I am thinking about the buying habits of readers, and trying to subdivide them into several categories, in relation to a single author's works
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"Theme/review based" can overlap with "series fan" (which is a combo of setting fan and character fan, I think? E.g., Cherryh's Foreigner series, or possibly Bujold's Vorkosiverse, where we love Miles but we'll read non-Miles books too, but Miles was kind of the "hook") -- sometimes a particular character/setting "clicks" and sometimes not. E.g., I can take or leave a lot of Cherryh's stuff, but I will follow the Adventures Of Bren And Associates till the end of days, and I love the hani of Pride of Chanur and sequels.
(The two Xanth books that I can pin down why I liked them are: Castle Roogna and the one with Mare Imbrium. Because I am a sucker for non-human characters, EVEN IF ONE IS A GIANT SPIDER AND I HATE BEING AROUND SPIDERS. *headdesk*)
I'm trying to think where Bujold's Vorkosiverse fits there. Mostly it's Miles, but it's also Cordelia for 3 books, and Ivan for one, and Ellie Quinn and Ethan of Athos, and the Quaddies. I don't really feel that it's got the flavor of the Discworld in the sense of setting? Maybe because the non-Miles books aren't always standalone... Shards of Honor/Barrayar are a duology, and Falling Free is a standalone, but while Ivan's book could stand alone, it's... so thoroughly enmeshed in... in Milesatude?
*flails*
(No, no, the Mallorean was the same story arc! It explicitly said it was a reprise, because of that prophecy thing doing a certain amount of "actually, you have to keep doing this till you get it right." Or something like that. I mostly just remember Velvet suborning that other fellow's snake and keeping it in her bodice. And Belgarion realizing that just because the prophecy said "one son" didn't mean that a bunch of little (dryad) daughters wasn't an option. And flying being like swimming -- you don't think about the depth of
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The Barrayar setting books are much more intermeshed than the Discworld ones are. Incidents in one book have a lot more consequences in others than occur (or would be plausible) in Discworld
Yeah, that's probably why I feel Barrayar/Vorkosiverse is more interwoven than Discworld, so am not quite comfortable with it being "setting" over "Series."
I suppose there's probably a vague category of "it doesn't feel like X, and it's all tied together, so..." O:>
Andre Norton's Witch World is a better example of "setting." It's one of two series where I don't recommend reading in order -- Discworld being the other.
Oh, point, that. ...I don't think I've ever read the first Witch World books, but I am extremely fond of Year of the Unicorn despite the title's bait-and-switch. (SPOILER! THERE ARE NO UNICORNS IN THIS BOOK. If you are a pre-teen who is a unicorn fanatic, YOU WILL FIND NO UNICORNS. On the other hand, shapeshifters.)
This reminds me of how annoyed I was by Anne McCaffrey's short story collection Get Off the Unicorn (the title of which is perhaps the most epic copyedit fail ever, but there still weren't unicorns in it EITHER WAY.)
I would tend to call Barrayar as a "setting" more in this sense, and Discworld, frankly, as more like "a collection of settings, inside of another larger setting".
This is actually a pretty good example of a place where I'm more of a character fan than anything, I guess. Because I've read most (all?) of the Watch "Setting" books, and almost none of the other books in the series.
I guess for me, I'm pretty flexible with "setting". If an author has described enough of the universe that stories in other parts of it can even be imagined, it's a "setting". Heh.
(The two Xanth books that I can pin down why I liked them are: Castle Roogna and the one with Mare Imbrium. Because I am a sucker for non-human characters, EVEN IF ONE IS A GIANT SPIDER AND I HATE BEING AROUND SPIDERS. *headdesk*)
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*flails*
(No, no, the Mallorean was the same story arc! It explicitly said it was a reprise, because of that prophecy thing doing a certain amount of "actually, you have to keep doing this till you get it right." Or something like that. I mostly just remember Velvet suborning that other fellow's snake and keeping it in her bodice. And Belgarion realizing that just because the prophecy said "one son" didn't mean that a bunch of little (dryad) daughters wasn't an option. And flying being like swimming -- you don't think about the depth of ( ... )
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I suppose there's probably a vague category of "it doesn't feel like X, and it's all tied together, so..." O:>
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This is actually a pretty good example of a place where I'm more of a character fan than anything, I guess. Because I've read most (all?) of the Watch "Setting" books, and almost none of the other books in the series.
I guess for me, I'm pretty flexible with "setting". If an author has described enough of the universe that stories in other parts of it can even be imagined, it's a "setting". Heh.
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