I recently started reading Curse of the mistwraith and am enjoying it, but I’m not hooked yet. I worry i won’t enjoy the series since any deeper meaning a paragraph might have beyond the basic information it’s conveying goes completely over my head.
I’ve seen people say you won’t enjoy this series unless you understand and pick up on all the meanings a single sentence or a paragraph might have. I don’t usually analyse text this way and am not smart enough to do so.
We all started the same way once, read at least the first book and missed most of the more obscure stuff. You can read and just note the basic story and still enjoy the series. BUT as you read the series you might start noticing other things that get you curious enough to go back and re-read the series again to pick up on other facets of the story. This is optional, but if you get hooked will have you often re-reading the whole series (and the short stories) in order to chase stuff you never noticed at first. Most will probably not catch on to this till around the third or fourth book. As you read though the series you learn more about how things work, how some assumptions you might have made at first do not pan out, and start to look for little things you might not notice when first starting the series.
The big mystery Janny saves for the last book, if it was possible to get the answer from the clues we already have in the first 10 books, I at least failed to piece it together, but I am real curious!
I started reading this series decades ago and missed lots on the the first reading of each book. It did not matter in the least. I can honestly say I find something new with each re-read!
Keep going with it- you will not be dissapointed.
As someone who also picked this up decades ago in the 90s, I can safely say that I missed a lot. (I was like, 14 or 15 when I started). Even now, after more re-reads than I can count, I notice things and make connections between things.
The books are best taken slow, tbh, but read as you are comfortable! It’s well worth it!
I think picking up every meaning is what re-reads are for, ha.
And hey, since you’re here, if you have questions or something doesn’t seem clear you can always ask about it here and get a discussion going.
If a new reader has the great good fortune to acquire the WOLAS book series in their proper order, then that reader is doing better than I.
When I pursued the WOLAS series, I started with book number nine! It was the first one that caught my attention, and it made me want to read all the rest.
I found it challenging to locate all of the other eight books, and I was able to read them all, but not in the order in which they were written.
If the reader is anything like me, then one book, any book, from WOLAS will be sufficient to whet the appetite for more and more of the books in the series, and to encourage you to persevere in hunting for them.
While I agree any of the 10 books is going to be enough to gain interest in the series, all of them being equally great. It does help with the build up and the clues to read them in order. It is never too late to start again with Curse of the Mistwraith and re-read them all.