Comments | celestineangel: [Books] Well there you go.

celestineangel

[Books] Well there you go.

Dec 23, 2009 11:21

Now that I have my brain back, I can say a little more about The Prodigal Mage, but I'm not in full review mode yet.

Mostly, it's just that now I've finished it, and The Reluctant Mage isn't out yet, I've moved on back to Robin D. Owens' The Summoning books, with the third one, Protector of the FlightAnd immediately, the difference is noticeable. ( Read more... )

reading, robin d owens, karen miller, authors, books

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raeraesama December 23 2009, 17:49:23 UTC

Very interesting read and while I haven't read either series yet, I do know what you're talking about. The Dresden Files are rather like your The Summoning series. Formulaic, you know Harry will come through fine(although his friends don't always). Entertaining, but not mind-engaging.

As for the out-of-print, middle books don't do well . One of the authors I watch on LJ had her second book go out of print because it didn't do well enought--right after the conclusion of the series came out.

celestineangel December 23 2009, 18:38:42 UTC

As for the out-of-print, middle books don't do well.On one hand, I can get why, considering it all depends on how prolific an author can be as to how fast they put books out. Not everyone is Jacqueline Carey, who can turn out a new book once a year like clockwork. And so people might lose track of the series until the end of it ( ... )

raeraesama December 23 2009, 19:14:42 UTC

It doesn't make sense to me either. The sad thing is, the second book for the Doctrine of the Labyrinth book is my favorite.

Apparently series are problematic. Publishers like series. Bookstores don't. Unless you're the hottest seller, it's kind of difficult to keep all the books in stock, especially with how long you have to wait for the next one. Lots of people pick up a book, see it's the 2nd or 3rd in a series and put it back because the first one isn't on the shelf. Some like Ace seem to think that magically removing the numbers from series will help sales of middle books, but I think it's actually more detrimental... >>;

celestineangel December 23 2009, 19:24:36 UTC

Apparently Luna thinks so too, as the cover of Protector of the Flight just says "The Summoning continues..." So, you know it's part of a series, but you don't know which one, and there's no list in the front of the book to tell you. Or even what the titles of the others are so you'll know which one is the first. That's why it's taken me this long to pick up this series in the first place, because I could never tell which was first. Finally, I bought the second, realized it was the second, and purchased the first off Amazon. Even then, it took me a while to read through my backlog enough to decide to read Guardian of Honor, and apparently since then the whole series has disappeared off the shelves ( ... )

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