Fantasy with Friends is a weekly meme hosted by the good people over at Pages Unbound. Fantasy with Friends poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.
This week’s prompt is:
When reading a favorite fantasy series, which reading order would you recommend? For instance, when reading Narnia, do you think people should go by publication order or by chronological order? Or, if you like to recommend Tolkien, do you think readers should start with LotR or The Hobbit? Feel free to discuss any favorite fantasy series you have!
Generally speaking, for your first read it should always be in publication order. Period.
For re-reads, that’s up to the reader and their interests. Maybe once in chronological order, just for giggles. But that’s only on a re-read.
The exception I’d make to that (at this point in my life, I can think of one—I’m open to others) is reading The Lord of the Rings prior to The Hobbit. I came to LotR later in life than I should have—having been unable to get through The Hobbit in childhood. Yes, yes, I know—there are so many red flags raised by this admission. I have no defense. Anyway, in college, I had several friends tell me to skip The Hobbit and jump right to LotR. A few years later, I didn’t pay attention to them and started with it—and not only finished, but then went on to read the rest. As the two were clearly written for different audiences, it totally would’ve worked to do skip The Hobbit, LotR tells you everything you need know about its predecessor, and does so at the level of the rest of the series.
Narnia, on the other hand needs to be read in the publication order the first time. Spoilers ahead. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the reader—like the children—don’t understand who the witch is or who this Aslan everyone’s talking about it. You’re confused and in suspense just like them. If you, as some will tell you, read The Magician’s Nephew first—you will run into problems. 1. You won’t give a hoot about the lampstand bit. 2. You will know who Aslan is, how much greater his power is than the White Witch’s. So when everyone’s telling the children to wait for Aslan, the reader can go “oh yeah,” he’ll sort it out. 3. You’ll wonder why no one is using Jadis’ name—and really, someone who’s only known by a title rather than a name is more ominous. 4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a better book than The Magician’s Nephew and is more likely to get people to read on. There are likely better and more reasons along those lines, but I’ll save that for better writers than me—and I need to get going anyway.
Yes, there’s that letter that Lewis wrote to a young reader where he said he didn’t care, but suggests the chronological order. I’d point out that Lewis isn’t infallible. But also, he’s writing to someone who’d read the books at least 4 times. Not a new reader.
Before I get into things more—let me talk about a couple of other series.
Let’s start with Harry Connolly’s Dark Fantasy/Urban Fantasy series, Twenty Palaces. Del Rey published three books in the series and decided not to continue (tragically, oh, so tragically). We pick up with our protagonist after he’s been on a mission with an enforcer of a society that controls/polices magic for some time. After Del Rey declined to continue the series, Connolly published a prequel where the protagonist meets the enforcer. Frankly, I cared more about Annalise coming into Ray’s life as a flashback. You can stomach the way she treats Ray when she first meets him better than if that were your intro to her. Seeing Ray get his first/only spell is more enjoyable when you’ve seen it in action, etc.
The next series isn’t fantasy. But it’ll make my point better. Gregory Mcdonald’s Fletch series (don’t judge them by the Chase movies, which are fine for what they are, but they can’t hold a candle to the books). Here are the two orders to choose from:
Publication Order of Fletch Books
| Fletch | (1974) |
| Confess, Fletch | (1976) |
| Fletch’s Fortune | (1978) |
| Fletch and the Widow Bradley | (1980) |
| Fletch’s Moxie | (1981) |
| Fletch and the Man Who | (1983) |
| Carioca Fletch | (1984) |
| Fletch Won | (1985) |
| Fletch, Too | (1986) |
Chronological Order of Fletch Books
| Fletch Won | (1985) |
| Fletch, Too | (1986) |
| Fletch and the Widow Bradley | (1980) |
| Fletch | (1974) |
| Carioca Fletch | (1984) |
| Confess, Fletch | (1976) |
| Fletch’s Fortune | (1978) |
| Fletch’s Moxie | (1981) |
| Fletch and the Man Who | (1983) |
source: Book Series in Order
I’d add that reading them in any order works, too. When I first encountered the series, Fletch Won hadn’t been published, and I got the rest in a haphazard fashion by buying whatever was available at a used bookstore or two. Now, Fletch is the best way to encounter the character for the first time. I’d argue that the publication order is a really good way to read them—with the random way I stumbled onto coming in a close second (although you should do Fletch Won and Fletch, Too last even then). Like with The Magician’s Nephew, Fletch Won answers questions raised by Fletch and maybe Fletch and the Widow Bradley. And that’s a big factor. But the biggest is that when Carioca Fletch (a direct sequel to Fletch—starting hours after it) Mcdonald starts flexing different authorial muscles, and his storytelling shifts. Fletch Won is closer to the style of the other books in the series, but is still closer to Carioca. Fletch, Too is clearly more of the same kind of storytelling that started in Carioca—it’s deeper, not as dialogue-driven, there’s more atmosphere, it’s about the locale as much as it is the story and characters. Also, there’s a lack of concern for news stories, which is a driving force in the others.
This gets us back to my main point—prequels come along and explain things that the reader already knows—no one cares about the lampstand in Nephew, no one will care about the origin of Ray’s Ghost Knife (well, it’s a fun scene regardless, but you won’t care as much), or no one will care about Fletch meeting a woman right before his wedding if we don’t already know that the new woman will be his second ex-wife. If you read them in publication order, on the other hand…
But all three point to something else—the author has grown, their ideas about the series have matured and changed—in some cases, the first book or two were written without any plan of books to come in the series, and were written that way. It’s only in retrospect that an author decides to go back and explain some things—or play with things we already know.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong. I look forward to seeing what other people writing on this have to say. I expect it to be better (and likely shorter) than this..
