Random thought popped in my head the other day. I know I've talked about starting a series out of order when it was meant to be read in order for the most part, but then I got to thinking about those series where authors say you can read it in any order, it doesn't "really" matter. I wondered...how do you choose to read it?
To Read in Order or To Not Read in Order?
One series that comes to mind...that I am still actually reading in some sense but haven't gotten back to in awhile is Christine Warren's The Others series. It's a paranormal romance series where each book is a different couple. You can essentially read whatever book you want whenever you want. The only "spoilers" per se that you might encounter is knowing who winds up with who, if it's even a question. Because really, if you look at that couple's book, you can pretty much figure out they'll wind up together.
Her series is really interesting because it was published out of the order she envisioned it to be in. I can't remember the why of that, but it essentially doesn't matter. Some characters might pop up in another's book but you'd only be spoiled to know if a human gets turned into a paranormal creature or if there was ever a chance of a love triangle, you'd know who the "winner" was. But to be honest, I don't recall any love triangles. I'm not even sure if there was a jealous ex who couldn't accept that they were over...I mean that one is possible, but it's been so long I really can't remember if that was a scenario or not! Lol.
But anyway, the author said you can read this in whatever order you'd like. There's the publisher's version of when books were released, there was the author's order that she aligned them in, or you can go all over the place! It didn't matter.
So what do you do? What would you do? In this scenario I decided to go with the author's route! Mainly because of timeline purposes. Like meeting a character while they are still human not seeing them as a vampire and then jumping back to seeing them single and human and not with their lover.
I'm sure I've had other series like this too. Even when you just follow different couples in the same world. There might be just some minor continuity spoilers, but nothing major really. But even then, when it comes to that, I will read in the published order (unless the author throws out that there is a more chronological order to go with!).
Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld can kind of be read in any order as well. But once she started returning to previous heroines and giving them an extra book, it's kind of best to have at least read those women's books in the right order for spoiler purposes! Of course, with that series, I also read that in proper order! Lol.
So needless to say, if an author says you can read their series in "any order," I am still going to read it in the chronological order. It's just how I'm built!
What about you? If you are told you can read a series in whatever order you'd like with there only being minimal spoilers (like knowing who winds up with who and how they possibly escape their conflict/problem), what order do you choose to read that series in?