JV Jones

[soulsinging]

Which is why I prefer standalones nowadays!

I'll check out David Gemmell though, I keep hearing the name.

It's why I've shifted back to reading more hard-boiled crime and sci-fi... they seem to have more interesting standalone options. I'll never read a series that's not done again!

Got any good standalone recommendations in the fantasy world? Gemmell is good, very fast-paced, little concern for landscape description, interesting characters, and lots of action.

 

[Lioness]

I read the Book of Words series and really enjoyed them...guess this means I should check out her other stuff?

 

[Clansman]

It's why I've shifted back to reading more hard-boiled crime and sci-fi... they seem to have more interesting standalone options. I'll never read a series that's not done again!

Got any good standalone recommendations in the fantasy world? Gemmell is good, very fast-paced, little concern for landscape description, interesting characters, and lots of action.

There is a major flaw with this point of view. For an excellent series, full of excellent books, will never get finished because the author will give up in disgust, no one having bought the first book. If you do not buy the first when it is new, then the author cannot write the second, the third, etc. and so on, because the publisher would have to drop him or her in favour of your stand-alone writers. Under your "never read a series that's not done" mantra, the fantasy series of the last 30 years would have never been finished, notwithstanding authors who produce successive volumes in a steady stream. Most of them are not like GRRM.

Some stories really need series, like A Song of Ice and Fire, Sword of Shadows, Wars of Light and Shadow, Wheel of Time, and The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The stories therein are simply too big to be told any other way.

A personal choice, indeed, but don't complain if you can't find a particular author anymore who you didn't bother to support when they were in print.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

"interesting"? That could be taken any number of ways.

Yes... she was very nice, I have to say.

 

[soulsinging]

There is a major flaw with this point of view. For an excellent series, full of excellent books, will never get finished because the author will give up in disgust, no one having bought the first book. If you do not buy the first when it is new, then the author cannot write the second, the third, etc. and so on, because the publisher would have to drop him or her in favour of your stand-alone writers. Under your "never read a series that's not done" mantra, the fantasy series of the last 30 years would have never been finished, notwithstanding authors who produce successive volumes in a steady stream. Most of them are not like GRRM.

Some stories really need series, like A Song of Ice and Fire, Sword of Shadows, Wars of Light and Shadow, Wheel of Time, and The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The stories therein are simply too big to be told any other way.

A personal choice, indeed, but don't complain if you can't find a particular author anymore who you didn't bother to support when they were in print.

One could argue the flip side, that if not for the commercial success book one gave them, it's possible those series would have been done in 3 books instead of being drawn out to 5, 6, 11 volumes. Furthermore, there are good odds that even IF I liked book one, I'll never get to read the end of it anyway, even if I buy it. Jordan died. Gemmell died before finishing Troy. GRRM will need a fountain of youth to finish his series. Buying the book is no more a guarantee I'll get to read the whole thing than not buying it and risking the author's financial ruin.

I think once a series passes 3 books, it's impossible to maintain quality. You say some stories demand it, I say any story that big exceeds the ability of a human to tell it well. Eventually it devolves into treading water... endless description, sidetracks, soap opera-eque character drama for the sake of drawing things out rather than moving to a resolution. I've never read a series that demanded more than 3 books. Jordan fell off after 3, and so has Martin. Erikson's reviews begin to drop pretty fast after book 3 as well. This very thread is already about Jones losing control of the story after 3 books. It's near universal, and I think it's partly because once authors realize they have a cash cow, they come up with ways to extend it or get too wrapped up in chasing down every half-formed plotline that they lose their way. Instead of the hunger for success leading them to hone the work down into something sharp and engaging, the success stokes their ego into thinking their every minor character is so interesting they deserve an entire book (Jordan and Martin especially), esp since they know people will buy it regardless of quality just to see how it ends... they've already invested too much time!

My free time, let alone leisure reading time, is very limited. I don't want to spend it on endless doorstoppers that may never finish and are often padded heavily. I'll wait until it's done, then evaluate whether or not the author respected the reader enough to provide a work worthy of the time I'd need to invest rather than a work that lost its way due to vanity or greed.

 

[Mouse]

Got any good standalone recommendations in the fantasy world? Gemmell is good, very fast-paced, little concern for landscape description, interesting characters, and lots of action.

Neil Gaiman seems to be the only standalone fantasy stuff I have on my shelf. The other standalones are Oscar Wilde or horror stuff. I have King Rat by China Mieville too actually, but I've not got around to reading that yet.

As for JVJ, I'm still slogging through it!

 

[GOLLUM]

Erikson's reviews begin to drop pretty fast after book 3 as well.

Really? All of my friends both offline and online and other reviewers I have read do not appear to have that opinion of the Malazan series In fact one of the great strengths is Erikson's ability to maintain the overall quality of the series to a pretty high standard. You may have guessed by now I am particularly keen on Malazan... It still remains the greatest EPIC fantasy series I've read to date and as you are probably aware I've read a fair amount of SFF and non-Genre aka World Literature series containing elements of the fantastic. I'm also of the opinion that Martin's Song of Ice and Fire has not really run out of steam, the biggest issue there being fan's consternation as to the gaps between books, bearing in mind Martin's tendency to spend several POV chapters on specific characters in his latest series being more of a literary device than an invalid or unsupportable authorial decision. I can assure you Martin is not suffering from any need to have his ego stroked as you seem to suggest. Having met him last weekend he is in fact one of the most modest and unassuming authors I have come across. Martin has been writing for almost six decades and is one of the best in the business when it comes to story and plotting across multiple Genres. I do agree about Jordan and to a lesser extent JV Jones though. I guess like most things, it comes down to matter of opinion and personal taste.

I also agree on your general point that it is very difficult to maintain a high standard over a long series and not to have the classic mid series "sag". Very few authors achieve this and in general some of the best series are 2 or 3 book efforts or the classic standalone.

Cheers.....

 

[williamjm]

The Sword of Shadows series was always meant to be five books long. Jones switched publishers after the first book, as Warner Books was not supporting it very well, and called it a trilogy in the blurb on the cover, despite Jones' advice to them that it was to be a pentalogy. The third book, A Sword from Red Ice, took a looooong time to come out, due in part to the publishing problems, but the fourth, Watcher of the Dead, came out pretty smartly after ASfRI. I don't know the name of the fifth book.

I've seen it suggested that the series might be six books long now, but I'm not sure if that's been officially confirmed. I wouldn't be too surprised given how much plot still has to be resolved at the end of book 4.

I think once a series passes 3 books, it's impossible to maintain quality. You say some stories demand it, I say any story that big exceeds the ability of a human to tell it well. Eventually it devolves into treading water... endless description, sidetracks, soap opera-eque character drama for the sake of drawing things out rather than moving to a resolution. I've never read a series that demanded more than 3 books. Jordan fell off after 3, and so has Martin. Erikson's reviews begin to drop pretty fast after book 3 as well.

I don't disagree with your general suggestion that some fantasy series are much longer than they needed to be. I would disagree with some of the specifics, I have seen some series where (for example) 4 books was the appropriate length, but I'm not sure I've seen any series that really justify 10 or more books (apart from series where the individual books works as stand-alones, like the Vorkosigan Saga). I'd also say that Jordan fell off after book 6/7 - I thought books 4 and 5 were significantly better than the first 3. Similarly, I'd say Erikson's series doesn't really start to go significantly downhill until the 6th book. Feist's Midkemia series similarly went downhill about book 9. I'd probably suggest that 6 or 7 books would have been the best length for those series, they did justify more than a trilogy but 10-14 books is a bit excessive.

 

[Clansman]

The length of a series depends on the story being told. Almost everyone agrees that Jordan lost his way. 14 books for a 2-3 year story does seem like a bloody lot of verbiage. However, Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadow (and before I begin, there are some who accuse her of excess description and verbiage. To me, she writes in an older-fashioned style, where the world around the characters is itself a character) will finish out at 11 books, but the story is of a period of 500 years. I don't know about Malazan, as I am only to Midnight Tides. A Song of Ice and Fire seems to be on track, except that Martin can't seem to get the fifth book written and submitted. These three series were always planned to be big, but with definite endings (unlike Feist's endless Midkemia stuff, the ideas in which are long past their "sell-by" dates).

Many series tail off after a few books, it is more the author's and publisher's using what sold before: the same story, the same type of characters, and the same setting. I loved the early Feist stuff, and his collaboration with Janny Wurts was his best story by far. However, he, like Brooks, Eddings, and others, simply repeats the same damn story, with the same characters (sometimes with different names and bodies).

The best, like Martin, Erikson and Wurts, are able to maintain their quality.