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…
Deathstalker. OMG. This can’t be the series you’re talking about, but my god were those books a series of neverending escalations with the exact same resolution every single time. If you want to know how many times a hero can get into an impossible situation and get out of it by simply overcoming the impossible situation be becoming impossibly stronger, which is something apparently any other character is also potentially capable of if they are given the right drugs, that is the series for you.
Unfortunately, unlike you, i was determined to ride it out through spite instead of self respect.
Capt. Silence and Investigator Frost kept me going in that series far longer than common sense dictates.
I’d still love to see a B movie adaptation of a couple of the plot lines. Gimme an ironclad Sigourney Weaver positively eating the scenery as Empress Lionstone XIV.
Like the Wolf Brother books by Michelle Paver. Boy gets into trouble. Weird gruesome magic happens. Boy is saved by someone else because he’ll never learn to save himself.
I love all Paver’s books apart from these.
Oh… if I’m being honest… I’m probably just postponing the inevitable with the series that made me gobble two like candy. But… if I abstain for 6 months and I forget about it, I have saved over two hundred dollars… unless someone has links to the audio version…
I read a giant number of books, and I’m not rich. I use the Libby app with my library card. I usually get the Kindle versions, but they have audiobooks, too. All free.
Good for you! Life is too short to read disappointing stories, there are way too many other good ones out there waiting for you.
Except it doesn’t sound like he was disappointed by anything other than that the books are one long story, not self contained.
It’s that each is representing itself as a novel. They are not. They are episodes. And they should call themselves what they are: a serialization of a 5 or ten thousand page single book.
I know this perspective might be rare… and I aplaud the folks who are going to hang in there, but as good as the story is, it’s not worth seven thousand pages.
But they’re not presenting themselves as single novels…
Sure they are.
You not liking the series isn’t an insult to the fandom. I don’t think people who dislike and rant about pistachio ice cream to be insulting to me.
And if you want to go off about pistachio ice cream, go off! I’ll be here eating it anyway.
Exactly.
It’s Rum Raisin I absolutely cannot stand.
So… I did not buy the third
Did you also give up on Lord of the Rings after book 2 didn’t have an ending?
8 is ridiculous but many books follow the Lord of the Rings structure where books aren’t self contained novels.
This is me with the Stormlight Archive. I vociferously defended the first book, but after finishing the second one I couldn’t face subjecting myself to a decade plus of thousands of pages of mediocre fantasy.
Exactly! Thank you!
