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Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 9:17:26 PM   
MrsWargamer


Posts: 1655
Joined: 6/18/2014
Status: offline 		What are yer favs. I'm considering a series needs at a minimum of 5 thick ole books to be epic.

I'm reading Dune. If you consider all it has available, that's like I think 17 books.
Competing with that for me is Shannara. Which is like I think 32 books. Not easy keeping track :)

Yes, LotR is epic I suppose. But it's something you can hold in one hand.
I won't mention my numerous romance novel series :) They're fun, but hardly 'epic'.
I've really only got 3 epics I like. The last is the Sword of Truth series. 9 awesome books.

If I could only have one series of books to read, I think I'd pick Shannara although I'm mainly a Dune fanatic.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 9:35:30 PM   
shunwick


Posts: 2426
Joined: 10/15/2006
Status: offline 		The Lensman Series by EE "Doc" Smith. There are seven Lensman books but the seventh is only marginally related to the Lensman universe. It's the first six books that comprise the main series. Classic and epic sci-fi.

The Belgariad and Mallorean by David Edddings is worth a mention if you like Fastasy.

Best wishes,
Steve

< Message edited by shunwick -- 2/9/2021 9:39:17 PM >

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 10:24:01 PM   
MrRoadrunner


Posts: 1323
Joined: 10/7/2005
Status: offline 		My favorite only has eight books in the series. Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony.

I also like the alternative history series by Harry Turtledove that started with 'Worldwar: In the Balance'. I forget how many books it had.


RR

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 10:35:49 PM   
Aurelian

 

Posts: 3916
Joined: 2/26/2007
Status: offline 		The Richard Bolitho series.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 10:41:50 PM   
TonyAAA


Posts: 141
Joined: 2/7/2008
From: Arlington, TX
Status: offline 		The Aubrey Maturin series gets my vote. Roughly 21 books, 7000 pages, but it's not the length, it's the quality.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/9/2021 11:10:43 PM   
Curtis Lemay


Posts: 12969
Joined: 9/17/2004
From: Houston, TX
Status: offline 		Colleen McCullough’s Master of Rome series of historical novels. There are seven novels:

The First Man in Rome
The Grass Crown
Fortune’s Favorites
Caesar’s Women
Caesar
The October Horse
Anthony and Cleopatra

A grand total of 4951 pages covering the 84 years of the end of the Roman Republic (from 110BC to 27BC). Last time I went through them it took less than six months. All I had read before. Traveling through them again was great fun. She really immerses you in Ancient Rome in its most fascinating period, with a long string of titans across the stage.

And the characterizations of the principle characters (Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius, and Gaius Octavius) are superb. (Although she clearly favors Caesar over all others, with Pompey & Anthony especially getting dumped on).

But the supporting cast is just as richly characterized (Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, Quintus Caecilus Metellus Numidicus, Publius Rutilius Rufus, Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Quintus Sertorius, Quintus Servilius Caepio, Marcus Livius Drusus, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Quintus Caecilus Metellus Pius, Lucius Licinius Luculus, Publius Clodius, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, Marcus Porcius Cato, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Marcus Junius Brutus, Titus Labienus, Decimus Junius Brutus, Gaius Trebonius, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Lucius Julius Caesar, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

Principle women get fully fleshed out as well: Aurelia Cotta (Caesar’s Mother), Livia Drusa (Cato & Servilia’s Mother), Julia (Caesar’s Aunt & Marius' wife), Julia (Caesar’s Daughter & Pompey's wife), Servilia (Mother of Brutus and Mistress of Caesar), Octavia (Octavius’s Sister & Anthony's wife), and Livia Drusilla (Octavius’s Wife).

And foreign enemies too: Jugurtha (Numidia), Boiorix (Cimbri), Mithradates VI (Pontus), Gaius Papius Mutilus (Samnites), Spartacus (Slave revolt), Vercingetorix (Gauls), Cleopatra and Caesarion (Egypt).

Yet all of that is just the tip of the ice berg. It’s literally a cast of thousands!

And battles all over the place: Arausio, Aquae Sextiae, Vercellae, Nola, Colline Gate, Carrhae, Alesia, Pharsalus, Philippi, and Actium, among many others. Rome was basically in the business of War, and it shows.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Masters-Rome-Colleen-McCullough/dp/B01HN4WGPC

< Message edited by Curtis Lemay -- 2/10/2021 5:00:26 PM >

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 12:25:52 AM   
MrsWargamer


Posts: 1655
Joined: 6/18/2014
Status: offline 		Series guys, series :)

But I like seeing mention of occasional great works.

Has anyone else read the Brotherhood of War series by WEB Griffin? Really fun read series.
That and the series called There Will Be War edited by Pournelle Basically a series of short fictions divided into types.

_____________________________

Wargame, 05% of the time.
Play with Barbies 05% of the time.
Play with Legos 10% of the time.
Build models 20% of the time
Shopping 60% of the time.
Exlains why I buy em more than I play em.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 2:16:04 AM   
Eambar


Posts: 240
Joined: 4/2/2010
Status: offline 		Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series is my favourite (not counting the Lord of the Rings as a series).

In true Moorcock style, it is difficult to fully work out which of his books/series are Eternal Champion, but certainly the Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and Erekose (John Daker) books are core Eternal Champion, plus Jerry Cornelius, Von Bek and Oswald Bastible are probably Eternal Champion. Moorcock's time travelling books often overlapped with the Eternal Champion series, but they are all fine works of imaginitive fiction.

I also like Harry Turtledove - particularly the Videssos, World War, Colonisation and Southern Victory series, although I haven't read all of his other series yet.

Cheers

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 9:25:20 AM   
Massattack

 

Posts: 93
Joined: 10/28/2002
From: UK
Status: offline 		"The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Fourteen meaty books in the series! Fantasy genre, a good galloping read!

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 10:33:46 AM   
RFalvo69


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From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Massattack

"The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Fourteen meaty books in the series! Fantasy genre, a good galloping read!

+1

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 11:04:11 AM   
Hellen_slith


Posts: 1990
Joined: 10/10/2005
Status: offline 		I like the Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair.

Follows Lanny from the end of WWI
through almost 40 years of wartime intrigues.

I am surprised that it hasn't been made a mini-series for the TV.





Attachment (1)

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 11:20:40 AM   
stuart3

 

Posts: 193
Joined: 9/4/2014
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Massattack

"The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Fourteen meaty books in the series! Fantasy genre, a good galloping read!


Plus the New Spring prequel, so fifteen books.

Also -

Roger Zelazny's two Amber quintets. Corwin wakes up in hospital after a car crash but discovers that his less than unified family are considerably more than human.


Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Begins with Harry Dresden as a wizard/private investigator in modern day Chicago. Builds up into full scale wizard warfare. Seventeen books (out of an anticipated twenty five) published so far, plus two short story compilations.

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Post #: 12
RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 2:39:07 PM   
USSAmerica


Posts: 18715
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From: Graham, NC, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69


quote:

ORIGINAL: Massattack

"The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Fourteen meaty books in the series! Fantasy genre, a good galloping read!

+1


+2

My favorite series of all time.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 3:38:31 PM   
warspite1


Posts: 41353
Joined: 2/2/2008
From: England
Status: offline 		The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis)

Told my mum I was reading them when I was about 10 but.... well I was a little boy and reading was for girls and was boring so didn't get much done....

Finally read them around 15 - and wished I hadn't left it so long. Then read them to my youngest little warspite many years ago.

Wonderful stories.




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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 3:46:16 PM   
warspite1


Posts: 41353
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From: England
Status: offline 		Not sure if they can be counted as a book series - but I'll count them anyway.

Four books by the wonderful Geirr H Haarr that centre on the naval campaigns of 1939-40 in and around the North Sea

No Room For Mistakes
The Gathering Storm
The German Invasion of Norway
The Battle of Norway

Stonkingly good reads










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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 3:46:33 PM   
Kuokkanen

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

What are yer favs. I'm considering a series needs at a minimum of 5 thick ole books to be epic.

The Complete Hammer's Slammers. Only 3 books, but each is around 500 pages thicc.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 4:54:05 PM   
ncc1701e


Posts: 7380
Joined: 10/29/2013
From: Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
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quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Not sure if they can be counted as a book series - but I'll count them anyway.

Four books by the wonderful Geirr H Haarr that centre on the naval campaigns of 1939-40 in and around the North Sea

No Room For Mistakes
The Gathering Storm
The German Invasion of Norway
The Battle of Norway

Stonkingly good reads



Wow - the price of these books on Amazon is huge.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 5:00:57 PM   
warspite1


Posts: 41353
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From: England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e


quote:

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Not sure if they can be counted as a book series - but I'll count them anyway.

Four books by the wonderful Geirr H Haarr that centre on the naval campaigns of 1939-40 in and around the North Sea

No Room For Mistakes
The Gathering Storm
The German Invasion of Norway
The Battle of Norway

Stonkingly good reads



Wow - the price of these books on Amazon is huge.
warspite1

Believe me, everything about these books screams quality - particularly the two tomes that deal with Norway - a most interesting campaign for many reasons. The books are well written by a serious historian who provides a measured balanced view and has no dumb axe to grind. The page count is good (the writing is small too) the books are well put together too and well illustrated.

Believe me, these books quite simply scream sex at you very loudly, and if someone is in anyway interested in naval warfare in World War II then they should have these books on their bookshelves.


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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 5:14:08 PM   
ncc1701e


Posts: 7380
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From: Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
Status: offline 		I believe you. Amazon states that The Battle for Norway is the second book in a series of two. Which one is the first one please?

Thanks


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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 5:18:15 PM   
warspite1


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From: England
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e

I believe you. Amazon states that The Battle for Norway is the second book in a series of two. Which one is the first one please?

Thanks

warspite1

Correct. The German Invasion of Norway is the first book and details the build up to the campaign, the opening moves by each side and ultimately the landings at each of the MG targets, together with the British/Norwegian response.


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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 5:30:18 PM   
ncc1701e


Posts: 7380
Joined: 10/29/2013
From: Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
Status: offline 		Thanks

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Chancellor Gorkon to Captain James T. Kirk:
You don't trust me, do you? I don't blame you. If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 6:39:08 PM   
MrsWargamer


Posts: 1655
Joined: 6/18/2014
Status: offline 		Ever tried a supposed good series, you couldn't finish because of some element of the novels?

Tried real hard to read Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever 2 series of three. But the main character, he was so unlikeable. Always whining, complaining. Sucked any fun out of the experience. I made it to the 3rd book and quit.

_____________________________

Wargame, 05% of the time.
Play with Barbies 05% of the time.
Play with Legos 10% of the time.
Build models 20% of the time
Shopping 60% of the time.
Exlains why I buy em more than I play em.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 7:37:07 PM   
76mm


Posts: 4688
Joined: 5/2/2004
From: Washington, DC
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer
Ever tried a supposed good series, you couldn't finish because of some element of the novels?

The Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard. The first several books were actually pretty good. Then it got weird. Very, very weird.

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Post #: 23
RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 9:26:54 PM   
shunwick


Posts: 2426
Joined: 10/15/2006
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Ever tried a supposed good series, you couldn't finish because of some element of the novels?

Tried real hard to read Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever 2 series of three. But the main character, he was so unlikeable. Always whining, complaining. Sucked any fun out of the experience. I made it to the 3rd book and quit.

I read and liked the first two trilogies: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever and The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I didn't know that Stephen Donaldson had written a third trilogy, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant so never got round to reading it. The title character is a complicated man. Broken and embittered by leprosy and shunned by everyone in the society in which he lived.

It's easy to see him as unlikeable but he was trapped either in the real world or elsewhere. Leprosy was the one truth he had to accept in order to survive the real world and everything other than that was a lie to etch away at the core of belief. The first two trilogies were his journey into understanding. And he railed against it every step of the way.

Anyway, not easy to read.

Best wishes,
Steve

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 9:30:33 PM   
stuart3

 

Posts: 193
Joined: 9/4/2014
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Ever tried a supposed good series, you couldn't finish because of some element of the novels?

Tried real hard to read Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever 2 series of three. But the main character, he was so unlikeable. Always whining, complaining. Sucked any fun out of the experience. I made it to the 3rd book and quit.


I finished the Thomas Covenant books, but I didn't enjoy them.

Then there was Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series of books. Three (or four?) wonderful trilogies set in a medieval world of ritual magic, high religious rites, and dynastic civil war, followed by a depressing trilogy of prequels about a time when the good guys were being persecuted and killed off one by one, with the only silver lining of each book being that the deposed royal family left an heir to be the subject of the next depressing story.

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Post #: 25
RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 9:35:25 PM   
Aurelian

 

Posts: 3916
Joined: 2/26/2007
Status: offline 		David Glantz 4 book Stalingrad series.

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RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 9:44:43 PM   
Eambar


Posts: 240
Joined: 4/2/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: MrsWargamer

Ever tried a supposed good series, you couldn't finish because of some element of the novels?

Tried real hard to read Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever 2 series of three. But the main character, he was so unlikeable. Always whining, complaining. Sucked any fun out of the experience. I made it to the 3rd book and quit.


Had this one in my hands last weekend in another attempt to give it a go. Read it a while but just couldn't get into it. Have put it down again for now.

One of the other science fiction/fantasy series I have tried to read in the past, and may give another go soon is Julian May's Saga of the Exiles.

This may be heresy now, but I picked up the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire in 2000, thought they were OK but have never continued the series.

Two other series I like not in the fantasy realm are George G Gilman's western series Edge and Adam Steele and Sven Hassel's Legion of the Damned .

Cheers

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Post #: 27
RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/10/2021 10:45:15 PM   
mikkey


Posts: 3142
Joined: 2/10/2008
From: Slovakia
Status: offline 		Terry Pratchett - Discworld series

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Post #: 28
RE: Epic book series (any genre) - 2/11/2021 10:41:10 AM   
Massattack

 

Posts: 93
Joined: 10/28/2002
From: UK
Status: offline 		Loved the whole "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, couldn't put them down from start to finish. But RR Martin
created a monster with all the threads so no idea how he will be able to pull them all together for the last
two books in the series to come.

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Post #: 29
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