I read the first when it came out on the understanding it would be a 10-part series, then read the second which was about completely different characters, and briefly picked up the third (different characters again) and never read it because there were *so many* characters I'd lost track.
I suspect there's a strong tendency for the Setting Series to be an early phase on the way to it becoming the superset of something else, because somewhere along the line the author decides to do more with those characters, or to bring those two stand-alone bits together into a third thing
Absolutely. One usually has more story than will fit into a book, and the temptation to write another book about a character/write a prequel or sequel/have them turn up in a cameo is just too great. I guess I should write a post about that, as my current WIP is part of a Saga arc. (I have two reasons to write this: one, I like the world and the people and it's something I can have fun with in times of stress or little brain, and two, I started out with a basically ok but in places pretty fucked-up culture. No single hero will come in and change everything; the change is part of a concerted effort of many people over a long time, so I'm writing about multiple protagonists who each make a contribution.
[Pern] When did that start? After the AI thing. I can't recall how long it went on, I remember Dolphins being the one where I recognised the pattern and lost interest, though Moreta/Nerilka also had overlap IIRC, and I seem to recall that some of Jaxom's story overlapped with another book.
The book where I completely stopped reading Pern was Masterharper because it undoes a lot of earlier story, and I just Could Not with Robinton getting all of the credit. (I never read the books that were published after that. I see there's quite a few.)
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yati
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Date: 2021-03-11 08:00 pm (UTC)I read the first when it came out on the understanding it would be a 10-part series, then read the second which was about completely different characters, and briefly picked up the third (different characters again) and never read it because there were *so many* characters I'd lost track.
I suspect there's a strong tendency for the Setting Series to be an early phase on the way to it becoming the superset of something else, because somewhere along the line the author decides to do more with those characters, or to bring those two stand-alone bits together into a third thing
Absolutely. One usually has more story than will fit into a book, and the temptation to write another book about a character/write a prequel or sequel/have them turn up in a cameo is just too great. I guess I should write a post about that, as my current WIP is part of a Saga arc. (I have two reasons to write this: one, I like the world and the people and it's something I can have fun with in times of stress or little brain, and two, I started out with a basically ok but in places pretty fucked-up culture. No single hero will come in and change everything; the change is part of a concerted effort of many people over a long time, so I'm writing about multiple protagonists who each make a contribution.
[Pern] When did that start?
After the AI thing. I can't recall how long it went on, I remember Dolphins being the one where I recognised the pattern and lost interest, though Moreta/Nerilka also had overlap IIRC, and I seem to recall that some of Jaxom's story overlapped with another book.
The book where I completely stopped reading Pern was Masterharper because it undoes a lot of earlier story, and I just Could Not with Robinton getting all of the credit. (I never read the books that were published after that. I see there's quite a few.)