I just finished reading the last of Terry Moore’s Strangers In Paradise series and I am going to be recommending it to everyone I can, because it was just that good. I’m going to link the Wikipedia synopsis of the series which gives you an idea of what the stories are about, though it completely fails to explain how compelling the stories and characters are. When you are reading it, you care about the characters; you really, really want everything to turn out all right for them.
I read this series in the Pocket Book trade format, but when I get them for myself, I will probably invest in the full-size trades (“graphic novels”). I was aware of this series a few years ago; a friend of mine who has very similar reading tastes was reading them as they came out (this series was originally published as a comic book series) but I don’t do the whole comic book thing. I want to read a story or series in as close to one go as possible, so if it sounds like my kind of thing, I will wait for the trades to come out. As it turns out, they had these at the library, and on a whim I checked out the first two. After those, I knew I had to read the rest of the series ASAP. And I think it’s a series that will merit re-reading, hence the addition of the trades to my Amazon list.
This is a series that when it ended (and it ended beautifully and tidily) you wish it could still go on a little further. I’m going to look into his other series, “Echo,” pretty soon and see if it is half as gripping. If it is, it will be well worth it at that.