Five Favourite Books from Five Series
You'll notice that I'm already not doing this every week. That's because the list of prompts (linked below) doesn't always appeal to me, and I'd rather not post than post just for the sake of it. Similarly, this week's prompt asks me to pick my favourite book from a series, ten times. I don't read a huge amount of series, much preferring standalone works, so going in to this I didn't actually know if I'd be able to pick ten. It turns out that I couldn't, so I've stuck with five titles.
The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo
An easy one to start with, since I've only just read this series. You can read my posts about Nghi Vo's Singing Hill Cycle here. Aside from the third book, which I liked but didn't love, I've adored every entry in this series. But this final one is easily my favourite.
Before They Are Hanged, Joe Abercrombie
As with the Singing Hills Cycle, I read these books very recently so they're still firmly at the front of my mind. If you'd asked me before I re-read them I would have told you that The Blade Itself is my favourite, but with a fresh mind I'm happy to say that I was wrong and that the second in the trilogy is by far the best. Before They Are Hanged takes everything that worked in The Blade Itself and makes it bigger and better. Now that we know the characters we get to watch them grow and change, we get to see the threats that were only hinted at in the first book realised, and we see much of what we've been working towards come to a head. This feels less like the middle book of a trilogy and more like the second half of the first novel.
Iron Council, China Mieville
The New Crobuzon books count as a series, right? I'm going to say that they do. I haven't read these for many years and I think this is the unpopular choice for a favourite of the three, but this is the one that has stuck with me over the years. The endless building of the rails that feels like a Western, the angry political polemic that runs through the entire text - present in the earlier books but never as aggressively at the forefront of things as it is here - the way we're forced to contend with the reality of what corporal punishment looks like in this world. Perdido Sreet Station and The Scar walked so that Iron Council could steam.
Bone Silence, Alastair Reynolds
It's so, so hard to pick a favourite from the Revenger series. All three are very different and all three are fantastic in their own way. For me, Bone Silence just about wins purely because of the vast, dark majesty of the ending. It answers so many questions while asking so many more in a perfect end to the trilogy, and I sincerely hope Reynolds revisits this world at some point in the future.
The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman
Very few trilogies come as close to perfection as His Dark Materials, and The Amber Spyglass is a beautiful, epic ending to the series. As with Revenger it's very hard for me to pick a favourite here, and for many years I would have chosen The Subtle Knife, but as I've got older I've grown to appreciate the sheer ambition of this final novel all the more. I still need to read the Books of Dust at some point, but I think first I should revisit this series for the first time in about a decade.
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