Mercule, if you don't mind me asking, why is that? I'm asking as a writer, and as devil's advocate. I'm not saying that I don't like my trilogies as much as the next guy, but why to the exclusion of standalones? And why to the nine-book extreme?
Random counterpoints -- and again, nothing against you, nothing against what you like, this is mostly just me playing devil's advocate:
1) You ever notice how movies tend to do a better job with their characters than series do? It's because movies have two hours or so to make their point, and they have to have a character start out some way, go through changes, and then finish up in another way. The classic example would be the jaded, cynical cop who, by saving some naive person repeatedly from evil goons, gradually has his faith in humanity restored, to the point where he becomes noble, or at least idealistic, at the end.
Very few series sustain that kind of character development, for the simple reason that once you do that, you have to either a) stay with a now-fixed and non-changing character for the rest of the (now dull) series, b) get rid of the character and go through constant rotation, or c) whack the character with some outside circumstance that messes them up again ("ER" syndrome). Instead, TV series usually have the person continue to remain as they are for a long long time, or they do the "fake change" in which the cynical and jaded cop shows his humanity at the end of Every Single Episode, and we're supposed to be surprised each time.
The epic series is a bit like that TV series, in my personal and utterly subjective opinion. Very few epic series have characters that really change. I mean, Eddings didn't, Feist didn't, Jordan (in my opinion) hasn't. Jordan says that he has, but really, everyone is pretty much the people they were in book one, only harder and more jaded and more prone to glaring. Martin seems to be trying to change people, but I'd submit that he's got a bit of ER syndrome going on -- somebody overcomes their fear of trusting others, and then their new friend gets killed, and then they have to overcome a new fear, and so forth.
There are a ton of exceptions to this rule -- it is by no means a cover-all. But in a single standalone book, or even a determinedly short trilogy, you get closure. You get people changing and making those changes, and it's relatively short, and then it's done, and the changes that the characters made can be symbolic and powerful in their memory, as opposed to the somewhat muddled progression we often get in the many-book series. (Exceptions exist, I agree. Heck, there were some great character arcs in Babylon 5 and Buffy.)
2. The time factor. Unless you only start reading series once they're finished, you inevitably catch up, and then you have the situation where that series you started reading as a 14-year-old is now one you're reading as a 25-year-old, and really, it's only good because of nostalgia. I'm not gonna go read The Belgariad again. I like my fond memories of those books just fine, and I don't want to see Eddings' horrible fear of just using the word "said" laid bare, or the cardboard characters, or the "one hero who is best at everything" syndrome. I wanna remember it as being good. That's a lot easier to do once the series is done. Feist, when I tried to reread his old stuff, was a sloppy writer who was knee-deep in cliches. He got much better as the years went on, but I don't read long series in order to see the writer improve.
3. Sloppiness. I know that, again, voting with our dollars, most of us would rather go to a few movies than get a yearlong subscription to a short-fiction magazine (and as a writer who submits a lot of short fiction, that bums me out, 'cause I've only got a handful of markets left as a result). But short fiction shows me some important stuff. It shows me that there are different types of stories, and that they work at different lengths. If you have to tell a story in 5,000 words, it can't be a sweeping epic, unless you are a master craftsman who can get the most out of every word and gloss the heck out of the details. 5,000 word stories have to be short and to the point -- this character wants this, this is the problem he has is in getting that, and here is what happens as a result. 100,000 word stories (say, mystery-novel length) have to be relatively short. You can have a conspiracy, but you can't have a chapter devoted entirely to character. Every scene needs to be there for more than one reason. At 450,000 words -- the length of three 150,000 fantasy novels (each of which would be about middling length by Fat Fantasy standards), you're getting into situations where you can do one of two things: You can tell an enormous epic saga, fleshing out every detail of your world, working on a huge number of levels, assembling and doing justice to a huge number of complex characters -- or you can take that 150,000 word story and pad it with more cardboard characters and a lot of little mini-bosses that your heroes can systematically hack through on their way to the big boss.
Eddings, in my remembered-through-rose-tinted-lenses opinion, did pretty well with the first series, and padded the heck out of the second. I didn't care, even though I recognized it at the time, because I liked the characters. Jordan is padding. Martin is, I think, on the brink. If the next novel rocks, all is forgiven. If the next novel plods, then I'll be worried. A lot of the epic series that I start but don't continue with ("Rhapsody" is the most recent example) look like they've got a 150,000 word story that they're gonna tell in 450,000 words -- or perhaps both of those figures should be multiplied by three or four.
4. One area in which TV series beat movies hands-down is in the procedurals, the Law&Order or CSI-type shows where the characters are pretty much constant, and it's all about seeing a similar story with new and different plot twists each week. Mystery novels do really well at this kind of thing, but I haven't seen a "procedural" fantasy series, where the characters take out a different bad guy in each book, and the characters are all developed and pretty much stay the same, but in a good way. If anybody has examples that they feel illustrate evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see/read 'em. There are times when I don't want an epic sweeping plot, but I'd love to read Yet Another Novel where the king's trusted secret team goes out to thwart Yet Another plot against him. I'd say that good Media Fiction approaches this level -- Peter David does a good job of recognizing the limitations of his genre (I'm writing about established characters that I can't change) and going with it as far as he can.
Anyway -- no offense intended. I obviously read these a fair amount, too. But I also try to read the standalones, and I don't find one arbitrarily better than the other, and I'd be interested in having a discussion about why people don't want to read a book that is meant to be self-contained.
Random counterpoints -- and again, nothing against you, nothing against what you like, this is mostly just me playing devil's advocate:
1) You ever notice how movies tend to do a better job with their characters than series do? It's because movies have two hours or so to make their point, and they have to have a character start out some way, go through changes, and then finish up in another way. The classic example would be the jaded, cynical cop who, by saving some naive person repeatedly from evil goons, gradually has his faith in humanity restored, to the point where he becomes noble, or at least idealistic, at the end.
Very few series sustain that kind of character development, for the simple reason that once you do that, you have to either a) stay with a now-fixed and non-changing character for the rest of the (now dull) series, b) get rid of the character and go through constant rotation, or c) whack the character with some outside circumstance that messes them up again ("ER" syndrome). Instead, TV series usually have the person continue to remain as they are for a long long time, or they do the "fake change" in which the cynical and jaded cop shows his humanity at the end of Every Single Episode, and we're supposed to be surprised each time.
The epic series is a bit like that TV series, in my personal and utterly subjective opinion. Very few epic series have characters that really change. I mean, Eddings didn't, Feist didn't, Jordan (in my opinion) hasn't. Jordan says that he has, but really, everyone is pretty much the people they were in book one, only harder and more jaded and more prone to glaring. Martin seems to be trying to change people, but I'd submit that he's got a bit of ER syndrome going on -- somebody overcomes their fear of trusting others, and then their new friend gets killed, and then they have to overcome a new fear, and so forth.
There are a ton of exceptions to this rule -- it is by no means a cover-all. But in a single standalone book, or even a determinedly short trilogy, you get closure. You get people changing and making those changes, and it's relatively short, and then it's done, and the changes that the characters made can be symbolic and powerful in their memory, as opposed to the somewhat muddled progression we often get in the many-book series. (Exceptions exist, I agree. Heck, there were some great character arcs in Babylon 5 and Buffy.)
2. The time factor. Unless you only start reading series once they're finished, you inevitably catch up, and then you have the situation where that series you started reading as a 14-year-old is now one you're reading as a 25-year-old, and really, it's only good because of nostalgia. I'm not gonna go read The Belgariad again. I like my fond memories of those books just fine, and I don't want to see Eddings' horrible fear of just using the word "said" laid bare, or the cardboard characters, or the "one hero who is best at everything" syndrome. I wanna remember it as being good. That's a lot easier to do once the series is done. Feist, when I tried to reread his old stuff, was a sloppy writer who was knee-deep in cliches. He got much better as the years went on, but I don't read long series in order to see the writer improve.
3. Sloppiness. I know that, again, voting with our dollars, most of us would rather go to a few movies than get a yearlong subscription to a short-fiction magazine (and as a writer who submits a lot of short fiction, that bums me out, 'cause I've only got a handful of markets left as a result). But short fiction shows me some important stuff. It shows me that there are different types of stories, and that they work at different lengths. If you have to tell a story in 5,000 words, it can't be a sweeping epic, unless you are a master craftsman who can get the most out of every word and gloss the heck out of the details. 5,000 word stories have to be short and to the point -- this character wants this, this is the problem he has is in getting that, and here is what happens as a result. 100,000 word stories (say, mystery-novel length) have to be relatively short. You can have a conspiracy, but you can't have a chapter devoted entirely to character. Every scene needs to be there for more than one reason. At 450,000 words -- the length of three 150,000 fantasy novels (each of which would be about middling length by Fat Fantasy standards), you're getting into situations where you can do one of two things: You can tell an enormous epic saga, fleshing out every detail of your world, working on a huge number of levels, assembling and doing justice to a huge number of complex characters -- or you can take that 150,000 word story and pad it with more cardboard characters and a lot of little mini-bosses that your heroes can systematically hack through on their way to the big boss.
Eddings, in my remembered-through-rose-tinted-lenses opinion, did pretty well with the first series, and padded the heck out of the second. I didn't care, even though I recognized it at the time, because I liked the characters. Jordan is padding. Martin is, I think, on the brink. If the next novel rocks, all is forgiven. If the next novel plods, then I'll be worried. A lot of the epic series that I start but don't continue with ("Rhapsody" is the most recent example) look like they've got a 150,000 word story that they're gonna tell in 450,000 words -- or perhaps both of those figures should be multiplied by three or four.
4. One area in which TV series beat movies hands-down is in the procedurals, the Law&Order or CSI-type shows where the characters are pretty much constant, and it's all about seeing a similar story with new and different plot twists each week. Mystery novels do really well at this kind of thing, but I haven't seen a "procedural" fantasy series, where the characters take out a different bad guy in each book, and the characters are all developed and pretty much stay the same, but in a good way. If anybody has examples that they feel illustrate evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see/read 'em. There are times when I don't want an epic sweeping plot, but I'd love to read Yet Another Novel where the king's trusted secret team goes out to thwart Yet Another plot against him. I'd say that good Media Fiction approaches this level -- Peter David does a good job of recognizing the limitations of his genre (I'm writing about established characters that I can't change) and going with it as far as he can.
Anyway -- no offense intended. I obviously read these a fair amount, too. But I also try to read the standalones, and I don't find one arbitrarily better than the other, and I'd be interested in having a discussion about why people don't want to read a book that is meant to be self-contained.
