Fanfiction
I still remember my great disappointment in sequels written by sort of professional writers to "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen and "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. I was so let down by them that i decided then never to buy and read sequels that weren't written by authors of original works. They are simply below the mark. It's difficult for writers to repeat the success of their own books, but to write sequels to somebody else's works seems like a futile idea. The only book that I think was a good homage to a classic novel was "Mrs. De Winter" by Susan Hill. It' still doesn't equal the original, but it's a really good book on its own merits.
Therefore the addiction to fanfiction caught me quite by surprise, something I wouldn't have predicted based on my previous reading experience. The first fanfic story I've ever read was recommended to me on True Blood forum and was a follow-up of Charlaine Harris's 8 novel about Sookie Stackhouse "From Dead to Worse". I don't remember exactly the title of this fanfic story, because after this first story I've read a great abundance of those follow-up stories. The funny thing is that the main reason why I started reading those stories was that I had finished reading all the SVM novels and stories written by Harris and the next novel was to be published in a few month's time, so to ease the waiting time for book 9 I started reading stories that were a variety of ideas what could happen in book 9. When this book was finally published in May 2009 it was the biggest disappointment of the whole book series. It didn't meet my expectations that were fuelled and heightened by fanfiction stuff I had read. I didn't expect of course that her book would be anything like the fanfiction stuff I had read. I expected a book that would logically follow the plots from book 8 and that characters in book 9 would be connected emotionally and logically with the previously published books in Sookie Stackhouse series. What I found in this book were plenty of illogical flaws and suddenly unlikable protagonists. The book was aiming at being darker from its predecessors, but what it achieves is the sense of discontinuity with the previous installments of this book series.
Therefore the addiction to fanfiction caught me quite by surprise, something I wouldn't have predicted based on my previous reading experience. The first fanfic story I've ever read was recommended to me on True Blood forum and was a follow-up of Charlaine Harris's 8 novel about Sookie Stackhouse "From Dead to Worse". I don't remember exactly the title of this fanfic story, because after this first story I've read a great abundance of those follow-up stories. The funny thing is that the main reason why I started reading those stories was that I had finished reading all the SVM novels and stories written by Harris and the next novel was to be published in a few month's time, so to ease the waiting time for book 9 I started reading stories that were a variety of ideas what could happen in book 9. When this book was finally published in May 2009 it was the biggest disappointment of the whole book series. It didn't meet my expectations that were fuelled and heightened by fanfiction stuff I had read. I didn't expect of course that her book would be anything like the fanfiction stuff I had read. I expected a book that would logically follow the plots from book 8 and that characters in book 9 would be connected emotionally and logically with the previously published books in Sookie Stackhouse series. What I found in this book were plenty of illogical flaws and suddenly unlikable protagonists. The book was aiming at being darker from its predecessors, but what it achieves is the sense of discontinuity with the previous installments of this book series.