TOP 5 SERIES I COMPLETED IN 2025

Hi everyone. Welcome to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’ll be ranking the series I completed in 2025, from worst to best. Here are my thoughts on all five of them:

5. Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker

I picked the first book of this series up from my local library because I wanted to read more mystery/thriller books in 2025. It is a cozy mystery series and I did like the first installment. However, I did not like the second and third books. So, I stopped reading it after that.

4. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

I did not rank this series any lower because I liked the first and second installments. But the third and fourth books were not good. All the main characters went from likeable to insufferable, and the only character that could have saved it and place it in a higher position dies at the end. I don’t not like this series at all.

3. Stories of the Past: Ancestors, Buried and Crypt by Professor Alice Roberts

Frankly, this series was a disappointment. I expected to love it, but the first two installments, Ancestors and Buried, were boring. I did like the third book, Crypt, and I read it a lot quicker than I expected but I had already been disappointed by the other two installments that it was beyond salvation.

2. The Women of Troy by Pat Barker

I liked this series but the way they sell it to you makes you expect something that it can’t deliver. This, inevitably, makes readers hate this series a lot. And it has a lot of haters because marketing makes you believe that this is retelling of The Iliad from the point of view of the women of Troy when it really is not. Yes, the narrators are women but the plot and story (of all three books) are still centered around the men of the myths they retell.

Honorable Mention: The Great War by Barbara W. Tuchman

These books were reprinted in a new edition that recategorizes them as part of a series. However, they were not originally published as such. In fact, the last installment of this series was published first. I read them in the order suggested by the new edition, that is, in the chronological order in which events happened before and during the outbreak of World War I and I think that this is a worthwhile suggestion. I recommend others do the same. The best book of all three is Guns of August.

1. Julia Domna by Santiago Posteguillo

Santiago Posteguillo is a Spanish writer known for his well-researched and accurate historical fiction novels of Rome. I read his series on Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus years ago and really liked it. Today, this series is still one of my favorites. So, when I found out that he wrote a series on Julia Domna, I didn’t think twice about adding it to my TBR. His books are long and dense; also, if you’re used to reading books in Spanish from Spain it takes a minute to adjust. However, when you do, it can turn into a very quick read despite the fact that each book in this duology is approximately 700 pages long. A downside is that there are no English translations available of any of Posteguillo’s books.