The Unbearable Awfulness Of Waiting For The Sequel.

Two things to gripe about when it comes to the state of modern
fantasy fiction….



First, there is the tendency of authors and publishers, once they have a certified
franchise hit on their hands, to attempt to stretch it out for as long as possible.
By this, I mean long fantasy series like The Wheel of Time, the Sword of Truth,
or Laurel K. Hamilton…basically a series that starts out intended as trilogy,
then extends to a pentology, and then before you know it its fourteen volumes
long with no end in sight…



The reason usually given for the case of the Never-Ending-Series is that the "the
story has grown" beyond what was originally conceived, and that the authors wants
more time ad place to explore the plot and tie up various subplots and loose ends.
Putting aside the question of why things got this expanded in the first place,
this reason would make sense if every book in the series was interesting to read.
But more often than not, after about book five or six the whole enterprise basically
turns into filler, one meaningless volume after another designed first and foremost
as a means to part the desperate fan from his money. With all due respect to Robert
Jordan - if anyone deserves the title of "the American Tolkien," it's him - but
after Lord of Chaos came out the Wheel of Time basically lost
steam. They could have gone straight to the Last Battle, skipping the twenty or
thirty books that followed, and the plot wouldn't have skipped a beat. And once
it was done, Jordan could have moved on to write Infinity of Heaven before
being so cruelly taken from us (wonder if Brandon Sanderson will tackle that project
after he's finished up with A Memory of Light. And why the heck is it
being split up into three more volumes?)



Which leads me to the second part of this rant; if an author is going to stretch
out a series to seven, eight, or twenty books, shouldn't he try to deliver each
installment in a reasonable amount of time? A Feast for Crows came out
FOUR years ago, and so far no sign f the next book in the series, A Dance
of Dragons. What makes it even more troubling is the fact that they were
supposed to be one book that got split up in two, with the second supposedly ready
follow a year later. Now, to be fair, every writer has his own way of working,
and more often than not has several other projects in the works at once. (A
Game of Thrones is coming to HBO as a TV series….joy!) but at some point
you have to produce. It's the fans that buy the books, and the longer they wait,
the greater chance their interest in the whole enterprise will wane.



Consider this…in the years since A Feast for Crows was published, the
entire Twilight Saga has been published, all four books. Granted, Stephanie
Meyer isn't in the same league as Martin or Jordan…but still, four books in four
years, and she brought the series to a satisfactory conclusion…at least for now.




Thoughts, anyone?