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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29250
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29250
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I can only speak to personal taste, but in the interest of generalization, I will try to justify my personal taste in this. I think serials should consist of stand alone novels that can be read independently. This is for four reasons.

1. Many of the serials I have read -- Sharpe, Aubrey/Maturin, Hornblower, Longmire, Leaphorn/Chee -- I first encountered at some middle book in the series, whatever the library or the airport bookstore happened to have on the shelf. If I had opened these to a recap, it would at once have suggested that there was no point in reading this if I could not start at the beginning, and that I was unlikely to enjoy this unless I bought the whole series, which is more of a commitment that I am willing to make. In other words, if you want me to start, you better promise me a payoff in this novel, even if I decide not to pursue the entire series. 

2. I am not going to read an entire series in order from beginning to end without a break. I read the first six Aubrey/Maturin novels and then took a three year break before I picked up the seventh as a vacation read, which lead me to buy 7-11, after which I will almost certainly take another several year break before I pick up 12-21. Each novel needs to work as a novel. There are lots of ways to make the in in-situ recap interesting. O'Brien is a master of it, usually using it to introduce characters who will be important in the next novel. 

3. A series of novels should be a series of novels -- independent works connected by a slender thread such as recurring characters. It is not the same thing as a saga -- a work too long to bind into a manageable book. LOTR is a saga, not a series. If you need an explicit recap to make sense of the book I am holding, that suggests that I am in the middle of a saga rather than a series. A saga cannot be read out of order or with large gaps of time. A series can. Each book in a series should work as the first book the reader reads. 

4. Many stories have backstories that have to be told as some point. Just because the backstory of novel B happens to have been related in novel A does not make an initial infodump the right way to supply the backstory to the reader of novel B. 

Original score: 5