As I remember them, the Xanth stories had an order but mostly stood on their own, like the detective novels TFA mentions. In contrast, there's hardly anything

As I remember them, the Xanth stories had an order but mostly stood on their own, like the detective novels TFA mentions. In contrast, there's hardly anything in Game of Thrones that isn't tied tightly to everything that precedes or follows it. The division between books is largely arbitrary and you could have divided them up in a million different ways that would be no better or worse than the way they are now. Not that this is qualitatively better than the older series or serial style, but I do agree with the article that it's "different".