runsforcelery wrote:roseandheather wrote:
You can paint a zebra solid black, but that still won't make it a horse.
(I'm kidding - kind of. Shadow of Freedom may be marketed as a main-line novel - and understandably so, given that it's essentially A Rising Thunder Part 2 - but the name, the characters, the content, and the setting all mark it as a Saganami Island novel.)
The problem, Rose, as I think I've explained before, is that after the very first of the Shadow books, it became obvious to me (and I so stated in an author's note) that what I had intended as a secondary series was, in fact, a critical part of the mainline novels and that there truly was no difference (in my own mind or in the flow of the story) between them and any other "mainline" novel. It may be my fault for not dropping the "shadow" part of the title, but I've retained it deliberately to indicate that this is a book which is going to be dealing with events
outside the Haven Sector and its immediate environs. It's akin to my habit of using the word "honor" (or a form of it) in every second novel that
does focus on the Haven Sector and its immediate environs. Because they're transpiring in a different area, they focus on different characters, a different tempo, and different character and story constraints, but they're definitely "mainstream" in terms of their contribution to the entire storyline. It is possible that the two areas of operations are going to merge into a single set of covers in the next book or two, or I may continue to separate the story strands, depending on how closely they coordinate in both time and space, but you aren't going to get the complete story without reading all of them.
Oh, no, I get
that - at least, I hope I do!
I think the kerfuffle arises from differing definitions of what a mainline novel
is. To me the sub-series have marked - well, different "theaters of operation", if you will -
Wages of Sin are the Zilwicki/Cachat books, the
Shadow series are in the Talbott Quadrant, and the "mainline" novels are Manticore, Haven, Mesa, etc. They're not sub-series in the same way
Manticore Ascendant or
Star Kingdom are, for instance, which don't contribute to the ongoing 20th-c PD narrative.
When I - and most of the people I talk with outside these boards - talk about
Shadow novels or
Wages novels, we're using the names as shorthand for "this is the one that deals with Michelle &co in Talbott", not "this is a side story and you don't really need to read it unless you want to." And in that sense, SoF very much
is a Shadow novel, whatever its marketing. On the other hand, for most people - i.e. those unfortunate souls who haven't yet discovered this playground - the term "sub-series"
does tend to translate as "something you can skip if you want", which can make for some very confused readers when they suddenly find characters referencing events that, as far as they know, never happened!
For the purposes of reading order, I treat the Honor novels, the Shadow novels, and the Wages novels all as "main line" novels. I've read the Shadow trilogy pretty much as a standalone, just adding in the relevant bits of
Mission of Honor, when I was in the mood to go spend some time with those particular characters, but that was probably on read three or four of those particular novels, not the first or even second.
I've also noticed that I tend to refer to
Manticore Ascendant and
Star Kingdom as "spinoff" series, but the Shadow and Cachat series as "sub-series" - probably just to keep it straight in my own head! And everybody else's, for that matter.
It'll be interesting to see how one or both of those sub-series fold back in to the main spine of the Honor books - particularly as the theater of operations shifts toward the SL and the Alignment and, presumably, away from the Quadrant and even Mesa, though. This isn't so much as a story
line as it is a story
weave - and God help you if you miss a thread!
Aaaaand
this is why I just tend to go, "Yeah, first is
On Basilisk Station, then
Honor of the Queen, then
The Short Victorious War - after you've finished those, let me know and I'll explain what you've just gotten yourself into...
"
*
quietly shuffles off soapbox and hides under it
*
