So many books, so little time

I am a lover of fantasy and sci-fi. I am also an adult with a full time job, and interests outside of reading as such I try to get the most out of my time with them. I am no stranger to long stories, over 1000 pages, and if there is a reason for it to be that long I will happily devour it.

What I have an issue with is that writers these days can’t seem to edit their story or possibly push their stories to be long enough to have sequels.

Every time I visit the local book store I look at what’s happening on the fantasy and sci-fi sections. And oh boy. Books with 500+ pages, which is pretty standard for a story lure me in, get me all interested just to realise they are only part of a series of other similarly bulky publications.

I am talking modern, contemporary books. If you look at the Lord of The Rings trilogy, or Pullman’s Dark Materials or even Asimov’s Foundation epic those series are not as…lengthy as the ones I see on the shelves. The above writers also have standalone publications. Asimov’s I Robot are stories set in the same universe and despite the slim volume it sure packs a punch. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World didn’t need a trilogy. Pratchett’s Discworld books can be read and enjoyed as standalone stories. King’s The Talisman is a fantasy which could be done in a single book despite how action packed it is.

Everyone raves about the Expanse series so I checked it out and it’s TEN books. The Mistborn series 4 books all just shy of 600 pages each except the last one. Game of Thrones, same thing.

I have tried my hand with Holly Black’s Cruel Prince which is also part of a series. The amount of filler in the first book was astonishing! At the end I was just sitting there like “If the rest of the books contain so little action and have similarly large margins and spaces between letters this whole trilogy could easily be compressed into a single book.

The above of course is my personal opinion, and is a general rant. I might post it in three parts and make it into a trilogy. 😉