Thread: Long Series - For or Against? :)

Over the years I've found that I tend to lean towards authors who write series of books rather than individual stories.. Raymond. E. Feist's Midkemia stories for instance.. or Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth Series for example

Although I'll admit there are some good individual stories out there.. but I always feel like there could have been so much more that the characters could have done.. whereas, my father hates the idea of long series of books because he tends to forget whats happened two books ago when its mentioned at a later stage - what do you think?

When I'm just perusing through a bookstore, I tend to avoid series. If I have heard they are good, I might look into it, but I prefer to just have one satisfying story.

I might also have been marred by movie sequels...the second is never as good as the first.

Except in the case of LOTRs Two Towers and Return of was so much better than Fellowship but then the same can be said for the book so well done Peter Jackson there

lol Yeah, I don't include LOTR in the bad experience. Though, I thought The Fellowship of the Ring was good too...more lighthearted.

The camera seemed to have an attraction to Elijah Wood's eyes in FotR.. not that I'm complaining.. they're nice eyes but I dunno it set it up well.. and I loved every minute of it.. but once you saw the last two! Wow! hehe!

Haha, yeah, I guess that's true... now that you mention it. (I will probably will laugh at the Frodo shots every time I watch that one now...)

Sorry my friends mum pointed it out to me when she first saw it and it make me laugh every time too lol!

Think I've kinda hijacked my own thread here lol!

lol It's ok. I've seen it like 30 times anyway.

Oh geez. Scared 'em off with the LOTR talk.

Quick talk about something else.. *panics* ... have you seen the extended versions too?

Um...how about gnomes? lol Yeah.

If the series is good I'm for it, but sometimes it's better to go out on a high note.

I tend to be wary of long series. You mentioned Goodkind's series, for example. I stalled out after book nine. Honestly, he could've ended the whole thing at book six, but instead he decided to milk the Richard Rahl thing for all it was worth. In fact, after despising the horrible derailing of the whole plot in book 7, I only read 8 and 9 just to see if it could feasibly get any worse. (It did--go figure.)

Same with Robert Jordan. A long series of books is fine if you can keep the momentum going without having to resort to bullshit. Harry Potter was long, but each book built on all the previous ones, so it worked.

Actually, I would love to see more stand-alones in the fantasy genre. Everything seems to come in threes there.

I'm about to start my sixth novel in a series, so I'm all for them. I'll probably end it after this one, though, cos I'm getting tired of writing about the same characters over and over again.

Yeah Mr Goodkind did lose it a little bit, I think.. it was very samey too.. like the plot recycled over and over again but I quite enjoyed it until 9.. I think it was :-/ the one where hes in the enemy camp playing that Game of Life.. uh, game I've got them all so I might go back to it in time!

Three is a nice number though.. a trilogy isn't too bad but I think I should just bite the bullett and grab some stand-alone books and read them and see how I get one

SW - 6? blimey.. I'm having trouble getting passed a paragraph at the moment are there snippets on here that I can read or...?

I enjoy reading books that span a triology or so, often if I find a story enthralling enough one book doesn't do it justice. And pretty often, adding a further triology at a later date will meet my approval, depending on how the prior trilogy ended mind. That said, it's very possible for the story to begin to drag if the author isn't careful, especially if each book in the trilogy is a 500+ page monster in itself.