Do you prefer consistent or changing protagonists / POVs in a long book series?

[dream]

Imagine you’re in a used bookstore and you come upon a fantasy novel that you immediately fall in love with. You settle into it and read it in a night. In the morning, you search for book 2 and are delighted to find there's dozens and dozens of books in the series! Rejoice! But every series is different. You're curious to find out—does the setting remain the same across books? How about the cast of characters? Does the protagonist/POV change?

In this post, I'm curious to hear people's opinions on protagonist/POV change throughout a series—particularly, a long series such as a web novel that spans millions of words across hundreds and hundreds of chapters.

[WK_0]

Yanno, it's not something I really think on now that it's been pointed out. Good question.

I guess, honestly, I don't mind any number of PoVs—per book or per chapter. Unfortunately my whole reading history has mostly stayed within the fantasy and sci-fi genres, which has books that often stay with a one-PoV-per-novel policy. I've maybe only read a couple of novels that actually shifted PoVs between chapters within a single book (not counting anthology books), and I didn't mind when that happened. In fact it makes sense to do so when there's a main cast who all equally contribute to the overarching conflict in their stories. I kinda wish I could find more books that do so, at least any that can also keep my interest these days.

--- 2 second later edit
I almost forgot the "long-running series" point in this topic, so lemme add to that.

My main experience with any long-running series of novels is both from the Redwall series and The Dark Crystal novels by J.M. Lee. With Redwall the main PoV changed per book as the series spanned entire generations and showcased how their world changed over time to establish a sense of history, which makes sense. Meanwhile with The Dark Crystal novels, the books switched between each member of the main cast as they journeyed through their quest, mainly to showcase how each member went through their own personal changes through the entire tale.

Again, my reading experience is a bit limited, which is why I wish I could find more books that switch between PoVs more often. Eh but you know what they say, if you can't find it may as well make it yourself.

[candycanearter07]

Well, my only real experience with the character-shift-between-each-book is Enders Game/Shadow and this really bad YA dystopia called Matched. Honestly, I really like it as long as it tells you who the POV is. It gives it more flavor, and I especially liked the overlapping storyline of the two Enders books. Then again, I don't read much anymore.

[varve]

I'm good with multiple POVs. Even within a chapter. It's the scenes that I prefer to keep a single POV character... and some kind of scene break indication so you know you might be switching POV character as well as time and/or place. As long as all of the POVs are contributing to the story and not running off on some side plot somewhere!

And in a long book series, sometimes *refusing* to change POV characters can create problems. Later events might not make sense to keep the book 1 POV character centred. The Hunger Games comes to mind: by book 3 Katniss was a figurehead being trotted out to inspire people, but others were making the decisions and shaping the story; she had very little agency. Alternately, the Expanse (book series, haven't seen the TV adaptation) has the same small crew go from 'wrong place at the wrong time' to 'important in system-wide politics' and the transition just didn't make sense to me. They were great in the first couple of books!

[invader_gvim]

I am torn on this issue and I think it ultimately comes to this question - "Is your story enhanced by having the reader know things that the main character doesn't?"

My favorite book series is Nightrunner, and that usually has the POV of Alec but sometimes it is from the POV of Amberley, or the antagonist. Pretty much all of the time this happens it is because the main character doesn't know what is going on yet.   

In my favorite movie, the 5th Element, the story would be utterly ruined if the camera only followed Bruce Willis around. We would be deprived of the best scene in the movie. Also notable is that in the movie the antagonist and protagonist never realize that eachother exist. 

But then sometimes following only a specific character can allow you to have more suspense, and also to feel a little helpless as a reader which I consider to be a good thing. In Ciaphas Cain, I can not think of a single time that it ever drifted away from Commissar Cain's perspective. In some instances this was really helpful for adding surprise, such as when the mining base turned out to have dug into a necron tomb. 

Gotrek & Felix also only ever is told from Felix's POV as far as I know, but that series is so long that idk if that is true for all of the books. 

I've recently uploaded chapter 3 of my series, which I intend to be long running. It usually has one POV per chapter, but in the most recent chapter, it has two POVs because I had written two chapters and felt that both of them were two short.