I like Shakespeare but I can't dance to it.
Sorry, badly mis-quoting the Dead Poet's society there.
I've been reading Trudi Canavan's 'Magician's Guild' of late and really struggling with it. I had a fantasy fad back in the summer and wanted to read some good old fashioned sword and sorcery. I'd seen Canavan's novels in the bookshop some time before and figured it was as good a place to start as any.
Now, I've mentioned several times before that I invariably find adult fantasy novels dissapointing. This, sadly was no exception. I remember reading once about the nine-act story structure and how the plotlines of most high-grossing films tend to follow it. I was able to apply the graph to most stories I've ever enjoyed and whilst I'm not suggesting that any story be written to some sort of formula, I tend to find stories that look like this very enjoyable:
The Magician's Guild, if graphed would look more like this:
Now this brings me back to something I've mentioned before on my LJ. The Magician's Guild is the first part in the seemingly inevitable trilogy and as such may only represent the first part of the top graph. We are introduced to the world as it is, the status quo. Check. Something bad happens that threatens that status quo. Check. Our hero is reluctant at first but quickly finds it impossible not to become involved in events due to a push force and a pull force. Check. Bad things start happening to our hero. Check.
Okay, the book seems to stop there, about a third of the way along the graph just as our heroine starts on the long downward slope to total hopelessness. Unfortunately it stops about a third of the way through the novel too. For the rest of the book, our heroine suffers some minor inconveniences whilst trying to learn magic without a teacher. And nothing much really happens. It's excruciatingly dull.
Now the other two books may continue. Things may continue to go badly wrong for our heroine before she starts to fight back and eventually triumph over the big, bad but I've been bored so thoroughly by the first book that I've absolutely no interest in finding out. If the other two books are as exciting as they should be then I can't help feeling that some judicious editing could have chopped the whole thing down into a single, pacey and much more enjoyable story and not just the deliberatley and cynically protracted bore-fest that it actually is.
Of course publishers aren't about to do that. Their target demographic have proven time and time again that they are willing to buy trilogies, so why sell a book once when you can pad it out and sell it three times? Or even five, or ten?
I think I should make it a personal rule from now on, never to read a book unless it was written with the intention of being a single entity. If I see the word trilogy, cycle or anything else on the cover then I shall steer well clear.
Wayne
I've been reading Trudi Canavan's 'Magician's Guild' of late and really struggling with it. I had a fantasy fad back in the summer and wanted to read some good old fashioned sword and sorcery. I'd seen Canavan's novels in the bookshop some time before and figured it was as good a place to start as any.
Now, I've mentioned several times before that I invariably find adult fantasy novels dissapointing. This, sadly was no exception. I remember reading once about the nine-act story structure and how the plotlines of most high-grossing films tend to follow it. I was able to apply the graph to most stories I've ever enjoyed and whilst I'm not suggesting that any story be written to some sort of formula, I tend to find stories that look like this very enjoyable:
The Magician's Guild, if graphed would look more like this:
Now this brings me back to something I've mentioned before on my LJ. The Magician's Guild is the first part in the seemingly inevitable trilogy and as such may only represent the first part of the top graph. We are introduced to the world as it is, the status quo. Check. Something bad happens that threatens that status quo. Check. Our hero is reluctant at first but quickly finds it impossible not to become involved in events due to a push force and a pull force. Check. Bad things start happening to our hero. Check.
Okay, the book seems to stop there, about a third of the way along the graph just as our heroine starts on the long downward slope to total hopelessness. Unfortunately it stops about a third of the way through the novel too. For the rest of the book, our heroine suffers some minor inconveniences whilst trying to learn magic without a teacher. And nothing much really happens. It's excruciatingly dull.
Now the other two books may continue. Things may continue to go badly wrong for our heroine before she starts to fight back and eventually triumph over the big, bad but I've been bored so thoroughly by the first book that I've absolutely no interest in finding out. If the other two books are as exciting as they should be then I can't help feeling that some judicious editing could have chopped the whole thing down into a single, pacey and much more enjoyable story and not just the deliberatley and cynically protracted bore-fest that it actually is.
Of course publishers aren't about to do that. Their target demographic have proven time and time again that they are willing to buy trilogies, so why sell a book once when you can pad it out and sell it three times? Or even five, or ten?
I think I should make it a personal rule from now on, never to read a book unless it was written with the intention of being a single entity. If I see the word trilogy, cycle or anything else on the cover then I shall steer well clear.
Wayne