swan_tower: (*writing)
swan_tower ([personal profile] swan_tower) wrote 2021-03-12 02:20 am (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.

This is one of the things I've been chewing on as part of this mass of topics: how to handle reader expectation, especially when the structure is unconventional (e.g. three seemingly separate books that are all setting up a connected story later). Marshall Ryan Maresca has been doing this with his Maradaine novels, where he's got multiple trilogies in the same setting -- which was great right up to the point where I finished the trilogy I'd chosen to read and discovered that its actual conclusion was in another castle. I didn't know that was coming, and it threw me for a not-good loop.

re: Pern, I think I stopped at Dolphins, either in the sense of that was the last one I read or I looked at it, said "wtf?," and didn't bother trying.

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