The ending not written

Well as I thought, I was not able to really get any writing done this week. The most I was able to do was rewrite the end of the last chapter a little bit to better set up the following one. I also made the scene list for the next chapter and spent some time thinking about it.

Hopefully towards the end of this week I will be able to get back into it and finish the first draft during this upcoming holiday. Since I’ll be traveling the first week there will probably not be as much output as I would like there to be.

I was able to read four novels this week, all by Elizabeth Moon. You might wonder why I have so much time to read and not write. The fact is that I read at around 750 words per minute and you can read anywhere. Most of my reading takes place while I commute to work and other places. It is a lot easier to read for a few minutes than to write as writing requires a decent chunk of time and a place to sit down and type.

I finished the next three books in the series and a prequel and have a few thoughts on the matter. I will try to not put spoilers in this semi-review but you will learn a little bit about the story.

For the first series my biggest gripe has to do with how the story plays out. Perhaps we are all spoiled by George R R Martin’s series “A song of Ice and Fire” and other more contemporary fantasy series where the good guys don’t always win, some of them may die and it is not smooth sailing for the heroes of the story, if you can figure out who it is.

In Elizabeth Moon’s Legacy of Paksenarrion, none of the main characters ever feel like they are ever in any danger. They are all doing things and have the occasional setback but you never feel that any of them are about to get killed off. Only one semi-main character has died so far, and she was not one of the main characters and her death just made one of the main characters become even more over-powered.

Another thing that annoys me about series is that every one of the main characters is “God-touched.” You would think I would expect this in a series that is a sequel to a trilogy of a paladin becoming a paladin but in the original series, Paksenarrion did not become a paladin until the last book (as far as I can remember). Even after becoming a paladin, she still went through hell, literally, to be a paladin. In this new series every one of the main characters either has a direct connection to a god, has overpowered magical powers that no one can stand against or is a super good fighter. None of them are normal people. I get that you need for a main character to stand out from the rest but it’s still nice if they have to work for it. They can’t be awesome at everything.

The last part that annoys me is that all the novels are the exact same length. It’s understandable that a publisher wants the books in a series to all be the same length but this leads to an obvious inflation of words and scenes that aren’t always needed just to fill out the pages and you can feel it, especially in the fourth book where, I presume, the author is saving all the good stuff for the final book in the series, which sadly I do not have at this moment.

The last novel I read, which is kind of a prequel to all the novels was actually the one that got my curiosity going as it is similar to the type of story I am writing. My main gripe with the novel is the opposite to the other novels, the author crammed too much into one novel. The main part of the novel is very detailed with the life of the main hero which is fine. Moon’s world building is excellent as always and her world has an excellent mythology and history attached to it. It is obvious though that she wanted the whole story in one book and the story was too long so the last fifty pages is a lot of summary and brushing over, which is a lot easier than sitting down and writing out another book which would have done so much more for the story.

All her novels are excellent though if you like a good fantasy or sci-fi read and I suggest them to anyone who hasn’t read her work yet. I learned a lot from reading them and I hope to apply the lessons learned on what to do and what not to do when I rewrite my first draft.