Please Just Stop--Knowing when Enough is Enough in your Series

There are few things in the world of reading worse then books and series that go on too long.  We've seen this in TV.  Shows that are continued not because they're good or fresh anymore, but because they're still making some money.  You know what I'm talking about.

But I think it's sad when this goes on too long.  Wouldn't you rather see a series end leaving you wanting more then one that's dragged on so long you almost want to give up on it.  The characters have been so developed, there's no room left.  The plot twists that were so great in the first two or three books and starting to feel old and worn out by book 9.

Now, there are two types of series in my opinion when it comes to books.

The first is a series that has an over-all plot.  It's a series made for the sake of telling a good story that just happens to be too long to fit in one volume.  I'm talking about series like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and A Series of Unfortunate Event.  If you read just one of these books, you would feel drawn to the rest of the series.  It's more than just the sum of its books.

Then there are books like the Nancy Drew Series.  Great books in themselves, but there's no overarching plot-line.  It's simply a bunch of books following the same characters.  You could read any one book and not be confused.  You could read them out of order.  It really doesn't matter.

And I really don't hate either or these types of series.  My first two novels were in plot arc type of series.  My current novel is a new series where each book could be a stand alone.  But what makes me really sand is when a book crosses from the first type of series into the second.

The example I'm going to use is The Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan.  Please don't hear me say I don't like this series.  I do.  HOWEVER.  It has made me sad and frustrated for a few months now.

John Flanagan wrote an excellent novel that could have been a stand-alone in The Ruins of Gorlin.  Great book.  Witty, cute, funny.  Promising.

And then he continued the character development and growth in Burning Bridge through Battle of Scandia.  It could have been the end.  Should have been, some might even dare to say.  But it wasn't.  Flanagan followed up with his first four books with a roughly two year jump to Sorcerer of the North and Siege of Macindaw.  I'm glad for this, because Socerer just so happens to be my favorite of the books.

But then, he really could have stopped.  The hinted romance of the book had been fulfilled.  The boy we met and fell in love with in the first book had developed into a man.  Flanagan didn't stop, though.  Instead, we jumped back in time with Eric's Ransom, a stand alone.  Then we jumped forward in time for The Kings of Clomel and Halt's Peril, two books that were tied together, not stand-alones.  Then, we ended (or so we all thought) with book 10, The Emperor of Nihon-Ja, another stand alone with all the same characters we met in book one.  Now both romances are well and truly cleared up, along with a third thrown in for luck.  And John Flanagan went on record saying he's always wanted to write a 10 book series and now he was done.

I was glad.  While I liked the characters still, the last four, especially the last three, books had lacked the depth that made the first 6 so great.  I was excited to see how Flanagan would filter his creative talent into a new set of characters for me to fall in love with.  He did this really well with the Brotherband Chronicles.  Yeah!  I gobbled them up.  Great books set in the same world with a few of the same characters.  Perfect!

And then Flanagan released book 11.  I was a little mystified, but it was a collection of short stories.  Great! A different thing with characters I loved.  Fine.

And that's the last I thought of my slight frustration with this elongated series.  Until I stumbled across a Ranger's Apprentice cover I didn't recognize.  That's right.  Book 12 , the Royal Ranger, will be released November 5th.

It might be great.  It might be the best book yet.  And I'll probably read the book.  But really?  I'll be a little sorry that this series didn't stop earlier, that it didn't leave a little more room for my imagination to be left to its own devices to continue the characters I've loved into new worlds and stories.  So yes, Will Treaty's story will be told completely.

But this means that there will be no room left for me to bring myself into the story.  I'm really worried that I won't be able to add myself to the story and add futures to these characters.  Their entire lives are told.  Period.  End of sentence.  No need for reader imaginations here.  And in my opinion, if you can't add anything to the story, what's the point in reading it?

Wow.  This is a seriously long post.  Sorry 'bout that.  This is my word to authors everywhere.  If you made these brilliant characters once, you can do it again.  And we can't wait for you to bring us another set of people for us to fall in love with.  Don't be afraid to start something new.

What do you think?  Are there some series that were cut a little too short?  Or your personal pet peeves of all the series that went on a book or two too long?  Leave me a comment and let me know.

P.S.  I didn't have to look up any of the Ranger Apprentice titles.  Am I the only one who finds that a little sad?  More proof that I eat, sleep and breath books.

200K

Maybe you've heard, or maybe you haven't, but there's a quote about writing.  After some digging, I still haven't found an author to attribute it to or the actual quote; but it goes something like this:

You must write one million words of (yuckyness) before you can write well.

While I know this isn't exactly true, this quote has always sort of stuck out to me.  Every time I feel like quitting, every time I'm ready stop writing a story and do normal people things like homework, I remember this quote.  Of course I'm not very good yet.  I've only written 20 thousand words or 50, or 75.  But if you count short stories, started but not finished novels, my current work in progress, and my two completed novels, I'm at 200 thousand words now.  I'm 20% of the way there!  For me, this is very exciting.  Like, so exciting that it makes me want to write 50 more thousand right now and bring it up to an even 1/4.

Also, if you're in need of some inspiration, here's an awesome Youtube song!  I'm a big fan of this song right now.  I've listened to it over and over.  I thought some of you might like it too!  Unfortunately, blogger decided to be stupid and not let me embed the video on my blog, so here's a link to the video.

Have a great writing week!

Book Spotlight: Merlin's Blade

Happy Memorial Day!  I always feel strange saying that, because Memorial Day isn't really a happy day.  It's a day set aside to honor the troupes who have fallen to preserve America.  What do you think?
Today, I'm doing a special spotlight as part of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.  The book I'm talking about today is Merlin's Blade by Robert Treskillard.

Before the round table

Before Author was crowned

There was . . . Merlin

Click HERE to buy on Amazon.

About the Author:

Robert Treskillard is a Celtic enthusiast who holds a B.A. in Biblical & Theological Studies from Bethel University, Minnesota. He has been crafting stories from his early youth, is a software developer, graphic artist, and sometime bladesmith. He and his wife have three children and are still homeschooling their youngest. They live in the country outside St. Louis, Missouri.

It all began when Robert’s son wanted to learn blacksmithing and sword-making. The two set out to learn the crafts and in the process were told by a relative that they were descended from a Cornish blacksmith.

This lit the fire of Robert’s imagination, and so welding his Celtic research to his love of the legends of King Arthur, a book was forged—Merlin’s Blade, book one of The Merlin Spiral, now published by Zondervan / BLINK Young Adult Books and available worldwide wherever books are sold.

Robert blogs at http://www.epictales.org/blog/robertblog.php.

And about the book:

Merlin's Greatest Weakness Could Become His Greatest Strength 

When a meteorite crashes near a small village in fifth-century Britain, it brings with it a mysterious black stone that bewitches anyone who comes in contact with its glow---a power the druids hope to use to destroy King Uthur's kingdom, as well as the new Christian faith. The only person who seems immune is a young, shy, half-blind swordsmith's son named Merlin. 

As his family, village, and even the young Arthur, are placed in danger, Merlin must face his fears and his blindness to take hold of the role God ordained for him. But when he is surrounded by adversaries, armed only by a sword he helped forge, how will he save the girl he cherishes and rid Britain of this deadly evil ... without losing his life? 

And a few of my thoughts:

In reading this book, I discovered something.  I am much harder on a novel if I know I'm going to write a review about it.  I received an Advanced Reader Copy of Merlin's Blade about a month ago for review purposes.  I knew I was going to be writing a review about it.  I'm pretty sure this is part of the reason I couldn't get into the book.  I'm pretty picky when it comes to my medieval Briton fiction.  There are a few books I absolutely love, a few I enjoy, and the rest I have a really hard time getting through.  I was really hoping Merlin's Blade would fall into the first category  but it didn't.  For some reason, I had a very hard time getting into this book.  I took it with me on vacation, even started reading it a few times, but it just didn't hold my interest.  I think part of this is that it begins rather slow.  This is a problem I see in a lot of medieval Briton fantasy novels.  Finally, over the weekend, I did push myself through the first few chapters and the book got much better.  I haven't finished it yet, though.  If I do, I'll let you know with another post.  I think that if this had been a book I'd checked out of my local library without the pressure of writing a review, I would have liked it better and been able to get into it more.  I also think that this book is written for boys, specifically 11-14 year olds.  In case you couldn't tell by the purple and green of my blog and my first name, Sarah, I'm not a boy.  And I'm also older than 14.  I'm pretty sure if I gave this book to my 12 year old brother to read, he would really enjoy it!  And the story did pick up quite a bit by Chapter 5.

Please remember, my thoughts are not the only ones out there.  Check out some of the other posts on this tour before you make any judgment calls on Merlin's Blade.

Noah Arsenault
Beckie Burnham
Keanan Brand
Jeff Chapman
Laure Covert
Pauline Creeden
Emma or Audrey Engel
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Ryan Heart  
Timothy Hicks
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Jojo Sutis
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Phyllis Wheeler
Shane Werlinger
Nicole White

Captives Book Review

Captives by Jill Williamson

Book Review by Sarah Faulkner

If I were going to compare this novel to another one, I guess I would choose Wither by Lauran DeStefano.   And I haven’t read Bumped, but from what I’ve heard it has similar premises too.  Aside from those two books, the idea behind this novel was basically unexplored.

Then Safe Lands are not so safe anymore.  The Thin Plague has thrived on the wild lifestyles of the Safe Land’s inhabitants.  Pregnancy for their disease ridden citizen’s is no longer possible.   The bodies of the infected just aren’t capable of bearing children.  They need fresh meat.  They need Outlanders.

Enter three brothers, Levi, Omar, and Mason.  Levi has everything; the girl, the sharp-shooting abilities, the popularity, and, most importantly, the love of their father. And although Mason could be better on the hunt, at least he has a fiancé and position as the tribe doctor.  Omar, on the other hand, has nothing, and as far as their father is concerned, is worth nothing.  Perhaps that is why the comfortable, pleasure filled life of the Safe Landers is so appealing to him; appealing enough for him to sell his tribe as healthy surrogates in exchange for a high position among the Safe Landers.

I loved how much thought was put into this book.  It felt like the author had spent a lot of time dwelling on the story world and it really showed through.  Every single setting was bright and alive.  There was never a time when I thought an aspect of society wasn’t well thought out, explored, and presented.  This is an important aspect with any book, but especially a dystopian because its chief purpose is to illustrate a society that is different than ours but also has the potential to be very similar if we’re not careful.  This is where I seen many midlist dystopian falling short.  Their worlds and societies are not fully developed.  I’m really glad that wasn’t the case here.

 

However, with a well developed backdrop comes a trap that I see much historical, fantasy, and science fiction writers fall into.  The trap is to go a little too far into society; show a little too much of what you, as the author, know to the reader.  Yes, the details should be there, but it should be the stage and backdrop the story is played out on, not an important part of the story itself.

And that brings us to the story.  As a whole, I liked the story Jill Williamson had to tell.  I really did.  But the way she told it left—in my opinion—something to be desired.  Captives switches between four point of view characters, the three brothers plus one of the tribe’s young girls selected to be a surrogate mother for the Safe Lands.  Maybe this would have been alright if the characters had taken turns narrating in some kind of order, Levi, Mason, Omar, Shaylinn, then back to Levi, but that wasn’t the case.  With each new chapter, you were never sure who would take center stage.  And with that many people vying for your attention, it was hard to get deeply attached to any one of them.

Another thing that demanded a lot of attention was all the issues dealt with in Captives.  I think the main one was “don’t find your fulfillment with the temporary pleasures you might be offered,” but coming in as a close second was ideas of betrayal and forgiveness.  Also, the ideas of being content with yourself as you are, life after death, and the ideas of fate and karma were bandied about a little bit, though not very deeply.

On the whole, I felt there were both pros and cons in this book.  It had an over-all good story.  The characters were fresh and well developed, the world was well realized, the message was good and clean.  However, there was, for me, just a little too much going on in this novel.  If Jill Williamson could have narrowed the scope of the novel a little bit, elevated one of her characters to more of a center stage position, and focused more completely on one underlying issue this book could have gone from and over-all good story to a great one.  I’ll be reading her next book in the Safe Lands series, Outcasts, which comes out in November.  I hope to see a few of the problems I’ve mentioned here rectified so this series can make the jump from good to great, as I know the author is capable of.

Housekeeping

I'll try to keep this as just a short and sweet note.

My birthday is in a few short weeks.  I'll be 16.  I can't believe how quickly these first two years of high-school have passed.  It seemed just a few months ago I was squealing to my sister about how I was almost a middle school-er.

Now, I don't talk about numbers, stats, and the like too much.  (At least I hope I don't.  If you feel I do, please let me know in the comments.)

But as my Sweet 16 approaches, I have two thoughts for you.

1. It's always been a kind of secret goal of mine to reach 75 followers before I turned 16.  75 may not seem like much, but to me, it would be a huge deal.  So if you have some friends you think might be interested in my little corner of the blog-o-sphere, please, send them my way.  And we're only 3 people away.  That's, like, a person a week.  Totally doable, right?

2. I started this blog when I was 14.  Needless to say, I've changed and grown a lot since then.  My writing has improved.  I've written another novel.  My posts aren't in the strict format I used to hold them too.  And as I've grown, it's only far that my blog grow with me.  So what do you see lacking here?  Do you want more publishing talk?  More YA book talk?  The scoop on every little detail of my WiP?  (Trust me, you don't.)  What is this blog lacking, missing, or in need of?  I'd love to read your comment on what you think.

Thanks.  I seriously love blogging and getting to know so many of you!