Saturday
Dec192009
Thoughts on Trilogies
Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 08:16PM
I'll admit, I started to mentally write this post when I was partway through CITY OF GLASS, Cassandra Clare's third installment of the Mortal Instruments series. After I finished the book, my thoughts kind of changed, but I'll go through it all anyway.
There seem to be three kinds of trilogies. One, where all three books are virtually standalone, and have a building background connection without being repetitive or stalled. Despite that it is a longer series, Harry Potter is a great example. Each book has it's own problems and issues, and not every book has a major showdown with Voldemort, because there are other things to deal with.
The second kind is the try, try, succeed model. These trilogies are more common and often more disappointing, because they set up all the problems in the first novel, and the characters simply don't succeed. They try again in the second (which tends to be very repetitive), and succeed in the third. This makes the second novel virtually a throwaway, the first exciting, and the third fantastic, but I hate the idea of a second novel that really serves no purpose other than to fill space and delay gratification.
The Mortal Instruments series was definitely the latter; the second novel was totally missable, mostly because the real central conflict between the characters was that at the end of the first book, *SPOILER*, was that the leads thought they were brother and sister, and not only did I not believe it AT ALL, but the characters didn't even seem to believe it. It made me feel like flipping through pages until they realized they weren't.
Really, I think that writers should make a strong effort to make every book virtually stand alone, with an extra sense of belonging to read the whole series. It seems like sloppy writing, and I hope I never find myself guilty of it.
However, both to Clare's credit and to totally negate my previous statement, damn, was that finale worth it. CITY OF GLASS was a tremendous end to the series and a hell of a book, and it made the lack of believable conflict totally worth it.
So really, I don't know what I think. Maybe it's just that yes, storytelling is separate from WRITING and can often trump it, especially because I don't really like the books where writing trumps storytelling (think literary fiction). In a trilogy, you can blunder and bluster your way through the first two books (not that I really think Clare did that, the brother/sister thing was my only complaint) and still rock all three if you have a compelling story. That's how Stephanie Meyer got through.
Thoughts?
There seem to be three kinds of trilogies. One, where all three books are virtually standalone, and have a building background connection without being repetitive or stalled. Despite that it is a longer series, Harry Potter is a great example. Each book has it's own problems and issues, and not every book has a major showdown with Voldemort, because there are other things to deal with.
The second kind is the try, try, succeed model. These trilogies are more common and often more disappointing, because they set up all the problems in the first novel, and the characters simply don't succeed. They try again in the second (which tends to be very repetitive), and succeed in the third. This makes the second novel virtually a throwaway, the first exciting, and the third fantastic, but I hate the idea of a second novel that really serves no purpose other than to fill space and delay gratification.
The Mortal Instruments series was definitely the latter; the second novel was totally missable, mostly because the real central conflict between the characters was that at the end of the first book, *SPOILER*, was that the leads thought they were brother and sister, and not only did I not believe it AT ALL, but the characters didn't even seem to believe it. It made me feel like flipping through pages until they realized they weren't.
Really, I think that writers should make a strong effort to make every book virtually stand alone, with an extra sense of belonging to read the whole series. It seems like sloppy writing, and I hope I never find myself guilty of it.
However, both to Clare's credit and to totally negate my previous statement, damn, was that finale worth it. CITY OF GLASS was a tremendous end to the series and a hell of a book, and it made the lack of believable conflict totally worth it.
So really, I don't know what I think. Maybe it's just that yes, storytelling is separate from WRITING and can often trump it, especially because I don't really like the books where writing trumps storytelling (think literary fiction). In a trilogy, you can blunder and bluster your way through the first two books (not that I really think Clare did that, the brother/sister thing was my only complaint) and still rock all three if you have a compelling story. That's how Stephanie Meyer got through.
Thoughts?
Reader Comments