Twice in the last few months I’ve read books about which I began to feel a little uncertain as I drew closer and closer to the end. Was I missing something? I turned the advance reader’s copy of each of them over and over, making sure I hadn’t read the back too quickly, if at all. Nope: Not a word about a series. Not a breath about a sequel. And yet both ended in such a way that it was obvious there was more to come. I found the details about one book buried on the author’s website, and had to resort to more nefarious means (asking friends who worked for the publisher) about the other. Yes: both were the first book of a series. Both duologies, in fact.
And this seemed almost like a secret.
It’s an odd thing, the imagined divide between series readers and standalone readers. (Almost as odd as the word “standalone,” which doesn’t look real after you’ve read it a few dozen times.) I’ve been reading forums and subreddits and blog posts, curious about whether “series fatigue,” or sequel fatigue, is real: Are we SFF (especially F) burnt out on long series? Are we tired of series in general, or do we just get tired when trying to gulp down a pile of epic fantasies all in one go? Are we that impatient about endings, or so influenced by a couple of notable unfinished series that we think nothing will ever end? Do we just want things with a beginning, a middle, and a grand finale—a shape that can feel like it’s missing from life in the last few years especially?
It doesn’t seem like it, to tell you the truth. It seems like people read like they always do: omnivorously, broadly, with a few rare holdouts who only read standalones or only want to be immersed in multi-book series. One person said they hate endings and want to put them off as long as possible, and I grimaced in understanding: the last Fitz and the Fool book is still on my shelf. The second one made me ugly cry on an airplane, the payoff of decades of poor Fitz’s struggles. I’m not ready to be done, and I’m not sure I’m emotionally stable enough to handle it. I like to save last books until I’m ready, sometimes.
But I also like to read series in one big gulp, to drag them out over months or years, and to ignore them for long swaths of time in favor of singular novels that wrap themselves up in a tidy bow, or odd little books I’m not sure I understand but love anyway. Who hasn’t read a standalone novel that they desperately wished was a series? Who hasn’t finished a series and thought that it maybe could’ve been just the tiniest bit shorter? And who hasn’t finished a series and wished for one, two, five more books?
There are as many ways to read as there are readers, and more shapes for a story to take than I could possibly detail here. The true standalones (every Helen Oyeyemi book, which could be nothing else); the standalones set in an overarching universe (like Banks’ Culture books); the sequential series with a primary protagonist (like Hobb’s Farseer trilogy); the series with ever so many voices (like the Expanse); the loose series where the books are standalones but they also fit together. I’m enjoying longing for the next books in Daniel Abraham’s Age of Ash series, in which each book takes place in the same city in the same year, but is about a different character. The first one could certainly be read alone—but how you could finish it and not want to see Abraham’s grand city through another set of eyes, I really don’t know.
It’s that anticipation that’s been on my mind lately, as I continue to neglect new seasons of TV shows I really love (sorry, The Great and Russian Doll) because I find the all-at-once drop just too overwhelming. “You can just watch one at a time!” you’ll say, and it’s true! I could! But it’s just not the same as the steady drip of weekly episodes, the feeling of appointment TV, impatience and curiosity building as more people catch on and catch up. Severance was the best possible case of this: It felt like no one was watching it, and then it felt like everyone was. That show was made to be taken in small doses. It needs time to sink in, to get into your pores and work its magic.
Books are like that, too. There’s a specific anticipatory joy in learning a beloved author has a new series coming out—another story to dive into, to stretch out, to think about and reconsider and dream about between books. I fell hard for N.K. Jemisin with the first book of the Dreamblood duology; waiting for every book since then has been a delight (six months until The World We Make!). I don’t know if I’ve ever been as excited about a sequel as I was about Rachel Hartman’s In the Serpent’s Wake, honestly. But then there’s Kristin Cashore’s Seasparrow.
Those last two are odd cases, though, in that both are books in series that I initially didn’t know would be series. Cashore’s Graceling was singular and self-contained; so was Hartman’s Tess of the Road, a book I love beyond measure. Every subsequent book in the Graceling Realm has felt like a wonderful surprise, but then, almost every book in that world stands alone (Winterkeep doesn’t, not quite). Hartman’s two duologies start with a standalone book and then enlarge themselves, miraculously, in each sequel.
Do we absolutely need to know a book is going to be part of a series? Not necessarily. Not when it really, truly, cross-your-heart-I-mean-it works on its own. No cliffhangers, no heavily teased unsolved mysteries, no staring meaningfully at the land across the waves. This isn’t to say everything has to be perfectly resolved, but readers know the difference. When you get to the end of a book and the door is wide open, the characters having clearly run off to continue their adventures, it’s a bit disconcerting to flip the book over and wonder why it doesn’t say Book 1 of the Most Excellent Adventure anywhere on it.
If I had to guess why this happens, I would point a wary finger at publishing’s obsession with preorders. They have heard that some readers don’t want to read series until all the books are out, and they don’t want to put a dent in the preorder numbers. But then why some series and not others? Why do some series launch with epic series fanfare, a whole list of titles to come, and others sneak in once the series party is in full swing, lurking furtively by the half-empty punchbowl?
For me, I just want to know. I like to know how to approach a book, whether to pace myself in the knowledge that this is it, the full story, no more to come, a singular experience never to be repeated—or whether to settle in, to accept that the end isn’t really the end, to acknowledge the narrative threads that wave tantalizingly in the breeze as the author strides past, knowing they’ll be back to tie those up. Waiting for something to continue doesn’t feel passive to me. The space in between the books—or the chapters, or the TV episodes—is when my brain gets to gnaw on the meaty parts of the story, to let things percolate, to find new currents among the characters, or remember little moments that change the meanings of things. There are shows I’ve started to like better between seasons, books I’ve changed my tune about after sitting with them for a while. Everything takes time.
Still, that doesn’t mean you always want to give things your time. Getting fed up with a series is totally valid, and so is walking away from one that’s not doing it for you anymore. But impatience can also be good; it’s tied up with enthusiasm and delight and having something to look forward to. I like waiting. Waiting is time to read other books, ones not in the series I’m impatient for the end of. There is always something else to read—a novel you missed from another year, a series you’ve been putting off. Or maybe that last book of a series you weren’t quite sure you were ready to be over.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
When I hear about an interesting book that is not obviously part of a series, I now routinely check whether it really is a standalone.
I don’t have an issue with series, not all. I like reading them.
But if there are more books to come, I want to read them in one go. So I’m one of those readers who don’t want to read series until all the books are out.
I have so many unread books and series left on my TBR pile that I’m not going to run out of reading material for a long time so I don’t mind waiting.
And because of the phenomenon that you’ve described, which is that supposed standalone novels turn out to be not standalone after all because there’ll be sequels, prequels, books in the same setting, etc. I’m now not even reading standalones anymore until quite some time has passed in order to be sure, unless I have a high degree of certainty that they really are standalones.
I like standalones. I like series.
I like to know which I’m getting into, and if it’s a series I like to know whether the author has a good track record when it comes to getting the later books in a series out within a reasonable timeframe, because there’s only so much time my hindbrain can play with theories and possibilities before it stops caring.
You can all guess by whom I’ve been burnt on that front…
I won’t buy the first book of a series unless I know the series is completed. There’s also a difference between a good book that is complete but has room to grow, and an unfinished series. I have an 8 year old book at home that teases a sequel in the afterward, that shows no signs of being published, but the story itself is a complete adventure, so while I would like to know the further adventures of the protagonists, the first story was not left unresolved.
And of course, as I grow older, I am more ready to abandon a series that doesn’t engage me, and I suspect that influences publishers’ decisions as well.
Nothing annoys me more about a book than a lack of an ending so we have to buy the next book which will probably cheat about that, too. If the book isn’t a standalone or a complete story that’s part of a series, the publisher and promotion should say so. In traditional publishing, first books may not have second books if the sales aren’t what the publisher wants so the story just sits there forever like a patient in a never-ending coma.
And the sad news is all of you who are waiting for more books without buying the first book is that the second book won’t come out because of the sales numbers. Readers and authors can’t win.
I agree completely. I strongly dislike being 3/4 through a book and realizing nothing is getting wrapped up, especially if I’m not sure I want to read a sequel. If I go in knowing its book 1 of 2, my expectations are set appropriately. I first read The Lord of the Rings after The Chronicles of Narnia, I didn’t even think that a trilogy could be one big story. I remember nearing the end of Fellowship and wondering how they were going to destroy the ring in so few remaining pages. I had just assumed The Two Towers would be a separate adventure like the Narnia books.
@4 MByerly: I have several series of which I’m buying new installments but which I won’t read until they’re finished (as I’ve mentioned in my first post).
I’m knowingly taking a risk with these.
Even though it’s true that waiting to buy the books of a series isn’t helpful, readers don’t have any obligations here.
GRRM is not our bitch, as Neil Gaiman has so famously said (a quote that people who have been burned by his series get rubbed in constantly) – but we aren’t any authors’ or publishers’ bitches either! It goes both ways.
Publishers trying to deceive readers by hiding the nature of the sold product is not a good strategy to keep the goodwill of their customers.
I only rarely read books by the same author close together (I like to mix it up), which means that pairs, trilogies, and series of books are necessarily spread out over a long period of time. There are actually relatively few trilogies I’ve finished, and still a lot of second and third books lying around in my unread piles. To the point that I once briefly entertained the idea of starting a blog for myself for the express purpose of wrapping a bunch of them up.
Series fatigue might be real, but I’m well insulated from it.
For me, I distinguish between a series (in my definition, a group of books with the same protagonist(s) the individual elements of which are complete stories themselves) and “-ologies” stories which are not complete until you’ve read the third (traditionally…alternately the second, fourth, fifth, etc.).
Series I’ll pick up when I like the characters. I try to hold off on “-ologies” until I know they’ll be completed (even if they aren’t yet), especially that one very famous one.
As examples: all of Scalzi’s Old Mans’ War stuff is clearly a series, and THAT ONE PARTICULAR “-ology” is plainly an “-ology”, and one that I won’t pick up until it’s clearly finished (if then). There are also series that verge on “-ologies” as they go, like Stross’s Laundry series, which started exceptionally picaresque and now is a series-ology about like Scalzi’s first three OMW stories…complete in themselves while pressing a larger narrative forward.
I feel you. Reading the last couple of chapters of the final book, I started ugly crying in the living room, with my family around. I had never had that kind of reaction reading a book before. And as a guy, let me tell you, that was quite embarrassing! That probably didn’t help you decide to read the last book, huh? :D
@1: But if there are more books to come, I want to read them in one go. So I’m one of those readers who don’t want to read series until all the books are out. This. I have a separate shelf for books that look to me like parts of sets; I hope they’ll all cycle down to the TBR shelves eventually, as Cherryh’s Foreigner books have all done, but some of them look like they’ll never wrap up. I do distinguish between single stories spread over multiple books (e.g., the several pieces of Foreigner) and discrete stories that use continuing characters/settings (e.g., Mercy Thompson) — although I’ve avoided picking up book N in a series just because it has finally come to the attention of the reviewers I read, as it’s not always clear how much backstory is needed to enjoy the current volume.
This is fascinating to read about from a reader perspective, because from an author perspective it almost always comes down to cold hard cash and publishers wanting to hedge their bets. These days most authors are almost always told to approach duology/trilogy/series ideas as “a standalone with series potential, because of series fatigue” which is just publishing’s way of saying “everything that comes after is dependent on this book being an immediate breakout success.” It is very common to have book deals where the author themselves won’t know if the second book can be a sequel to the first until the publisher sees how the first book does and makes a decision.
It is frustrating! And authors know that the whole “is it a standalone or not” is a weird vibe for readers! Authors are specifically told to walk that very fine line, and it absolutely impacts the way stories are told. I bet most authors would love to be able to tell you exactly how long a story will be, right from the outset, but they themselves don’t know because the publishing industry won’t make those decisions until it is profitable for them. And they often have to fight for every new book in a sequence or world.
(Yes, authors who are mega-bestsellers operate under different rules… but there are not actually very many authors in that category. A lot of authors who are wildly beloved and successful still have to fight that fight every time.)
@9 and Molly I’m with you guys on this. I absolutely love Fitz’s story and have gone back to them multiple times over the last twenty years. BUT I can’t bring myself to open up and read the Fitz and the Fool. I bought them all as they came out but I don’t at this time want the story to end so there they sit on my TBR shelve. One day I’ll read them and close that adventure.
The current crowd of self-published SFF books are diluting them all. Nate Silver was a great character til he became nearly a god in book 4 and the series is now up to 14(?) with two parallel series. One I started out loving is up to 28 books. I am not sure if it says more about the authors or the reading public. Remember when Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Asimov were sort of unique?
Wouldn’t “Stan Dalone” be a great name for a series character?
I think it’s important to differentiate between series where each individual entry is a self-contained narrative (perhaps with hints of stories to come), and those which are clearly one big story carved up into chunks.
At this stage in my life, I like my stories to have beginnings, middles, and endings, even if the endings aren’t necessarily final ones. So it’s very difficult for me to start a new series unless I know the first entry is a thing unto itself.
(I’ve also ranted in the past about WHY so many new writers are doing ‘ologies, sagas, and the like, but I’m resigned to the fact that they simply market better. That doesn’t mean I like cliffhanger engines any more, though.)
Have readers’ demands on world-building changed?
A paperback of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers stands on one of my bookshelves. It takes about one inch. Then there is Weber’s Honor Harrington, taking one shelf and part of another. Perhaps a yard or so. Both neat military sci-fi, but ever so different. We’re not getting page-long info-dumps on the relationship between the Bugs and the Skinnies, or why the Skinnies would ally with the Bugs in the first place. They are simply a given, aided by the fact that the narrator is completely unreliable. Weber has more reliable narrators, which coupled with the info-dumps creates a much more detailed world. And would Niven’s Known Space fit right between those two, not just by the dates but also by trends in worldbuilding?
If somebody wrote something like Starship Troopers today, wouldn’t we go “hey, how does that fit together? If human space defenses could screw up this way, why is there any mankind left? Explain!”
About 20 years ago, I had a friend who wrote a novel. A major science fiction publisher told her. “We like this, but if it isn’t the first book of a trilogy, we won’t buy it.” She assured them she could get a trilogy out of that world, although that had not been her original plan, so they published that book. She wrote another two, but they didn’t really catch on.
Typically, I used to encounter fantasy readers who were: “If it isn’t a trilogy, I’m not interested. I want to invest myself in a fictional world, and if it wraps up too soon I feel cheated.”
Maybe this has started to change.
@17
I’m 52, so I’m hardly an exemplar for current trends, but it feels to me that the fondness for what you might call “cliffhanger sagas” is relatively new. Outside of the special case of LOTR, anyway.
I like Lois McMaster Bujold’s concept with her Miles Vorkosigan series, where her novels, while being part of a series, also stand alone. And some of her books, in their publication order, even fill gaps between already existing volumes, so she isn’t always writing sequentially.
Because of that standalone concept, I’m doing a partial re-read of that series. I know each book is a tale unto itself, and I don’t have to read a dozen volumes to get an entire story. I’d never attempt a re-read of a giant book series.
I’m even getting tired of serialized television series. I love STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and PICARD, but being serialized, I may never visit them again. I’d like to watch individual episodes the way I do TOS and TNG, but I’m not willing to re-watch an entire season.
@17:
Wow, this is bad, IMHO.
I think, the attitude of this major science fiction publisher is a disservice to us readers.
I’d like for authors to write their stories in exactly the number of books that they need. If it’s a story that can be told in one book, excellent. If it needs two books, it’ll be a duology, hooray! If it needs three, four, or five books, then make it a series of three, four, or five books. But modeling a story to a preset number of books sounds like a bad idea.
The same goes with “forced sequels”. If a writer has a good idea how to expand a previous novel or series, awesome. But if those continuation are only been written because the publisher thinks that a trilogy sells better, I can’t imagine that this is a good recipe to produce great books.
Never read past book four in a trilogy.
I remember the first time I read what I thought was a standalone book only to discover to my indignation that it was the first of a series, and not only that but the first of five (or sort of ten) of which only two had been published. It was The Way of Kings in 2015. (To be fair, this was a lapse on my part for not doing my research, though I prefer to blame the friend who recommended it for not warning me.) It was the first time I’d read a series in the process of being published, and it was both joy and pain to know that there were more books on the way.
More recently, I have the found the trend toward trilogies and series somewhat irritating as I try to expand the diversity of my reading list. I’ve frequently had the experience of trying a new book and finding it interesting enough to finish but wasn’t really captured by it. Then I get to the end, discover there’s a cliffhanger and have to decide if I’m willing to persevere through at least two more books to get resolution. I’ve been teetering for months on whether to pick up Children of Virtue and Vengeance because I got invested in Amari’s empowerment but was struggling to engage with the rest of it (not the author’s fault – I appreciated the themes she was exploring but just couldn’t seem to personally mesh with the presentation).
But I’ve also enjoyed new trilogies like Binti and Scholomance, so I think the issue for me is less about series and more about adjusting to the sad fact that as an adult, I can’t indiscriminately wolf down tons of books like I used to (no more finishing The Wheel of Time when I really only care about Egwene’s plotline and couldn’t care less what Rand decides about his convoluted love life). I can still try new things and experiment with long-shot reads, but my limited time and energy means sometimes I’m going to have to leave a series unfinished if I’m not invested enough, and if I really, absolutely have to know what happens to the one character I care about, I can consult Wikipedia.
@22. I hear you with WoT! If I re read now it’s for Egwene and especially Mat. And a little bit of Lews Therin.
I do love a good series though. Totally bummed that Black Wolves is now a sad standalone. The best might be the linked books just in case something happens and the author can’t go on anymore but my favourite books are all parts of series
Yep. I too have this approach now: as much as it’s possible, I try to start series only if they are finished, or at least “episodic” in nature (Like Bujold one or Steven Brust).
I still from time to time get it wrong, fall for it or things like that, but every time I get burned, I become more and more wary.
Some famous names doing that for sure did not help the rest of the market: I don’t think they own me anything, just to make it clear, but the reverse is also true, and their fellow authors, while understanding were they come from, should also remember that every time a series get indefinitely postponed, readership series wariness will increase.
And this is true for TV too: I really loved the advent of long form quality series… till the network started producing too many of them and then cancelling them before they were statisfyingly wrapped up.
I’m a bit more tolerant about that, because I generally care less about TV and expect less from them, but I’m always wary of starting an ongoing series, if it does have characteristics of long form narratives.
And for sure I do not even start any that got abandoned.
As readers and watchers, we can only vote with our eyes and wallets, so that’s what I try to do.
I agree 100% on wanting to know – I had somehow gotten the idea that the Scholomance was a duology, so the experience when I got to the end of the second book and it wasn’t done kind of poisoned the book for me. I’ll absolutely read the third, can’t wait, but I would look back on it happier if I’d come to it with the right expectations.
Have never heard of series fatigue, but have heard a lot of bitterness from readers of sff who are expecting the last book in a series which the author hasn’t (yet?) written. So perhaps that’s been part of the publisher’s attitude?
I don’t like series where it ends on a cliffhanger; I like series where every book is complete. I feel like a cliffhanger for a book is cheating the reader out of a promised ending. Like you are being blackmailed, to pay more for an ending.
I know people complain about Rothfuss’ missing Doors of Stone, but at least you can read his first two books as complete in themselves. As mentioned above Lois Bujold McMaster’s books are the same.
One of the problems with long series is keeping the same spirit going through years of stories. I agree Winterkeep almost destroyed the beauty of the Graceling series – it is so different from the others it feels like a fanfic. I am very tentative regarding the author’s upcoming book. Whereas Megan Whalen Turner wrote her series over many years, and yet they all contain the same goodness.
Maybe I am just too darned old, but I find that in the longer series and in many standalone books by the same author, the plot elements, character development and often even some of the dialog becomes very predictable. It seem as if the author is locked into a formula – it worked once, therefore repeat it. I wish they would use their imaginations more and try something new.\
Who hasn’t read a stand alone novel which they wish was continued as a series?
That would be me, it seems. I’ve often been sad that I can’t spend any more time with the characters or the world, but that’s different. I can genuinely say I have never felt like this!
I have series anxiety. I can rarely get past book 1 or 2 of a series, even if I really like it. I loved The Grey Bastards but couldn’t bring myself to read the follow-up. Even though Fetching was one of my favorite characters and I really wanted to know how things turned out for her! And I stalled out on The Expanse around book 3, even though I thought book 1 was amazing and book 2 was pretty good. Same for just about every other series I’ve started basically since becoming an adult.
Then again, these days, I have a lot of trouble finishing books at all, and a lot of anxiety about reading in general, so, maybe the problem isn’t just series for me >.<
But when it comes to series, what I don’t like is the sense of pressure. YOU READ BOOK 1 SO NOW YOU MUST READ BOOK 2. It’s not like freely picking up a book on a whim; it’s a task on a to-do list. Even if I actually want to read book 2, it feels too much like a chore.
In this respect, the age of waiting for book 3 of the Kingkiller Chronicle is actually a good thing for me. At this point there’s no pressure left. When that book finally comes out I’ll be able to read it free and clear whenever I choose :p
Whether I’ll ever get to it with my ridiculous TBR pile is another question….
I am a collector of books, not just a reader. I tend to gravitate towards series, but at the same time, I will wait until a series is nearly complete before I will start reading. Been burned too many times by series that will never come to completion.
On the negative side, it seems to me that individual books in a series are shorter than they used to be. It’s as though a publisher or author will release 2 to 4 chapters as a complete book and then after 10 books they declare it a series and put it all in a box set. The reader pays upwards of 10 to 20 times the price that they would if it had been released as a single book or duology. Of course, not all authors do thus, but a growing number are exploring it by calling them “episodes”. I call them something unprintable.
30: Odd: I often querulously complain helpfully point out that books are much longer than they used to be [1]. What series are taking your approach?
1: Because I review for money, I cannot use helpful time saving methods like skipping the generally pointless prologues.
I liked the approach of Mary Gentle to requests for a sequel to Golden Witchbreed. Ancient Light did bring the story to a conclusion.
@19 I’m even getting tired of serialized television series. IKR I enjoyed watching “24” but when a season was complete, I never rewatched a single season, to me they were puzzle stories, once complete there is no reason to watch them again. (I’ve imagine if they did a season that takes place after the previous season, it start with Jack, stumbling into home/apartment stripping off his outer cloths and face planting himself in his bed and then 8-10 episodes are of him sleeping, then episode 11 he gets up , eats a meal, putters around the house, reading thru the newspaper, etc, yes really thrilling entertainment) I yawn, when Discover or Picard brag about a “Season long serialized story” neither can hold a candle to JMS’ “Babylon 5” now that is a series that I do rewatch every so often, great characters, great stories, and setup that they have that they don’t resolve until season2, 3 or even 4, The Vir, Mr Morden bit. especially
@14 Wouldn’t “Stan Dalone” be a great name for a series character?
Dibs! Dibs! I call Dibs!
I don’t think it’s series fatigue as such – popular long running series are dominant in Urban Fantasy, and common enough in epic – Modesitt’s Recluce would be a good example there. Vorkosigan in SF.
But the big difference between those and say Wheel of Time is that most long runner series are a series of standalone stories featuring the same protagonists or the same setting, each of which builds on the previous but gives a valid ending. They’re not one continuous story broken up into many books, in which you have to read the entire thing to get a conclusion.
The most common format for that style of work is a trilogy of two parts – book 1 is a standalone work with a lot of dangling threads to support sequels. Book 2 is a fresh start that undercuts the finale of book 1 with a new dilemma and ends on a cliffhanger or resumed struggle, and book 3 wraps up the entire thing. You see that pattern all over the place – Riftwar, Star Wars, Hunger Games. Even Wheel of Time started out like that, before he changed to an expected 6 books, and then many.
And I think with the delays in a number of very popular series, there’s a decreased appetite for that sort of thing at the moment. Readers presently want discrete stories that build – Harry Potter is another great example there, as is the wild success of the MCU.
Series fatigue for me is easy to define: overextended/explored/undeveloped ideas that seem/are good (or even very good) initially and then die. Examples: Safehold by David Webber, Dorsai (Child cycle) by Gordon R. Dickson, saga of seven suns by Kevin J Anderson, Clan of the cave bear Jean M Auriel, Dune by Frank Herbert.
Series non-fatigue are those thay may have some dips but keep providing new ideas and evolving the plot. Example: Destroyermen by Taylor Anderson, Vorkosigan by L. M. Bujold, Discworld by Terry Pratchett (ok this one is probably not a “series”), Chung Kuo by David Wingrove (the 1st batch of 9).
As far trilogies… I no longer even consider them a “series”! Just an extended format novel.
I can understand the problem when all the books and/or all the series episodes drop at once (ok did binge THE GOOD PLACE big time especially when it ended, also LUCIFER). But…I also read fanfic and when someone posts 50 chapters of a saga all at once, it’d better be really good, and I’m still not going to read it through all at once. Well, unless it shows Snape triumphantly conquering the Wizarding World, then I’ll think about it.
I also often choose indie published series over trad published ones, because a) you normally don’t have to wait decades for the next volume and b) related problem, series dying by publisher decree. As much as I love lesbian necromancers in spaaaace!, waiting two years for each volume is not my favorite way of dealing with the series.
I wish authors could write their stories in the number of books it takes to tell the story, however many that is. To me the sweet spot is 2-3 books, more than that and you tend to get too much repetition while the characters stagnate. Or, the stakes have been raised too high so once the Big Boss is defeated, everything that comes after seems trivial–I find that as I get older, I can only suspend disbelief that any given obstacle is “literally the end of the world as we know it” but so many times. The series I enjoy that go for 5 or more books are usually episodic with one or two overarching plot threads (see: Women of the Otherworld by Kelly Armstrong; The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher; the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs). I read 30+ books a year, so my TBR pile is never-ending and I’m always in the middle of multiple series by authors I love. So, I’m a lot less likely to take a chance on a new series by an author I’ve never read before. I can only remember so many plotlines at a time, so I’d rather reread an old favorite than start a new series (at least until there’s enough reviews for me to know if I’ll like it).
Katherine Kerr’s Deverry series wore me out.
I lost steam reading The Fire Dragon.
Apparently I have commitment problem. I can’t even count how many series I’ve started that I can never seem to finish ( but in my defense; how many authors can’t seem to finish writing their own series?)
I’m not sure why I’m this way. I’m the same with TV, so many shows I still have yet to watch the last couple episodes.
Not to kick a dead horse, but I blame some of this on George R R Martin. While I do thank A Song of Ice and Fire for the spark that ignited a flame for the fantasy genre in me it was also a rude awaking for me that books of a series may not be an at least an annual thing. Martin taught me that I can’t trust that my commitment to a series may not be -for whatever reason- returned by the author.
All that said, -not sure where I’m going with this post now- I do enjoy a series but if it’s more than a trilogy and the wait between books is going to be more than a year, I’d really like to know up front before I get into it.
Also we need more stand-alones.
Quick show of hands… am I the only person who scrolls through upcoming book lists and immediately skips anything that’s marketed as a “part 1”?
@41: You are not the only one. I do the same.
I try very hard not to start anything that might be a series and I don’t even buy fiction until I know it’s not a series or is, at least, complete. I have only one incomplete series that I have bought religiously and the last book is now finished and waiting for publication (Janny Wurts – I will buy anything she writes). And I’m following 3 other series (Dresden Files, October Daye and Mercy Thompson), but I borrow those, and I simply haven’t bothered to read the latest Mercy Thompson. I was gifted the Murderbot Diaries, so if I buy anymore it will probably depend on price. The Locked Tomb quartet looks interesting and the first book (borrowed) was definitely interesting, but I haven’t gone further with it. I will continue once I know for sure that there aren’t all of a sudden going to be extra books. I did splurge on Hell’s Library trilogy, but that was complete when I bought it, with no other books planned.
40: Happily, long before GOT came along, I’d been forced to accept Series Interruptus was a thing thanks to unfinished series like the Anthony Villiers books and Dangerous Visions.
There are some series I’ve had to tell myself it’s okay to NOT force myself to read every book/ancillary work because I read the first one (I tend to be a completist). Especially once the author dies and somebody else starts taking over (I’ve read most of the Pern books but I fell off a long time ago, haha).
On the other hand, lately I’ve been circling back to the Sharon Shinn catalog, and one thing I’ve appreciated about a few of the recent series of hers I’ve read (this year I’ve gone through Shifting Circle, Elemental Blessings and Uncommon Echoes) is that the books are each standalone (and generally with their own POV) although they do build on the worldbuilding and may reference a little bit the previous characters.
Of course I like a good series too, as long as it doesn’t feel like it’s just being drawn out.