I’ve been reading the Sookie Stackhouse books, by Charlaine Harris. A friend leant me the first nine as a box set, so I had plenty of reading to be going on with.
For those who don’t know, Sookie is a human barmaid living in Louisiana. She has been blessed (cursed?) with the gift of telepathy, and finds it hard to get along with people when she knows what they’re thinking. A few years ago, after the invention of a synthetic blood called TrueBlood, vampires came “out of the coffin” and announced their existence to the world. When Sookie meets one, she is delighted to find that she can’t read his mind, and thus begins her adventures in the world of the supernatural.
The books are a fun romp, for the most part – chick lit with vampires as it were. No heavy thinking required. Each one is a self-contained adventure, unlike some other series I’ve come across, so it’s possible to stop any time you want.
And yet, there is always some nagging question at the end, something to make you wonder if the explanation will be forthcoming in the next book. And in the next book, your question is answered, but you’re left with another question. It’s a brilliant example of teasing the reader just enough to keep them reading.
Having said that, it’s getting a bit frustrating now. I want closure. I want to be able to put the series away and say “that was really good, and now I’ll read something completely different for a while”.
So my question is this: when is enough enough? When should an author give up on a series? Is it when they run out of fresh ideas for problems their characters can have? Is it when the readers get bored and stop buying the books? Is it when they run out of sensible titles with the word “dead” in them?
What do you think?
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December 12, 2012 at 6:20 pm
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December 14, 2012 at 5:52 pm
storiesbywilliams
Good question. It kind of reminds me of A Song of Ice and Fire, where I was getting so tired by the fourth book that I was ready to quit when it ended. But then I learned that the seventh book would be the last, and there were all these twists, hints and cliffhangers that made me buy the fifth! Personally, I think an author needs to quit before they run out of ideas and the audience starts getting bored. Go out on top, as it were, before you jump the shark and people risk remembering your work as a good series that went bad.
December 22, 2012 at 2:06 am
MythRider
I had the same problem with A Song of Ice and Fire. Once I realized it was never going to end. I stopped reading. After 12 books of the Dresden Files, I was ready to be finished only to be sucked int to two more books. I guess it depends on how far a reader is willing to go with the story.
I have no trouble stopping when I get bored.