I didn’t get this up yesterday–you might have noticed things were busy around here. A day late and at least a quarter short, here’s my
Fantasy with Friends is a weekly meme hosted by the good people over at Pages Unbound. Fantasy with Friends poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.
This week’s prompt is:
Do you currently prefer standalone fantasies or series? Is there a certain number of books that seems like “too much,” whether that means the series feels intimidating to start or just that the author might need to move on to something else? Is there a point at which you worry that a series is just a “cash grab?”
Ahhh, yet another This or that, Coke or Pepsi, kind of question that I shrug at. It depends?
There is something so satisfying about opening a book and spending 150-600 pages immersed in a complete idea. Beginning-middle-end and then you’re done.
t the same time–the pleasure of spending years with a story, watching characters grow, develop, storylines going deeper and more intricate than they could in a standalone…there’s something so fantastic about that.
Really it depends on the story that the author wants to tell. If a story needs multiple volumes–and the author has the chops to develop it over them–then bring it on. If the story wavers too much, gets too thin, or runs out of steam somewhere in the second or third volume–than editors and authors have made a mistake.
Similarly, I don’t think there’s a magic number. And that again goes back to the story the author is trying to tell, and the skill of the author.
I’m not saying there are no “cash grabs” in Fantasy fiction, but there have to be easier (and more profitable) ways to grab some. But I’ll let others who know more than I do weigh in on that.
I thought I had more to say on this, but I’m just coming up with variations on one idea: it just depends on the author, the themes, the characters, and the story. Oh, well, sales and a publisher’s willingness to keep buying the books (unless it’s a self-published series, then it’s just sales). Can I think of books that I wish had a sequel but didn’t? Yes. Can I think of series that were cut short because of sales/publishers? Sure. Can I think of series that went on too long, and should’ve been walked away from while they were still good? Yup. Series that needed one more book to really say everything? Yeah.
I’m really looking forward to some of the other posts in response to this prompt, I’m expecting better answers than mind.
Briana | Pages Unbound
Same! I made half the questions and a lot of the time the answer is just, “Well I like anything if the author did it well, right?” XD
I also mainly think of “cash grabs” in terms of those chapter book or middle grade series that go on forever. Stuff like Warrior Cats and Rainbow Magic. Maybe something like Keeper of the Lost Cities, which seems to keep growing. I’m not blaming anyone because, yeah, kids will totally read 200 Rainbow Magic books that are kind of just the same plot, but one doesn’t really think the stories feel inspired.
HCNewton
Oh! Those series!!! You can tell its been 15 years or so since I spent much time I n that section of a bookstore/library. On the one hand, yes, absolutely some of those should be put out to pasture. But I can only imagine the look my daughter would’ve given me if id told her thst her favorite of that type wasn’t going to have another installment (a mix of heartbreak and anger).
I don’t mean to imply that’s an exclusively female reaction. Just a difference in personality. My boys would’ve seen it as an excuse to start a new collection.
Briana | Pages Unbound
I shelved in a library several years ago, and it was so interesting to discover there were so many children’s series with a billion books that I had never even heard of. It’s like realizing other people are living in a different world than I am. I didn’t know Geronimo Stilton even existed, but there are over 200 books and some kids out there have read them all!
HCNewton
You’re really jogging my memory today. I read a couple of the Stilton books when my young readers picked them up. Had they been available in my childhood library, I’d have read their collection at least twice. 🙂
But trying to keep those kind of series in any order on library shelves feels rather sisyphean.