The Sword and Laser discussion

I'm slowly working my way through the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey and just finished up the Herald Mage trilogy. So I searched up the Valdemar reading order to see where to go next and saw two lists, publication versus chronological.
A lot of longer running series sometimes have these variations as not all authors write their stories chronologically (Redwall comes to mind).
Which do you prefer to read a long established series in? Publication or chronological?
Personally, I try to stick to publication because I like to see an author evolve over time with their style and voice. Although, I know I read Magician's Nephew before Lion, Witch and The Wardrobe when I was younger...

Publication. Always publication. If major plot points are resolved in prequel fashion, you are supposed to wonder before getting to them. I'm appalled that readers of Narnia are now told to start with The Magician's Nephew.

Good point about plot points. Imagine watching Star Wars as your first time being in chronological order. Empire would definitely not have the same impact

Generally publication unless the early books are supposed to be pretty bad.

Publication, unless the author suggests differently. Which does sometimes happen.

Yep, I agree with what everyone else says. I tend to find that prequels delight in adding a bunch of references you'll only understand if you've read the books published earlier. I have seldom felt they stand alone, and they usually spoil stuff in the chronological future of the stories. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I can't think of any right now.

I've tried reading series in chronological order before but I've always felt lost. even when the author or other readers say it's ok, there's never enough character description, and they tend to end with a big reveal which you only understand if you've read the next book.

I also prefer publication. Though, in subsequent reads/watches, I prefer to go in chronological order.

Generally I’m also pub order, although I did read parts of the Vorkosigan series in chrono this year by happenstance due to library availability. In that case it wasn’t a huge deal.

I start out in publication order but there are some big worlds like Pern, Darkover, and Discworld that I have to read in chronological to keep the references to people and events, across the different mini-series/groupings, understandable.

Varies from series to series, and depends on the exact circumstances, but these days I lean towards publication order.

Having said which, there are some series that I do prefer to read chronologically -- Michael Moorcock's Elric books, C.S. Forester's Hornblower books and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser books are prime examples, although in all of those cases, by the time I discovered them, they were really only available in chronological order.

(And what really messes things up for me is when an author publishes a new book in a long-running series, and that book takes place within an existing book, or spans a period of time such that it also entirely contains an existing book.)

Joseph wrote: "(And what really messes things up for me is when an author publishes a new book in a long-running series, and that book takes place within an existing book, or spans a period of time such that it also entirely contains an existing book.)"

Books 2, 3 and 4 of the Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett essentially cover the same time period from the perspective of three different characters. He does push the overall story forward in each book, but the bulk of them retread the same era.

Lots of Larry Niven’s recent books do that, too. In Brett’s case it filled out the world, but for Known Space it’s just tedious.

For me the most egregious example was in Gary Gygax' Gord the Rogue books, where the first two (Saga of Old City and Artifact of Evil) were published while he was still at TSR; then after he was forced out & founded New Infinities, they let him keep the rights to Gord, so after writing a few more books to continue the series, he went back and wrote City of Hawks to act as a new beginning, and the events of the first two TSR novels kind of happened somewhere between paragraphs of the new book.