Monday, May 27, 2013

The Cliffhanger Rant

This rant is brought to you by the UMTEENTH (yes I really had to use that word) book I have read that ends with a heart wrenching cliffhanger. Not your average dum dum DUM ending where you think hmm that was a cool twist. No, no this is in regards to the author leaving the reader kneeling on a kitchen floor next to the beloved main character in a pool of his blood, crying out, begging the author for mercy only to find out mercy will not be given for another 12-18 months...

Now I am a book lover (obviously) and I understand that it will lead to more books being sold bla bla bla but seriously...? You want to sell books? How about writing a book longer than 300 pages and have cliffhangers AND resolutions all in one amazingly entertaining novel and leave the sequels to the money grabbers like James Patterson... CALM DOWN... Save the hate mail, if you love him good for you. I don't read him for the same reason I don't listen to Justin Beiber, because I don't let the media dictate what I read. I don't read "popular" books simply because they are popular. I seek out and read lesser known authors who have amazing stories to tell. Look around there are so many authors out there just trying to get their stories heard and are being drowned out by mass market books.

  ........Anyways.........
My little & loud opinions about the Pattersons & Roberts of this world can wait for another rant...

I am not a gentle reader that needs to be fed a happy ending to be satisfied. If a story has to end let it be happy or sad or torturous or heart wrenching but let it end! And not FOUR YEARS after the first book was released! I guess I just wish more authors would put out an amazing full bodied novel that took a bit longer than 30 days to write and was carefully planned out and thought through so it could all fit in one amazing story, cover to cover. I don't want to have to re read a series every year to remember what happened in the last book so I can be caught up for the newest release. I want to be moved to tears or laughter or anger and I want it to be amazing and then I want it to end. Period. 

We as readers get strung along and hung out to dry year after year hoping this next book will finally give us the closure only to find out, nope it's not a TRILOGY, the series will have FIVE books released! And the crowd collectively goes... WTF?

So here is a toast to the characters we have left getting on a bus to art school, or on the kitchen floor dying in a pool of blood, or in the hallway crying over the murder of a madman, or in the mangled heap of a car wreck taking their last breathe. We love you, we miss you and we hope you will ONE DAY get your ending, happy or not.

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