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.
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…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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?
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.
*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
*
All this time I’d been hoping…