Sunday, September 9, 2012

Top 5 Sundays #19 - Authors Who Write More Than One Great Book Series!

This week's poll at Larissa's Bookish Life ended in a tie between "Authors Who Write More Than One Great Book Series!" and "Books I Had to Buy But Are Gathering Dust on My Shelf" so thanks to the time honoured tradition of eeny, meeny, miney, moe this week's Top 5 on Calliope's Domain will be looking at authors who write (or wrote) more than one great book series. We're at a point where stand alone books are something of an endangered species, especially in the urban fantasy genre. Heck, even in the paranormal romance genre couples may change but the series chugs along. The challenge with this list was finding five authors with multiple series that appeal to me. It's not that great authors are one hit wonders in the series department, far from it, but more often than not they try to make their second series something so distinct and different from the first that it's not always a guarantee that both will suit the tastes of a singular reader.

So, without further ado, I present Calliope's Domain's Top 5 Authors Who Write More Than One Great Book Series!

#5 - Kelly Meding
 Dreg City begins with a monster hunter resurrected in the borrowed body of a suicide victim and trying to navigate the change, unexpected love and, of course, solve the mystery of her own murder. Metawars has recently a team superheroes try to come to grips with their newly returned powers, a less than welcoming public, and each other now that they're all grown up. Both series have a true edge of realism to their stories and detailed casts of believable and distinct characters. Meding successfully manages to hit the nail on the head - twice.

#4 - Seanan McGuire
On the one hand, you have Toby Daye, a Fae halflie whose happily ever got scrapped when a rival turned into a fish for over a decade, and on the other you have Verity Price, daughter in a long line of cryptozoologists trying to make a name (even if its not her own) for herself as a professional dancer in NYC. You may as well be comparing Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Grimm; sure you can find the common threads but when you get down to it these two series couldn't be more different!

#3 - Michelle Rowen
Michelle Rowen has one of those quirky, comedic personalities that infuses each and every book she writes in its own distinct and unique way. Sarah Dearly, of her Immortality Bites series, gets turned into a vamp on a blind date and wakes up to vampire hunters; cue running for her life which, naturally, leads her to interrupt the suicide attempt of a six hundred year old Master vampire. Psychic and police consultant Eden Riley finds herself possessed by cursed Incubus Darrak at a crime scene and dang if she didn't find him just the littlest bit irresistible. Jillian Conrad was just your run of the mill office worker until a coffee run led to her being injected with a serum that made her blood poisonous to vampires. Enter Declan; a tall, dark and handsome vampire hunter and dhampir working for an agency with more secrets than even anyone working there knows.

#2 - Gena Showalter
Here's a riddle for you: what do immortal warrior cursed with the demons of sin freed from Pandora's Box have in common with a girl who, thanks to a super secret formula unwittingly gulped down with her coffee, acquires control of the elements? Well, both have their stories told (and told unbelievably well) by the pen of Gena Showalter, and frankly, that's pretty much the only commonality these two series can claim.

#1 - Anne Bishop
In one corner, you have a series chronicling the life of dreams incarnate through the eyes of those around her. In the other corner, you have a fairy tale telling of the collapse of the Fae world as the witches who connect their world to ours fall to the persecutions. Both are told with vivid detail and infused with oceans of emotion, both share a common undertone to the writing, but the stories themselves could not be more different.

And there you have it! Until next week, my pretties, I bid you adieu. Ciao!

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