About a week ago I decided to take advantage of my surroundings and enjoy more of what Vermont has to offer. That meant exploring a few of the local restaurants (two decent, and two I need to promise myself never to return to) and spending some time at the lake. Of course, one can't spend time at the lake without some books to read, so I also needed to go book shopping.
My goal was to buy some easy reads - some relaxing summertime stories. Yes, that's right. I actually purchased some fiction.
I picked up a book on a whim, written by some young author who might be described as up and coming. The story was set in some late 16th century fantasy Europe - the names, places, and history were all had that "alternative Europe" feel to is, giving the reader a sense of familiarity. The book started slow, but picked up with each passing chapter. Plot twists - more like plot surprises, really - dropped in every 50 pages or so to keep one wondering "oh no! What now?" As the story progressed, everything seemed to be slowly spinning out of control for the main character - including her sex life, which grows progressively more depraved. The tension kept building and building, gaining energy and looking more and more unstable.
About two-thirds of the way through the book, I was really into it. Kudos to the author.
Then I broke the golden rule of reading a book: I turned to the last page....
Now, I wasn't trying to peek at the ending. Really, I wasn't. All I wanted to do was see what the page number was on the last page, compare it to where I was, I estimate about how long it would take me to read it. The book was getting into the "can't put it down" state; I didn't want to plug away at it 15 minutes at a time. I knew that I needed to be able to just sit down a polish it off in as few sittings as possible.
But at the bottom of the last page there was Big Bold Print. I couldn't avert my eyes! The Big Bold Print drew my attention to fast for me to look away.
It said To be Continued in ... and indicated that another book was coming in the near future.
Gah!
I lost all desire to finish the book and haven't touched it since.
Why doesn't any author in the fantasy genre just write a fricking BOOK anymore? For decades it's been all about trilogies and series and stories that just go on and on forever. Doesn't anyway write a BOOK? You know - a self contained story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Now, I understand that readers want to spend more time with their favorite characters. When a story is good, the reader should want more. But that doesn't mean the author should default to trilogies, or series of 5, or 10, or just plain never ending piles of pages!
I want a book to be a story. If the characters are lovable, bring them back in another book! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle write plenty of Sherlock Holmes books, but they were all self contained. Even in Piers Anthony's Xanth series, which just kept going and going and going, each book was a complete tale; often times the characters would change between books.
Here's a heads up: not every story needs to be Lord of the Rings! Not every single piece of fiction needs to stack up next to Harry Potter!
Am I alone in just wanting to read a book? Or does the whole rest of the world want 3000 page epics that are doled out them a few hundred pages at a time?
Or is it that publishing companies just want the revenue streams? Don't sell them one book when you can sell them three! Or five! Or fifty!
I'm going back to non-fiction.
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