Series I read

So, I was having an interesting Twitter-talk with the lovely blogger Wendy Darling of Midnight Garden … we were discussing our love of Karin Slaughter and how dedicated we are to her series, and why. 

It’s an interesting thing to think about – the series you read. Especially interesting for me, when I think of the series I've stuck with for the long-haul, and those I've let fall by the wayside. 

There are actually plenty of books that I dropped half-way through their never-ending series and for various reasons. ‘Stephanie Plum’ just got stale. ‘The Hollows’ was writing relationship cheques that the characters weren’t cashing, in my opinion. ‘Anita Blake’ just got … not good … though I still recommend this series, just with the asterisks of; “They get really bad around ‘Obsidian Butterfly’ – you have been warned.” I’m even teetering with J.R. Ward’s ‘Black Dagger Brotherhood’ because it’s getting pretty ridiculous to just keep filtering in new characters I don’t give a damn about just to keep this world alive.  

So, there are plenty of series I've abandoned. Maybe I’ll get back to them one day (I do occasionally sneak-peeks at Amazon reviews of ‘The Hollows’ to see if Ivy and Rachel’s romance is being further developed) but I mostly think the ship has sailed.  

So what are the series I've committed to, and can’t see myself ever wavering from? What makes them so special? There aren’t many – but below are the (ongoing) series I read religiously and feel quite devoted to.  

Grant County by Karin Slaughter 

Karin Slaughter will always hold a special significance for me, and not just because ‘Blindsighted’ was the first book I ever reviewed on this blog. Rather, it’s because ‘Grant County’ was the first crime-thriller series I ever persevered with. In the past I'd tried making a dent in my mum’s impressive Patricia Cornwell collection, but was totally unmoved by the first book. And then I tried Slaughter (possibly because her name in crime-fiction seemed an easy win) and ‘Blindsighted’ absolutely hooked me. It wasn’t even that, as a novice in the genre, ‘Grant County’ was “lite” crime-fic (ask anyone; Slaughter writes some of the nastiest, goriest worst violence against women . . . sometimes, she reads like the Patrick Bateman of crime-fic) rather, what hooked me in Grant County was the characters and, more importantly, the relationship between series protagonists Sara Linton and Jeffrey Tolliver – the county coroner and local police chief, respectively . . . and ex-husband and wife. There was a moment in ‘Blindsighted’ when Jeffrey is really unprofessional and says this to Sara, after she’s conducted an autopsy;

‘Sometimes,’ he began, ‘when I wake up in the morning, I forget that you’re not there. I forget that I lost you.’ 

‘Kind of like when you forgot you were married to me?’ 

He walked toward her, but she stepped back until she was a few inches from the cabinet. He stood in front of her, his hands on her arms. 

‘I still love you.’ 

‘That’s not enough.’ 

He stepped closer to her. ‘What is?’

In my 2009 review of ‘Blindsighted’, I express an annoyance at how little Slaughter feeds readers about Jeffrey and Sara’s marital demise, especially since sparks are still there . . . it frustrated me then, but now I can see that that’s actually what kept me coming back to this series. Yes, the whodunit mysteries are terrifying and brilliant, but it was Slaughter’s impeccable and thorny characters and their relationships that kept me coming back. 

Will Trent by Karin Slaughter 

For that reason, I didn’t know if I could make the trek from ‘Grant County’ to her new ‘Will Trent’ series (especially after I felt so bruised following some ‘kill you darlings’ cruelty. . . ) but then Slaughter bought all the romantic complications of ‘Grant County’ and amplified them by including one of the most genuine and charming but horribly tortured characters, ever, in Will Trent. 

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

You want to know how much I love this series? I named my dog ‘Murray’, after the character of young Ian Murray (and mostly because ‘Rollo’ didn’t suit my little jackshund). This is the series that has my deep and abiding love, a love that will never waver and is willing to wait 5 years between books . . . It is a love that grows stronger with each new instalment, as I’m left to pine after characters and wonder on their predicaments (no mean feat, since books often finish on cliff-hangers that are more hand-biting than nail-biting). 

I started reading ‘Outlander’ back in 2007, and was quite lucky in that I got to consume books 1–6 over one summer holiday. Since then I've only had to wait for ‘An Echo in the Bone’ and now ‘Written in my Own Heart’s Blood’, which is coming June this year. Of course, when I tell people that I’ll have to clear a week of my life in order to sit down and properly read & appreciate Gabaldon’s latest offering, they look at me with a somewhat perplexed expression. These are 800+ page books (‘Written in My Own Heart’s Blood’ is actually rumoured to be 1008 pages) and the series is now eight-books deep . . . then I explain that these are kinda time-travelling books (but not really) that cover historical events like the Battle of Culloden and the American Revolution, but at the centre of it all is a love story between an ex-army nurse from the 1940s and a 1700’s Highland warrior called Jamie Fraser (*cue swoon*). At this point, I find myself alone on a soapbox talking to empty air. And that’s okay, I get it. These books are hard to surmise, and it doesn’t help when my love for them leaves me utterly inarticulate and I usually just grunt appreciatively; “Oh my God, Jamie is so amazing and these books are just so URGHkeejiwjwioeufjnkndewmdkwjo . . .  y’know?” 

Though I do fully anticipate that the Starz TV adaptation will bring quite a few newcomers to this wonderful series (I mean, have you seen the lead actor? Yowza). 

Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs

This is another series that I have a serious soft-spot for, because it was the first urban fantasy I ever read and it converted me to a genre that I'd previously been pretty snooty about. 

But, if I’m honest, I almost didn’t read beyond ‘Moon Called’. I remember at the time reading and enjoying it, but not being sure if it was a series I'd be sticking with … but then there was a moment in the last six pages. I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when I knew I'd be coming back for more;

… ‘So, Bran tells me that or ordered you to keep an eye out for me.’ 

He stopped laughing and raised both his eyebrows. ‘Yes. Now ask me if I was watching you for Bran.’ 

It was a trick question. I could see the amusement in his eyes. I hesitated, but decided I wanted to know anyway. ‘Okay, I’ll bite. Were you watching me for Bran?’ 

‘Honey,’ he drawled, pulling on his Southern roots. ‘When a wolf watches a lamb, he’s not thinking about the lamb’s mommy.’

And I was sucked right in. It was Briggs layering mythology on top of whodunit central-story and throwing in a tangled relationship web to boot. ‘Mercy Thompson’ remains the benchmark for all other urban fantasies for me. I can only think of one other UF author who has done such a fine job of building up a protagonist’s world from the ground-up …

Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews

‘Kate’ and ‘Mercy’ came out around the same time (2007 and 2006, respectively) and have roughly the same number of books in the series right now. But they’re totally different, while also hooking me for very similar reasons.

Much like Mercy, when readers first met Kate in ‘Magic Bites’ she was the epitome of a loner. She had secrets to keep and a past to keep hidden, and she had been raised not to trust anybody but herself. But slowly, slowly husband/wife writing-duo Ilona Andrews teased out a love/hate relationship for Kate in the form of were-lion Curran. Now in the upcoming seventh book ‘Magic Breaks’ (out in July) the very fact that Kate has now accumulated a family and a whole community who depend on her – she has so much more to lose. 

I think both ‘Kate’ and ‘Mercy’ keep me coming back because I’m so invested in the heroines’ journey. I've seen them come leaps and bounds, completely change and transform for the people they love – and now all that they’ve gained is teetering on the edge and is in constant threat of being taken away from them. Of course I’m going to stick around for the long-haul, when the journey has been so rewarding.

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan (Writer), Fiona Staples (Illustrator) 

I remember reading this and going, “Ohhh. Okay. Now I get it.” Now I get how people can be so obsessed with graphic novels/comic books. Now I get the impulse to rock up to a convention centre decked out like your favourite character. Now I get the visceral *need* to know what happens next, and not give a damn if you get drip-fed in small instalments that always end on a cliff-hanger. Now I get it, thanks to ‘Saga’. 

This is the first comic series I've dedicated myself to. I’m so obsessed that I can’t even wait for the Volume’s to be released, I now have a standing order to receive each instalment once a month.

What hooked me is just damn good story and these characters who I instantly started rooting for. It’s an intergalactic love-story about Alana and Marko who have gone AWOL from their respective armies in order to raise their daughter, Hazel. The story is actually narrated by Hazel, who is a baby when the story begins but is looking back and narrating as a somewhat older, wiser soul … and that’s probably what really hooked me. The knowledge that Hazel grows up and has her own problems somewhere in the future that she’ll get around to telling the reader, once we understand the whole background to her complicated life. I love it. I especially love that Brian K. Vaughan was inspired to have Hazel narrate by reading children’s books to his kids, which often adopt that sort of whimsy. 

‘Saga’ Volume One by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

 From the BLURB:

From New York Times bestselling writer BRIAN K.VAUGHAN (Y: THE LAST MAN, EX MACHINA) and critically acclaimed artist FIONA STAPLES (MYSTERY SOCIETY, NORTH 40), SAGA is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in a sexy, subversive drama for adults. This specially priced volume collects the first arc of the smash hit series The Onion A.V. Club calls "the emotional epic Hollywood wishes it could make."

We meet Marko and Alana the day their daughter is born. In the back of an old body shop, on a star called Cleave, little Hazel is born to parents who were once on opposite sides of an ages old war. Now, with the birth of their hybrid daughter, Marko and Alana’s old armies have even more reason to find the new family and end them. . .

Marko is from planet Wreath. He was a prisoner and Alana his guard; she was from planet Landfall. Both of them decided their love was more important than continuing to fight in a war that neither planet can remember the origins of.

But now Hazel has been born, and there is a buzz in the Landfall Capital. Prince Robot IV is being taken out of his peaceful reprieve and sent to hunt down Marko and Alana – making sure to end them before word gets out to either side of their AWOL treachery in the name of enemy ‘love’. Meanwhile, Wreath’s people have hired freelance assassins to kill the dissenting parents, and return with baby Hazel alive. On the case are two of the galaxy’s most successful assassins – The Will, along with his trusty Lying Cat. Then there’s The Stalk – who never misses her target.

‘Saga’ Volume One is the first graphic novel instalment in a new intergalactic series from Image Comics, with story by Brian K. Vaughan and art by Fiona Staples.

I am a fan of graphic novels – but I admit, I've been very conservative in my graphic reading habits. I tried to get into the spin-off ‘Buffy’ comic series back in 2007, because it was touted as being Season eight and I was still feeling the ‘Buffy’ void after the show’s end. But I just couldn’t get into it – Joss Whedon’s particular brand of snark works best for me on TV. So then I limited my reading to graphic adaptations of the book series I already loved – Diana Gabaldon’s ‘The Exile’ story set in her ‘Outlander’ universe. I love the graphic adaptations of Patricia Briggs’s ‘Mercy Thompson’ and Gail Carriger’s ‘Parasol Protectorate’ series. I journeyed outside my comfort zone when I read the brilliant children’s graphic novel ‘The Deep: Here Be Dragons’ with story by Tom Taylor, and art by James Brouwer. So I was well and truly ready to delve even deeper into the graphic novel world, when a blog I frequent by the name of Gawker wrote up a glowing piece on this new series called ‘Saga’. It sounded dark, smart and complex – but it was mention of a (literal) star-crossed lover’s story that really hooked me.

‘Saga’ is so, so, so good! I was laughing from the first page – and from the first panel glimpse of Marko, I was swooning. The story begins right in the thick of action – with Alana giving birth to Hazel and soldiers from both Wreath and Landfall breaking in to take the family down – because word of enemy’s falling in love and starting a family would be one hell of a bad PR campaign for this war of no end.

The series is very clever and makes societal and political commentaries that are reflective and relevant to the modern-day. It’s in the things like Landfall royalty, Prince Robot IV, having a television for a head – that, I think, says something about corrupt media’s tyrannical hold over society. Then there’s the pornographic planet, Sextillion, where hired assassin The Will travels when he’s down on his luck hunting the new parents and wants to drown his sorrows in sex. Sextillion is all bright lights, paid flesh and beautiful depravity – but, as The Will soon discovers, it has a sick and seedy underbelly . . . again, this is no doubt commentary on the sexualisation of our own society – and in a particularly horrendous scene, Vaughan will really have you thinking about the slippery slope of carnal consumerism.

I did appreciate how very, very clever ‘Saga’ was – for all that’s between the panels, if you will. But what made this graphic novel so brilliant was the story. In particular, I loved our narrator; an older Hazel is recounting the story of her parent’s love and her birth from somewhere in the future. She peppers her reminiscence with references to life now. At one point she muses; “From my very first day, I was pursued by men. All of them tried to hurt me, but only one managed to break my heart . . . Sorry, getting ahead of myself.” I loved that Hazel had a voice in this novel, it means that though she’s an adorable (but silent) baby when this story starts, we do get a sense of her personality through her omniscient narration – more than that, her hints about what the future holds makes me very, very hopeful for a long, epic series in which we eventually catch up in the story to follow an older Hazel.

‘Saga’ is very much an adult graphic novel (if the mention of Sextillion wasn’t enough of a tip-off). There are graphic sex scenes, and violent deaths. It’s also scary as all get out . . . when I turned the page and saw an image of spider-like assassin The Stalk I felt my palms begin to sweat. It’s really a testament to Fiona Staple’s utterly beautiful, detailed and sometimes creepy artwork. She’s amazing – and I think I will have to trawl through her backlist and read absolutely everything she’s put her artistic licence to.

The fact that ‘Saga’ is so adult is also why I liked it so much – it’s complex and far-reaching, set on an epic scale and concerning AWOL lovers, broken-hearted assassins and royal soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. This is really a series to sink your teeth into.

I will also say that ‘Saga’ has a very cinematic quality to it. I have high-hopes that because Brian K. Vaughan has a Hollywood history (he was a writer/producer on TV show ‘Lost’) that there is every chance this brilliant series could be adapted . . . I’m especially elated to discover that Vaughan wrote for the Buffy season 8 comic series, because while reading ‘Saga’ I kept thinking that it had a Joss Whedon quality to it – with hints of ‘Firefly’. It’s in Alana’s snarky comments, a tangled back-story between The Will and The Stalk and a clear long-reaching story arc.

I love, love, loved ‘Saga’. I’m now officially addicted. Issue number seven has recently come out, with instalment eight due later in November. I need it – seriously! It has become a delicious drug, delving into this intergalactic love story and I just can’t wait to go back. . .

5/5