When I was at Worldcon, on one of the panels, I asked two questions of the audience.
The first was this: do you like cliff hangers at the end of a book of a trilogy, enticing you to buy the next?
It was a fairly full lecture theatre, and the audience was split right down the middle - half of them loved them, half of them hated them. (Since then I've seen one blogger write a whole blog post on how awful The Last Stormlord was because it didn't "finish" part of the story.)
And the second question: Do you like trilogies that come out one book every month? Would you happily buy them this way?
Most people said yes. (The problem is more that authors can't write a book a month...*grin*)
So what do you think?
And on quite another matter: I am now at the airport, waiting for a flight to Glasgow. Any bets on whether there will be too much snow for the plane to land? The Noramlys are travelling! So far this year we've had two volcanoes... what will noramly us this time, I wonder?
About Me
- Glenda Larke
- Malaysia
- My life has been described by one of my editors as “impossibly exotic” – although really it is not my life, but me, that’s the exotic. I’m the uprooted plant, the exotic who doesn’t belong, always living in someone else’s backyard...
An Australian living in Malaysia. Writer, traveler, environmentalist. Author of The Isles of Glory trilogy (The Aware, Gilfeather, The Tainted); The Mirage Makers trilogy (Heart of the Mirage, The Shadow of Tyr, Song of the Shiver Barrens) and, writing as Glenda Noramly, a stand-alone book Havenstar.
The latest trilogy is called The Watergivers in Australia and the Stormlord trilogy elsewhere. Book One, THE LAST STORMLORD, is already out; Book Two, STORMLORD RISING, is out in US and Australia and will come out in UK at the beginning of November 2010; Book Three, STORMLORD'S EXILE, will be out in all three countries in August 2011, or earlier.
Cover art by Vincent Chong for the Oz covers and by Larry Rostant for the US/UK covers (Book 1) and Steve Stone (Book 2).
10 comments:
Glenda, I am surprised you even went to the airport. From all the reports we get, the European airports are clogged with passengers who can't get flights, Toronto and other North American airports can't leave because they can't get into Europe. If I were you, I would go home and forget it. Normalying isn't in it, unless the whole air system is being affected by it.
I enjoy trilogies, don't like the longer books which go on for ever and ever. And yes, a cliff hanger helps one to remember what was happening when you get to the next book.
I enjoy a cliff hanger at the end of a multi book story, but not at the expense of some sense of completion. The characters have to overcome something / achieve something and the plot advance.
So, IMO, a teaser about the next book's plot / challenge is great, but deferring the current book's climax isn't.
Prk.
I do enjoy SFF trilogies/series for many reasons:
- Revisiting an established world of familiar geography and places you know.
- Gives the author time for realistic character development and sometimes redemption.
- Anticipation of the evil one's demise/redemption action.
What I don't like about book series is sometimes having to wait many years for the next book. In a current case 5yrs 2mths and still counting.
I'm curious Peter, which series is that?
While I do love trilogies/series, I prefer a series of standalone books set in the same universe/world such as China Mieville's Bas Lag books or Iain M Banks' Culture books because I have a terrible memory.
Sometimes I just can't remember a reference to a certain character or a certain location in the first book while I am reading the third book. Just an example.
Hi Jo,
The series is "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin.
Last book came out in Oct-05 in Australia.
I am waiting for that book too. Same as the Clan of the Cave Bear series. You kind of forget who's what. Right now I am reading Towers of Midnight which is book 13in the Wheel of Time series. I am having trouble remember the lesser characters in that.
Fortunately, my daughter is in Glasgow, Jo - so we didn't book thru Heathrow!
Meaning you got through OK I hope. Merry Christmas.
I agree, it is nice to have some sort of closure of something at the end of each book. Trouble is, what the author thinks is is an ending of something, the reader might mot find satisfying. I actually thought that the ending of The Last Stormlord brought quite a few things to a conclusion:
Kaneth and Ryka reach a recognition of where their relationship is going, Terelle escapes, Jasper jumps out of the flying pan...
Trouble is the story isn't over. And one reviewer spent the whole review complaining that it wasn't fair to the reader because there wasn't a story arc. Well, I thought there was. He didn't. Sigh.
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