The Reading Room

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9:04 AM

I completed the third book, and I feel cheated. The ending doesn't end anything, the book just starts a lot of storylines and barely closes anything. A book published in multiple volumes shouldn't do that. Sapkowski should have just put it in one big volume if he wanted to write a long story.

I know that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince also does that, with a cliffhanger where four Horcruxes still need to be destroyed, but JKR had the excuse that she was already the single most famous living writer of the world when she wrote that, so we all trusted her that she'll be able to deliver a satisfying seventh book, even if that seems impossible with four Horcruxes.

3 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

12:04 PM

@b_jonas Well, it's a continuous story. Of course you won't know how it ends before reading the other 4.

I fail to see how that's different from other series published in multiple volumes. Sure, Harry Potter might be in so much different that it's usually a single coherent adventure over the course of a full school year. But even that wasn't the case anymore for the last books as you realize yourself. It probably only became apparent later on to Ms. Rowling herself that there would be an overarching plot across the entire thing, which explains the loose connectivity a little more.

We don't even have to look further than fantasy's goto example LotR for series entirely incomplete after reading only 1 or 2 books..

Bookworm

12:22 PM

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b_jonas

1:02 PM

@NapoleonWilson But Tolkien regarded the book a six-parter that he published all at the same time, and was split to three volumes in some editions only for physical convenience. The Witcher series of books were published separately in different years and sold separately from the start, just like the books in ASOIAF or Harry Potter or Dune. In the latter sort of books, I expect each book to have a decent ending that wraps up at least some of the storyline.

Bookworm

1:18 PM

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