30 Days of Books: Day 01

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

If a book series goes on too long I just kind of stop reading it. I think most people I know who’ve done this meme have mentioned The Wheel of Time books. I know that people I know who love the series are bothered by its length. I don’t have a real contender for this, though.

A series I wish that had gone on longer is Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths series, which is 4 books long and also has a short story set in that world in the anthology The Queen in Winter, and which may include a short story murder mystery featuring a minor character from the series, but that story hasn’t been written yet.

Doctrine of Labyrinths tells the story of two half brothers from very different backgrounds who meet as adults and discover that their backgrounds are pretty similar after all, in a number of ways. All sorts of stuff goes on in the series, including magic and a murder mystery that’s hundreds of years old as well as contemporary plots and politics and social engineering. The main thrust of the books, however, is the brothers each coming to terms with his past, his actions, and becoming human. Each, in his own way, considers himself a monster and in the final book… there’s a lot of peace making going on. Sarah Monette, like Lois McMaster Bujold and Scott Lynch, kind of follows the “what’s the worst thing I can do this character and have him survive?” school of writing. Lots of writers do that, and misery just piles up. Good writers do that and the characters change and evolve and eventually learn to deal with what’s happened and what they’ve become.

The final book, Corambis, ends on a hopeful note. There aren’t any real plot threads left hanging. But the world is so vast and interesting and the characters so interesting, the possibilities so present, that it’s easy to want to see more.

(I also really would like Scott Lynch and George R. R. Martin to get their next books out, but they’re working on them so I have to be content with that.)