I must say I can't remember how I read series when I was in elementary school and series were pretty much all I read. A lot of what I read was Warriors by Erin Hunter, and so I believe that I mostly read through that incredibly long series while slipping in other books when I had something else, and not another Warriors. Anyway, I've been reading series totally broken up in the past few years. Not only that, but I've been reading books by the same author not part of the same series! Shadowmarch here is an example. I'm halfway through Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and yet I interrupt it with a different story by the same person! Not my favorite thing to do. Good thing I can keep stories straight, or else I'd be a bit confused upon starting To Green Angel Tower Part I. Well, Shadowmarch had to be read, and I am glad. I was excited to see what Williams had done after he'd had some more experience with writing.
In a stony keep, surrounded by ocean, royal twins Briony and Barrick Eddon have somehow found themselves in charge of Southmarch. With those who should have ruled before them imprisoned or dead, the teenagers are pressed onto the throne to oversee the troubles of their lands at a time when the lands have never been more troubled. In the very near north, hidden by enchanted mists, the strange fae Qar are stirring. They are no longer content to hide behind the defenses they constructed the last time they tangled with mortals... The centuries of waiting in their cold, gray world are over. They want their old homeland back from the sunlanders. Yet it seems that the Qar are not the only thing that should be worrying Briony and Barrick. Powerful human forces from the south press in, not to mention betrayal from within.