The series goes on and on
Don't get me wrong, I love opened ended
series. But when the books are a tightly connected, we are at book 14
and the author happily announce book 16-18 and states it isn't the
end? I walk away.
I get having a long series, but when I
have to re-read the books to remember what happend it isn't fun
anymore. A part of it is also what May wrote about in her post at Smexybooks in May : Keeping your
readers informed. It is one thing to say that ” I plan the series
to be 13-16 books long, and then I'll write stand alones.” and one
thing to say ” I plan to write in this world forever.” The first
makes me keep reading. The second? Makes me walk away.
There are no series arc
Even if the series are focused on just
one character, I want a series arc. I want that an event in book one
sets up book 2, and book 2 in turn sets up book 3 and so on. If
there is no series arc all the books start to blur, and feel the same
around book 4.
The characters doesn't change
This is the most
important for me. The characters doesn't change. They do the same
mistakes again, and again. And it just never occurs to them that
their actions affect the world around them.
The plot starts to feel formulaic
For me it comes a
moment when I read a book, and I realises that it could have been any
of the previous books by the author. The books might still be good,
but the series isn't on my autobuy list anymore.
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