[milamber_reborn]

With Feist, publishing order because I was forced to. It was a good way to read them though. Because of the generation shift in Shards of Broken Crown, there was a good feeling of nostalgia reading the Krondor and Tales of the Riftwar books.

[Blackwing]

I usually read them in the publishing order because that is also the chronological order. Otherwise I read in the chronological order, as I've done with with Brust and Bujold.

[Leiali]

I would say publishing order except for something Blackwing said. I read the Vorkosigan series in the order of 'whichever I could get my hands on first'. That was fine because the writing was so good it didn't matter where you started from. But generally speaking, I would say publishing order. That is how it develops after all.

[FicusFan]

Originally posted by Eventine


I don't think reading in chronological order achieves that. Usually (or at least in my experience) when an author writes a prequel half the concepts, characters, etc are included from the previously published novels and like Neil said:

Or at least some of the irony contained in the prequels is lost.

Small case study (with minor spoiler):
The First King of Shannara (prequel to Sword of Shannara) features ancestors of two characters who randomly meet in the Sword of Shannara. If the books were read in chronological rather than publishing order, the irony here would have been lost (or at least rendered less effective by being reversed).

I wasn't talking about prequels. The only prequels I have ever read, I think, are for the Dune series and they were so awful that there was no connection between the original and the prequel anyway.

I was talking about books in a series that are published out of order. Specifically in LMB's Miles Vorkosigan series Cetaganda is a recently published book, but chronologically it happens when Miles is still a young, new recruit for the imperial marines (?). When I started reading the series I got all those that were published and read them in chronological story order. It would have made no sense to read the book between the two late-in-the-story books that it was published with.

In fact the reviews in general from fans were rather negative for
Cetaganda , and I was expecting a sub par book. It was wonderful, but then it didn't jar me out of the story sequence because I was able to read it in the right place. Those who were reading the books as they were published ended up way back in the story, and probably felt annoyed. I think Memory was the last book that had been published when I started reading the series. Now of course I will read the books as they are published.

I always try to read a series in chronological order - so I collect all the books published before I start reading. I just don't think there is any point to a series if you read it randomly.

The one exception I will admit to, is that I have read Terry Pratchett's Discworld randomly, but each book pretty much stands alone. However one of my goals is to eventually start at number 1 and work my way through to 26 or 27 in order. Because there is a sense of the watch, and a sense of the witches , and a sense of other groups that I know exists from talking to other fans, but I don't have it, because what I have read is all out of order.

[Leiali]

I see what you mean ficus fan. Though for me, since I read the whole of the Vorkosigan series out of whack, I didn't experience any problems with Ceteganda.

Life is too short to read all the Terry Pratchett books all over again.:)

[Colonel Worf]

You may see it happening in Dune, but it's really easy to figure out the order.