Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
Be grateful you had those three.  The only fantasy book we had was The Hobbit, and that was basically it (well, except for fairytales, of which there were plenty. I had literally a hundred or so fairytale books in childhood). I got to read LoTR for the first time in 1994, when my father bought it for me in the UK (he was a long-distance sailor). It, and ergo the whole fantasy genre, was forbidden in the Soviet Union (a fact of which I wasn't aware before reading it, of course). |
Ouch! You have my sympathies.
I'm generally OK with whatever an author feels compelled to do RE their various series. I just wish that 1) the series mindset wasn't the de facto standard for speculative genres, and 2) authors/publishers were more upfront about the fact that they're launching a "franchise". I'd like to read more fantasy, for instance, but I'm not interested in starting any unfinished (and often overly ambitious) series' with open-ended installments right now.
It's also pretty hard these days to get a straight answer about whether series books have satisfying endings or not. It's not in the publisher/authors's best interest for potential readers to have the requisite knowledge to decide whether to read now or wait for series completion; and fans who've already read them can't seem to stop themselves from waffling about endings because they want more people to read them
right NOW!