn’t the Gor series count? It combines fantasy with erotica… > > [Gor - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor) I read a couple of those Gor books, and I can’t see how they would qualify as “good writing” by anyone’s imagination. Unless the others are better than the two I tried to get through, Norman writes page after page of densely packed and overly repetitive prose occasionally punctuated by stiff dialog. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/68 "2012-03-16T16:32:26Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > How about The Lord of The Rings, a hexalogy? > > But why the insistence on so many books? Many series are conceived as tetralogies, trilogies, or even diptychs. With your restriction, you’re forcing us to consider such drek as the Battlefield Earth dekalogy! And I seem to recall that Hubbard considered his “Mission Earth” 10-volume “dekalogy” to be a single novel, and I believe that novels have been split or combined at the publisher or translator’s whim to conform to what they think the market will want. I’d be wary of calling LOTR a “series” - it could be, but it’s really one narrative that stands alone as a work of literature, albeit a multi-volume one. I could call it a work of _serial_ literature, but not really a true series (shades of semantics here). I would call something like, say, Nancy Drew to be a true series - it has an overarching set of characters and themes with a shared back-story, but each volume can be read alone. Also, why is historical fiction out? I’ve heard, as an example, that a difference between “Little Women” and “Gone With the Wind”, both novels concerning the Civil-War era, is that the first one was written when the Civil War was still fresh and is considered to be contemporary literature (e.g. equivalent to a 2008 novel about the War on Terror), and that Gone With the Wind was historical fiction, having been written when the Civil War had faded into history. If these were series, why would the first be acceptable but the second not acceptable? ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/69 "2012-03-16T16:57:33Z")
> [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](#): > > if connected trilogies count I would throw in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings works > > Assassin’s Apprentice > Royal Assassin > Assassin’s Quest > > Ship of Magic > The Mad Ship > Ship of Destiny > > Fool’s Errand > Golden Fool > Fool’s Fate Leave out the Dragon Keepers ones though. They are horrible. ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/70 "2012-03-16T17:00:09Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > It may fail a number of your criteria (historical fiction?), but the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien is beautifully written and reasonably cohesive (modulo that he died before he finished the last one). Absolutely fantastic. Hilarious, exciting, and sometimes devastating. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/71 "2012-03-16T17:04:54Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > I read a couple of those Gor books, and I can’t see how they would qualify as “good writing” by anyone’s imagination. Unless the others are better than the two I tried to get through, Norman writes page after page of densely packed and overly repetitive prose occasionally punctuated by stiff dialog. Sorry if I wasn’t clear - I didn’t think much of the Gor series (I only read a couple), but I didn’t think the Lensman series was good writing either. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/72 "2012-03-16T17:52:47Z")
> [@glee](#): > > I didn’t think the Lensman series was good writing :eek: Prepare to meet my terrible xmex-like snout and zymolosely polydactile tongue. Slurp! Slurp! Seriously, I’ve read much worse, and thought Smith improved as he went along. His final Lensman book, “Children of the Lens” was pretty good. And he was also sort of co-inventing the genre as he went along, too. He was writing at the same time as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Howard. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/73 "2012-03-16T18:12:26Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Interesting. **Rainbow Six** is the only Clancy I’ve ever read, and I totally planned to keep it that way. Hearing that it’s among his worse works makes me think of giving him a second chance. If the next one is as fetid as Rainbow Six, he’ll not get a third chance. Any suggestions for what would be the best one to try? I totally don’t give a crap if it’s out of order. _Hunt for Red October_ is your best starting point. _Patriot Games_ and _Without Remorse_ give you the backstory on Ryan and Clark respectively. _Patriot Games_ is the weaker of the two IMHO, though funnier for a Brit; _Without Remorse_ is really good. Then _Cardinal of the Kremlin_, _Clear and Present Danger_, _Debt of Honour_, and finally _Executive Orders_. I suggest you avoid anything after that, though _Red Rabbit_ almost makes the cut. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/74 "2012-03-16T18:49:30Z")
\*Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Life, the Universe and Everything So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Mostly Harmless \* By Douglas Adams ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/75 "2012-03-16T19:58:13Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > \*Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy > The Restaurant at the End of the Universe > Life, the Universe and Everything > So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish > Mostly Harmless > \* > > By Douglas Adams The first two are hilarious. The third is decent, the fourth has its moments. But good writing? Not particularly, no. The only Douglas Adams book I’d consider “good writing” is The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/76 "2012-03-17T00:49:35Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Yeah, but the first volume of _The Dark is Rising_ is nowhere near as good as the rest. I mean, it’s not bad, mind you - it would be good in any other company - but it doesn’t stand up with the rest. Over Sea Under Stone? I agree. For some reason I read it last and it was hard to believe it was part of the series. I loved the others. ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/77 "2012-03-17T02:39:50Z")
> [@Truman\_Burbank](#): > > Seldom Seen - McGee is a good one, I’d forgotten. > BTW, it was pretty well established that there never was that rumored ‘last’ book - that was a not so subtle negotiating threat that MacDonald used on his publisher around contract time… Darn ☹ All this time I’d been hoping… Pretty smart move by Macdonald though. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854/78 "2012-03-18T17:21:24Z")
L Frank Baum’s [Oz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oz_books) books. And Gregory McGuire’s Wicked series, excepting there’s only four 9so far) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-best-written-series-of-books-ever/615854.md?page=3)