Book Series - How Long have you waited, was it worth it?

[tangaloomababe]

I have a habit of "discovering" a book series usually after two or three books have already been written, in many ways this is good because I haven't had to wait a couple of years in between for the next book to be written. Like many millions of us now waiting for the next exciting instalment of Song of Fire and Ice.

This got me thinking what was the longest I have ever had to wait for the "next" book.


Many years ago I was in the bookstore and came across The Valley of the Horses, I quickly worked out this was in fact book two, book one being of course Clan of the Cave Bear, A little under 24 hours later I had finished Clan of the Cave Bear and went back to buy Valley of the Horses..... it was then that the waiting started. Three years later came The Mammoth Hunters and five years after that The Plains of Passage. Then it took 12 long years before we got The Shelters of Stone and another 9 years before Land of the Painted Caves.


This bodes three questions:


1. How long have you waited for the "next book"?
2. Was it worth the wait?
3. Was the series to long, should it have ended sooner?


In most case yes it was worth it, they might have been 12 long years waiting for Shelters of Stone but it was a pretty good book, however the nine years waiting for the last book probably were not worth the wait or maybe the series should have ended one book earlier by then I may have had just a little to much Ayla and Jondular than I needed. I would have been content for it to finish with book 5. The first two books I loved and re read but from then on they seemed to be a little repetitive and drawn out.

 

[nightdreamer]

Alan Dean Foster and his Flinx books. I discovered them after he'd written four, and was truly irate with him for having left the series hanging. There was so much unresolved. He didn't write another for 11 years, and by then I'd given up and all but forgot about them. I only discovered he'd written more about a year ago, and when I picked them up ... well, no, not worth the wait. Mostly just OK, but hardly worth 35 years' anticipation.

 

[Bick]

Never all that long, mercifully. I recall waiting for each of the Belgariad books to come out as Eddings wrote them, but that wasn't a problem as he rattled them out. Likewise, I recall waiting by baited breath for each of the saga of the exiles (Julian May) to come out, but again that happened quickly.

I expect you will inundated by complainants still waiting for the conclusion to the Song of Ice and Fire books. I've started so late in the piece with this (just started book 2) that he may actually have written another by the time I catch up.

 

[BetaWolf]

That's the thing about series. They usually should end before they do. Or go on a little longer than they did.

Frankly, A Song of Ice and Fire could have ended fine with the third book.

I began losing interest in Harry Dresden after four books. Sorry, Jim Butcher, but that's how I feel.

Three books in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon stories was probably enough. Cornwell is the living master of serial novels, though. I liked his shorter Sharpe novels a hair better than the later tomes that he put out.

Since she was mentioned, Jean Auel has had a strong influence on my thinking and writing. My current writing is sort of Jean Auel meets E R Burroughs.

 

[tangaloomababe]

Do you have something published beta wolf that I could read?

 

[j d worthington]

Depends on what you're talking about. Let's see... I first read The Hobbit and LotR back around 1972, and began awaiting The Silmarillion... which saw print in 1977 (I ended up with a copy some months later). Was it worth it? Most definitely, though the first time through was a bit of a slog, it being narrated so differently. Now it is among my favorite of Tolkien's books.

I first read Moorcock's Byzantium Endures as soon as it saw print in the states (in, as I was later to find out, abridged form; I have since read the original text, and will stick with that, thank you) -- that was around 1981. The final novel of that sequence (The Vengeance of Rome) didn't see print until 2006 -- a quarter of a century I waited for the wrapping up of that quartet of novels. Again, was it worth it? Yes, I think so. I think these are among Moorcock's best work... though the protagonist is an almost unbelievably revolting person. (Not entirely, but he certainly isn't someone I'd want to spend as much time with as poor Mike had to....)

Even with authors who are long dead, I've sometimes had to wait a considerable time before a particular book was released. This was the case in Night Shade Books' 5-volume Complete Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, as well as quite a wait for the final volume of the William Hope Hodgson set. Not quite the same, as these aren't a "series" in the sense meant for the purposes of this thread (though there are stories in these volumes which fit within such a cycle). Again, worth it? Good grief, yes. I now have all of Smith's and Hodgson's fantastic writings, and those are treasures of no small merit.

I'm still waiting for The Last Dangerous Visions and Blood's a Rover (Ellison, not Oliver), though I really can't quite believe the former will ever see print... and likely not the latter, either; which is a pity. Would these be worth it? I think, most likely... yes. But I'll probably never know.

Some series should end a lot sooner; some should go on longer; and some can work either way. Considering that, really, all of Moorcock's fiction has been subsumed into the Eternal Champion cycle in one way or another, that has got to be one of the longest (if not the longest) series on record... even outdoing Cabell's 25-volume Biography of the Life of Manuel. Yet it is such a rich, varied tapestry that I wouldn't have any of them subtracted from the whole, any more than I would one of the pieces in Balzac's Comédie humaine... another series which took a very long time to come to completion... well, what completion it did; the author died long before completing the structure he had in mind. Still, it is one of the greatest achievements in all literature, so who's complaining? And (to return to Moorcock), if one considers all this as a single series... then I have essentially waited 40+ years for the latest installments in the set (which, I suppose, would include his Doctor Who novel, The Coming of the Terraphiles, which is also a Jerry Cornelius novel, from what I understand)....

 

[Juliana]

I don't mind waiting, really. If it takes more than a year, well, its an excuse to reread the series to "freshen up" when the next installment comes out!

I only really started catching up with my fantasy reading two years ago, when I got my kindle, so I was lucky in that many of the series' I was interested in were complete or nearly complete. For instance, I got to read the first 5 Song of Ice and Fire books at one go. And ALL the Harry Dresden books before the launch of the last one.

The only problem with waiting for the next book of a series to come out is that when it does, after the wait build-up, I tear through it way too fast and then its over too quickly...

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

I don't mind waiting a year or two. The Passage, part one of a trilogy by Justin Cronin, was one of my favourite reads of 2010, The Twelve was published in 2012 (on shelf waiting) and The City of Mirrors is due for 2014. I think this is an ideal scenario as it gives me time to read the book, a few other things in between and just enough space to build up some anticipation. Pat on the back for Cronin.
What disappoints me is when an author such as George R. R. Martin publishes the first several parts of a series quite quickly then has a wait of several years for the next part which turns out to be disappointing when compared with the earlier parts of the series.

 

[HoopyFrood]

I read Scott Lynch's first book back in 2005/6 and I think the second a year later. Now the third is finally due for release at the end of this year. He's had serious problems that have understandably hindered the writing, but damn, I have really wanted this book for so long! Certainly hope it's worth it...I think it will be.

 

[BetaWolf]

Do you have something published beta wolf that I could read?

I take that as a high compliment, but at the moment, I have a short-short story that is still out in the slush pile, but I plan to send out a longer piece in early May. I find myself very much pointing towards the planetary romance/space opera genre, but with the anthropological edge that I admire in Jean Auel and Ursula LeGuin.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

The ones I can most recently remember waiting for are A Dance with Dragons by GRRM, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, and Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch.

With GRRM, the first 4 books were already out when I started reading them so the only one I had to wait for was ADWD. When I finished AFFC I had a 4 year wait, and unfortunately I don't think it was worth it. It is still by far my favorite series, but ADWD was a bit of a letdown for me. We shall see how long of a wait we have before the next one.

The Wise Man's Fear was a 3 year wait, and for the most part was worth it. Republic of Thieves will be 2 years, and I'm certainly hoping it will be worth it.

For whatever reason (I certainly don't do it on purpose) I tend to find series after a couple books in it have been published.

 

[vanye]

Katharine Kerr's Deverry series suffered a long hiatus, I think due to an illness.

Then, of course, there's the one that has me yearning most: Cheeryh's Morgaine cycle. I even wrote the author an email in the late 90's, asking if there were any further books to be expected in the series. She answered, which really surprised me, however, her answer was no cause for optimism. Seems, no further books about Morgaine are planned. So I will never know how it all ends. Sometimes, reading can be just as unsatisfactory as "real life", I'm afraid.

 

[End of Time]

The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, she's going to get a new novel out about Lestat soon, it's been what, almost forty years since the first one, and a decade or more since the last Vampire novel?

Worth it... I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath. Rice has her own style, but her characters don't have new stories in them anymore. They've been milked dry as a bone at this point.

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman, the last novel Johnny Alucard didn't have the life and the fun of the earlier instalments.

Dune ended with Brian and Kevin's absolutely horrible trashy pulp, if Rice is milking her franchise dry, Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson are desperately trying to squeeze blood from a rock.

 

[Heather Myst]

I hate to wait and would rather read a completed series but some books are so good that you just need to pull the trigger. it also is frustrating not being able to read posts on boards like this that contain spoilers if you have not read a book yet.

The ones that really stick out as being worth the wait are the Song of Ice and Fire books and Wise Man's Fear. The good thing about Martin's books are that they stay with you and I find myself thinking about them even when I'm not reading them. Having Game of Thrones really helps the wait too.

Right now the book I am waiting on is The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks. Weeks and Abercrombie are two of my favorite newer writers.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Antares Dawn (1986) by Michael McCollum
Antares Passage (1987) by Michael McCollum
Antares Victory (2002) by Michael McCollum

I read the first two in the 80s, but I forgot about it in the 90s. Didn't discover the third one until 2007.

I don't think any book could be worth 15 years of anticipation. As a series I think they are all equally good for what they are. No as good as A Mote in God's Eye, but better than The Gripping Hand.

psik

 

[Foxbat]

Started reading The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant in 1979 and finished the final book when it was published in 2013 so that's 34 years from start to finish. Sadly the last book was just not worth the wait.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Waited a long time for A Dance with Dragons and was disappointed. A lot of people liked it much more than I did, of course, but I felt it was listless and didn't live up to my expectations (and those set by the brilliant first three books in the series).

 

[K. Riehl]

I'm surprised no has mentioned Wheel of Time. I read the first book in trade paperback and immediately went and ordered 3 hardcover first editions. I correctly guessed that it would become the next big series but I had no idea that it would lose its way to the tune of 14 books and a fill in writer to finish it.

I remember participating in some of the first online discussion groups on the internet with WOT as the subject. College professor's were analyzing the books and optimism was high that the series would be an all time great read. I had to finish the series even though it took 23 years to complete. Sanderson did a good job, but it was nothing like what it started out to be.

 

[vanye]

I still have to read the last few books of WOT. Guess I'll get around to it eventually, but expectations are low. Somewhere along the years and many meanderings of the story - not to mention uncountable yankings of braids - the story lost a lot of its allure for me.

 

[End of Time]

I still have to read the last few books of WOT. Guess I'll get around to it eventually, but expectations are low. Somewhere along the years and many meanderings of the story - not to mention uncountable yankings of braids - the story lost a lot of its allure for me.

Pug's story throughout all the Krondor/Riftwar/Whatwar novels is the exact same thing for me. I just saw that Feist released Magician's End last year... and I can't be bothered to pick it up.