Happy Monday!

It’s time for more Fantasy with Friends: as always, the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantasy series:

Do you currently prefer standalone fantasies or series? Is there a certain number of books that seems like “too much,” whether that means the series feels intimidating to start or just that the author might need to move on to something else? Is there a point at which you worry that a series is just a “cash grab?”

At the moment, I definitely lean toward standalones, or loosely-connected series which don’t require that you grab the next book right away in order to find out how the story ends. There’s something very satisfying about knowing the story has reached a happy-ever-after (or miserable-ever-after, though I’m not so keen on that) or at least a happy/miserable-for-now. And you don’t have to worry whether the remainder of the series will ever come out at all, or that the series will get cancelled before it all comes out.

That said, there are some amazing series out there, and authors I absolutely trust with that — I’ve probably mentioned Marie Brennan’s Lady Isabella Trent books a few times so far, but she’s definitely one example where I was thrilled to hang on and wait for the next instalment, eagerly reading each as it came out, and I’d trust her for the same now. I had a similar feeling about Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde books, too. I think it comes down to a certain amount of trust that the story’s going somewhere and that there’s a plan to get there.

There are some series where I find myself having my doubts and finding the sheer number of volumes daunting, though I don’t want to go as far as calling anything a “cash grab”. Seanan McGuire’s books seem to spawn apparently-infinite series, for example. I’m aware that she has a game plan for Toby Daye, for instance, but… I don’t know. It is definitely getting to daunting lengths, and the degree to which hardcore fans breathlessly greet each new story does make me a little worried it’s become too big for McGuire to wrap up.

As far as “cash grabs” go… well, authors need to make money, they have bills to pay, etc, and ongoing series with enthusiastic followings are a good way of guaranteeing a certain amount coming in, the induction of new fans, and the sales of backlist books. Authors have to be businesspeople because we don’t have worldwide universal basic incomes. If an author is looking at a series thinking “the books have to keep coming”, no shade for that except inasfar I think it’s possible for the world/story to end up suffering for it, and that would be a shame… and, well, my ability and desire to follow a series like that at the moment are somewhat limited, so I’m not the ideal audience.

There have been times in the past where I was absolutely into epic series, so it might happen again in time. At the moment I’m even reading Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, which is coming out in translation a volume at a time. What helps there is that I know the story is finished, and it’s just waiting on translation… so it’s already finite. Same goes for a lot of the danmei I’ve picked up lately (though also they’re often just four volumes or so, so not too intimidating).

So in conclusion: mostly standalones or at least short/loosely connected series for me at the moment, but I can’t say I won’t get into an epic sometime in the future.