[Katsunami]

As some may know, I recently completed my collection of (A)D&D Forgotten Realms (e)book collection. It means I own *every* Forgotten Realms ebook ever published, and I own the ones that are not (yet) available as ebooks in paper. In the past, I read a quite a lot of them and I fully intend to read them all, starting at the beginning.

In addition, I also own all but one of the Pathfinder novels (as they were suggested to me, they looked good, and got many on a big sale), which written or co-written by some of the Forgotten Realms writers and editors. On top of that, I also have most of the Eberron books (if my lists are correct I'm only missing three, or one series), and one Dark Sun and Greyhawk book.

I started out reading the Forgotten Realms novels after first playing Baldur's Gate in 1998, progressing from AD&D 2E to 3E, to 3.5E, to 4E, and now (it seems) to D&D Next, where characters and gods die and get raised or reincarnated, sometimes multiple times over a timespan of hundreds of years. It makes this world hard enough to follow, all on its own.

I got into Eberron because of some cross-overs in the Forgotten Relams series. That's also where the Dark Sun and Greyhawk book came from; because they are part of a cross-over series. Some series are comprised of books from two (or three) worlds.

I'm not even talking about the rest of the novels and series in the Greyhawk, Planescape, and other campain settings such as Birthright, Blackmoor, Dark Sun.... and on and On and ON.... !!

And there we have the problem.

It's hard enough to keep up with the Forgotten Realms alone, let alone trying to read, remember and understand every possible cross-over into every other D&D campain setting, and then read all the books in THAT setting. Pathfinder (related to D&D, but completely separate) makes it especially hard because of all the web tales, fanfic-that-becomes-canon-if-its-popular, 'journals', and other related stuff. That part of Pathfinder is actually much bigger than the novels at this point. I don't follow that, but if you'd want to understand ALL the references in the books, you'd need to read it.

In short, I'm starting to feel that I'm wasting my time on low-end fantasy, on worlds that get tangled up and crossed over, under and through one another with links that can't be untangled by anyone with unlimited money to buy, and time to read, re-read and remember everything, and the feeling that books are being written for the sake of writing another $6.59 book. Everything keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I'm thinking about keeping the Forgotten Realms books (the FR is 'my' world, as I started there and know it best, by far) and the few other books from Eberron, Dark Sun and Greyhawk to complete the FR/Other cross-over series, and split off the rest into another library. Actually, I'm thinking of ditching (read: wiping, deleting) them.

Has anybody been in a similar situation before, and felt the same?

I have already resolved that I'm NOT going to involve myself with writers such as Mercedes Lackey, Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman, and some others, as they essentially do the same: write book upon book upon book, entangling one or more series or worlds.

I'll only follow or start reading writers who write clean series: from one book to the next.