'90s hit SF series "Chung Kuo" by David Wingrove re-releasing as 20 volume set!

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Originally Posted by DiapDealer

He had more books planned for the series....
Plus I find the idea of splitting a 7,8,9-book series into a new 20-book series a rather repulsive money-grab.

But isn't that the point? He's adding those books, 500K new words in total. And since they're being sold as non-agency, each individual book will be cheaper than your typical agency book (and eligible for discount codes and/or volume discounts, if your e-book store of choice does that). Hard to fault that, IMO.

reading the new prequels has convinced me that either he or I am incapable of rekindling the magic I felt in these books at the time of their original publication. But perhaps new readers will gobble it up?

I haven't finished the first prequel novel yet, but I've read the first couple of chapters and it was rekindling the magic for me. Or perhaps it wasn't, and instead was invoking the magic of the post-apocalyptic setting that I find so intriguing (One of my favourite movies is Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior, and one of my favourite TV shows is Jericho, to give you an idea).

The original series started off dystopian, but the first prequel novel is instead post-apocalyptic, and that may have affected your response to it.

[DiapDealer]

But isn't that the point? He's adding those books, 500K new words in total. And since they're being sold as non-agency, each individual book will be cheaper than your typical agency book (and eligible for discount codes and/or volume discounts, if your e-book store of choice does that). Hard to fault that, IMO.

The total number of new words doesn't make the book count jump from 7 to 20. They're just reorganizing the vast majority of the original series into smaller chunks. Agency or not, it's going to cost someone a hell of lot more money to purchase 20 books instead of the 10-12 they could (and should) easily fit the series into. That's the money-grab I'm referring to... and don't care for.

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Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The total number of new words doesn't make the book count jump from 7 to 20. They're just reorganizing the vast majority of the original series into smaller chunks. Agency or not, it's going to cost someone a hell of lot more money to purchase 20 books instead of the 10-12 they could (and should) easily fit the series into. That's the money-grab I'm referring to... and don't care for.

I understood what you were saying, but I'm not 100% sure we're operating on the same understanding. It's not a simple matter of adding a bunch of words at the beginning and end, apparently a lot of content has been added to the middle too. An average novel is about 75K-100K words, so perhaps about half of those 500K new words is in the three new books (the two prequel novels, and the new final novel). That means the other half of the new content is spread through the over 7 books.

Beyond that, I'm philosophical. The original books were absolutely huge, much larger than the average novel that agency publishers charge $8.99 for. These will be larger than that, and cheaper than that, and all of them with new content.

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Originally Posted by Staked

I loved this series until he introduced the Kennedy (yes, one of those Kennedys) character. That made me roll my eyes and quit reading. Heh.

Wow, I had completely forgot about that part of the story. Well, it was 15-20 years ago, so I guess that can be forgiven.

I don't remember being irritated by a Kennedy showing up. As I recall, now that you've drawn my attention to it, the way he was used in the story was kind of interesting.

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The second prequel volume to Chung Kuo, "Daylight on Iron Mountain", is now available on Kobo outside the UK (well, at least it is for me now in Canada): http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Dayli...4CtaYLKmfQ&r=1

Still non-agency and available for use with Kobo's discount codes, such as the ones listed here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...discount+codes

[Dr. Drib]

...or buy it for $5.99 from Amazon, located here:

http://www.amazon.com/Daylight-Mount...7941736&sr=1-2

Reader's choice, of course.




Don