Novik is up to 1807 I believe. Considering that her Supreme Bad Guy (thank you, Rinkworks) is Napoleon himself, she could write several more adventures before we get to Waterloo. She shows no sign of slacking off. So, how do writers keep things fresh, four years and five books into a series? Or seven books? Or even three?
I don’t know.
Check out the on-line reviews of Breaking Dawn. There are a lot of disappointed fans here. Now, not every fan is going to like every installment, but when that many ardent fans of the earlier books post negative reviews, it’s clear that something went wrong.
I read some excerpts from the first book, Twilight, and was not impressed enough to buy a copy of the book. A lot of kids liked it, and that was no skin off my nose. But I thought that they could do much better. So what happened?
From what little I remember from Twilight, there really wasn’t much to this story. Teenagers? Vampires? Werewolves? Been there, Buffied that. (I’m a huge Buffy fan). Aside from the well-worn premise, there was little substance or insight, in either the characters or the story itself. True, Stephenie Meyers might have been in a hurry, under pressure from her publishers. Or perhaps there just wasn’t much there there to begin with.
Since some people have, in all seriousness, compared Meyers with J.K. Rowling, I’ll mention a few things. It’s clear even in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that this is more than just a kid’s story. There’s wry, satiric humor, genuine pathos, and terror. These are glimpses of greatness to come. Nothing in Meyers’s work comes close to this. I don’t remember any intentional laughs in Twilight. Now it looks like her meager gift has burned itself out. Yet Rowling kept things up over the course of seven books.
Perhaps it depends on both the overall premise and the authors’s skill. Not to mention the author’s own investment in the story. Rowling once told an interviewer that she hated to kill Cedric Diggory, even though she knew it was vital to the story. Meyers, on the other hand, explains away her lapses by saying that in fiction, you can make your character do anything you want. No wonder the series ended with a thud.
Now check out Patrick Rothfuss’s wonderful The Name of The Wind. It’s only the first book in a trilogy, so I have no idea if Rothfuss can sustain things over two books, let alone three. But this first installment is so vivid and written with so much brio that I have high hopes for the sequel (it comes out next April). There's also C.S. Mark's Elfhunter trilogy, another work written with energy and passion and deep affection for the chacaters and their story. I'm on the third book of this one, and it's the best entry so far.
The question is on my mind these days because I'm reading several series, as well as preparing the second installment of my own. Does it hold up? Writers are seldom the best judges of their own work, either for good or ill. I can only say, I hope so. Because I don't have the 'secret formula'. When it comes to writing, or pretty much anything, there's no such thing. Writers can only have faith in their work, and hope that it comes out right on the page.
