When someone asks “where do I start reading Discworld?” there’s a bunch of different possibilities and their storylines all intersect. Then there’s ones with clear starting points and general paths, but with a lot of other stuff that comes in-between, like the Malazan Book of the Fallen or Steven King’s Dark Tower series that intersects with various horror novels of his. Then there’s the “cinematic universe” approach of things like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, that start with multiple standalone novels and series that later on intersect in small ways and then bigger ways, to the point that you’ll need to have knowledge of multiple sub-series to read some of the newer books.
I was wondering… what book series has the most complex reading order? Is it any of the ones I already mentioned? Is it one I hadn’t even realized had a complex reading order? Is it a series I might not even ever have heard of? I’m curious! And why do you think it’s that one? How complex is it? In what way?
by AlwaysBeQuestioning
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Brandon Sanderson did an AMA here [you might want to take a look](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/) 🙂 [Here’s a link to all of our upcoming AMAs](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/amafullschedule)
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There’s an infographic on Google for Disc world that I’d highly recommend checking out. Basically you have different characters – so you could read the books from the character series you like most.
Or if you’re a completionist like myself. Start with the first book and work your way up.
Starting from the beginning will give a good taste of what characters you like if you want to pick and choose the series within like the infographic shows.
If you want complexity – check out fantasy or sci-fi like Sanderson books like Mistborn. Wheel of time or Dune etc.
Or if you like huge, rich world building with a simple to follow story. Nothing comes close to One Piece. The author is a genius at world building by adding so many characters and world details to it. My personal favourite thing about this series is the foreshadowing. You’d often have some minor side detail you think you can ignore. Then boom – years later, a One Piece chapter comes out. But because there’s so many chapters and Oda the author is the best at show and tell. He’s constantly hiding stuff and revealing stuff at the same making it such a fun read.
Often enough you’d be like where did that come from in the current chapter. Because the community is so fun to follow. You’re kind of in shock at realising how you forgot that small detail and how it became relevant later on. Or with the community – you realise Oda isn’t just hiding details in the chapter. But there’s detail everywhere like in the chapter numbers and titles for example.
As a lover of fantasy and sci-fi worlds in Books. Nothing comes close to the rich tapestry that One Piece has been layering for nearly the last two decades.
Plus if you get up to date with modern fantasy books – the wait can be years for the next book. It’s not easy writing a fantasy book. Somehow with Oda – you’re getting a chapter nearly every week to help build this enormous world and story he keeps adding to.
While we can predict how the pieces fit in most stories – you can only have possibilities in One Piece. I get great enjoyment from being constantly surprised at not thinking of a story element that he introduced.