Don't Lie. You'd Read It.

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Buggrit. I hate it when I charge headlong into a book only to find out it’s the third in a series. Whatever happened to book covers that helpfully told you that the title you were holding was "Book 3 in the wildy awesome Sorcerizer's Sidekick series!" or whatever?

At least this book has a page listing the other books in the series. Is it just me, or is that tradition falling by the wayside?* How am I supposed to know if The Sorcerizer's Shadow comes before Dragonbloodsword of the Star Throne or after it? It's not like it tells you on the cover, for chrissake. I am reduced to making educated guesses by publication dates. And hell, without a page like that, I don't even know I'm missing Book Two, The Sorcerizer vs. Samson, The Silver-Masked Man.

Thank god for the internet, I guess. And thank god for libraries that actually have the first books in series. That makes it a little better.


*And for God's sake, knock it off with the red-thing-on-black-background, tormented teenager, and abstract book covers! I want a splash illustration with lots of shiny colors and so much activity it looks like the book is showing you all the scenes at once, dammit! DON'T TELL ME I MISSED IT BEFORE I COULD PUBLISH MY OWN BOOK, YOU BASTARDS.

Comments

[marag.livejournal.com]

YES! It's amazingly ridiculous how much work it requires to figure out what order books come in! I don't have enough time for that.

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

Amen! Also, please to be listing the books inside the cover in the order they appear in the series. It is not helpful for me to see that there are 15 books in the series and not know whether this one is first or last or somewhere in between and it is doubly not helpful when every book in the series lists them in a different order so I can't even confirm for a fact that I've seen all the titles without sitting down with a paper and pen to do some serious homework.

And please please please people, knock off that whole losing, stealing, or destroying the first library book in a series thing, especially when the book is out of print so the library can't replace it. It's bad enough doing something that unconscionable to something that can be replaced if need be.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Actually, what gets me even more is when it's the second one that's not there, and I don't find out until after I've finished the first. That's happened to me five times now, and just leads to RAEG.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Amen! When did providing readers with the information necessary to read the series properly start seeming like a bad idea?

The only thing I can think of is that someone did some research and found that more people were likely to put the book down if they found it was part of a series before they started reading it. But if they started reading thinking it was a standalone, and then got hooked, they'd do the looking to find the rest. Doesn't seem too likely, but it's the closest I can come to a rational explanation.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I picked up one of Nina's books at Powells and no where on the cover or the interior did it mention that it was the 2nd book in a series.

You have to figure it out from the "Wait a minute... why am I supposed to know about what happened... dammit!"

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's what did it here. It was sneaky enough not to be blatantly obvious, either, but rather have me thinking, "Hmm, one of those authors who flings you into the story and expects you to keep up until he explains things in the fullness of time? I can handle that. ... Wait a second."

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Amen. Absolutely obnoxious. At least tuck it into the inside if you can't be bothered to put it on the cover.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Those are some of my pet peeves. What makes the reading the third one in first worst is that I find I tend to not like the earlier ones as well, because the writer's abilities have grown. If I'd read them in order, I would have been fine with the first ones!

Our library is notorious for not having all the books in a series, which drives me batshit. I ended up buying the middle volume of the original Kushial trilogy because they didn't have it, and I REFUSED to read the 3rd before the 2nd.

[baby-rissa-chan.livejournal.com]

That plus reading the third one first tends to give away a lot of the plot points for earlier books since they keep referring back to stuff that already happened.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

That hasn't happened to me*, but reaching the end of Z.A. Recht's Plague of the Dead was like hitting a brick wall at 250 mph. "Wait, there's a part two? Argh, I need it in my hands NOW!"

And when I finally got my hands on part two I hit another brick wall when I realised there's a part three too, and it isn't finished yet. Double argh!




*I obviously don't read enough.

[sriti.livejournal.com]

Your description of books with lots of colour and activity reminded me of the Terry Pratchett books, I would spend a LOT of time looking at the cover and figuring out all the characters and scenes.