There's plenty of both. Also, it's fairly common to get trilogies, e.g. Brandon Sanderson, Ann Leckie, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, etc. With

There's plenty of both. Also, it's fairly common to get trilogies, e.g. Brandon Sanderson, Ann Leckie, Joe Abercrombie, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, etc. With quite a lot of them they have larger worlds, but you can read the first book and enjoy it stand alone, the trilogy, or one of the other trilogies out of order within the larger world. You usually just miss minor appearances of known characters, or nods to earlier events.