Proud moment for me:
I made it through the second of 8 absolutely delightful, engaging, and extremely PLEASURABLE novels in a series about a topic I love.
But the first book ended POORLY… because they knew that fans like me would be the second. It’s like it LITERALLY had zero ending. Meaning there was this absurd violation of novelistic structure.
And the second cemented my creeping suspicion that this all… all all all… was trifling crap. It’s like porn for people who like fast talking smart alecks, snide, sarcastic, and battle after battle after battle.
One amazingly engaging battle after another. So enjoyable. Exactly what I love.
Except that there’s zero heart, soul, message… oh… it takes a head nod in the direction of what is noble and how should people behave…
But at the end of the day…
Lovely useless battles of stupid.
So… I did not buy the third.
I’m done.
Victory.
I’m not going to mention the name of the series because I don’t want to get into it with fans who are fine reading the same book 8 times: Hero and partner in exotic setting fight stuff until they live or die.
That’s the book.
Sirens of Titan made me weep for three hours. This is what I expect a novel to do. Moby Dick changed the way I examine culture and society. Emma taught me to be expect the unexpected. Valuable books do valuable work. Entertaining books entertain. I get it. I consider the elevation of my human experience more valuable than being entertained for five hours. Thoughts?
I don’t know, it sounds like your biggest issue is that the books are written to be a series and not self contained. To me, that’s a narrative choice and isn’t always bad. I hate it when the author doesn’t finish and leaves he hanging forever, but I can appreciate a long story that takes multiple books to tell.
I’m currently rereading the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, and it’s like that. Arguably, it’s two stories of five books each, although there’s a thread from the first five that continues in the second. It’s a wonderful series, especially the first five.
On the other hand, sometimes it feels like the author of a long series doesn’t know where he’s going, but is just trying to milk the franchise, and that’s more problematic.
Yes! This is franchise milking. I find it tasteless.
But Dungeon Crawler Carl is a dungeon crawler. You go from level to level. It makes sense.
Even East of Eden and Moby Dick know how to be a novel despite their fantastic scope.
This is milking an audience and not delivering meaning — just more… whatever…