3 ms·
Having recently slogged through some fantasy/sf tomes weighing in at 900 pages or more, I have to say that they make Tolkien - or Dickens for that matter - seem
by musicale 3y ago
Having recently slogged through some fantasy/sf tomes weighing in at 900 pages or more, I have to say that they make Tolkien - or Dickens for that matter - seem terse by comparison.
To make matters worse, some of these monstrosities aren't even complete in themselves but are the first (or Nth) volume in an excessively long series.
Perhaps novellas aren't commercially viable anymore, but I miss them.
- piaste 3y agoIt is difficult to tell a coherent story that ends in a satisfactory manner within a preset number of pages. Endings, outside of "and this is how everyone died", are inherently arbitrary and artificial, and it's tricky to disguise that. And if you're blessed with imagination, there is always one more character to do justice to, one more neighbourhood to explore. (Or, if you're Tolkien, one more etymology to plant.) At the same time, there is a certain type of curious, intelligent, often young reader that delights in those details. They want to know more about that character who spoke two sentences but made a big impression; they want to know how the neighbourhood the protagonist walked through came to be so peculiar. The market for massive 18-book series is a product of the happy match of that type of writer with that type of reader. But it's totally OK to not be that type of reader.
- musicale 3y ago> there is a certain type of curious, intelligent, often young reader that delights in those details > The market for massive 18-book series is a product of the happy match of that type of writer with that type of reader. But it's totally OK to not be that type of reader. Indifferent/stupid/old readers should probably keep reading Tolkien, Dickens and other authors known for published brevity - Melville or Tolstoy perhaps.