The Importance of a Conclusion

Imagine that you've finished reading the second to last book in a series and it ends on a cliffhanger. You inwardly groan when you learn the final book won't come out for twelve months. And then it's delayed further, making it a full 17 month wait time. The book comes out and you manage to get it straight away. Not caring if you'll be up late reading, you open the book. And then...

It falls flat. Quickly. By page 85 you realize it just isn't worth the effort and decide that while you'll read it some day, you are in no hurry and put the book down.

This happened with Karen Marie Moning's final book of the Fever series, Shadowfever. Usually I refrain from mentioning the books I criticize, but this is an example that I cannot in good judgement let slide by, especially as I sung KMM's praises earlier.

Building up events, drama and tension in a series to its breaking point is no easy feat, but if an author doesn't write a satisfactory conclusion to a series, he or she will lose readers; after all, if you wish to remain a successful writer, you must keep reader loyalty and their willingness to refer titles to their friends. (A great example of this is Melanie Rawn's unfinished Exile series. It's been more than ten years and the series still remains unfinished. This destroyed her fan base and reputation.)

For KMM, she did everything you're not supposed to do: a slow beginning, pointless scenes, lack of tension, and even an annoying point of view style (Dani's). In the 85 pages I managed to read, the main character walked a little, had a weird dream and did a lot of talking with a man she thinks killed her sister. Compare this to the previous four pageturner books, and you begin to wonder what happened.

The most noticeable thing is the size; the book was nearly twice the length of the other four books. Now, a bigger book doesn't necessary mean it's boring (Sherrilyn Kenyon's Acheron was twice the size of her other books and I couldn't put it down). The problem with Shadowfever is that it suffered from a lack of editing. There were clearly sections that should've been cut, but weren't.

Another problem was its tension and pace. All of the four previous books had event after event, with lots of tension thrown in, and kept you turning the pages. This was not the case for Shadowfever. It's as if the editors knew everyone would buy the book regardless of editing, and left it as is. Or that the book was written in such a hurry that no time was left to put it aside for a month or so and go back to it and revise. Editing is a pain to complete, but it is one of the most important steps in writing and shouldn't be overlooked.

Thirdly, don't introduce an annoying point of view. In Shadowfever's case, it was for a character called Dani. The writing was written in overly-tough-teeanger-slang that drives you crazy, especially the overuse and abuse of the word "feck." Throw in some words that are supposed to make the character appear to be Irish (I was unconvinced), and it's hard to read more than a page at a time for this POV.

So if you're going to write a series, and create enormous obstacles to overcome, make sure you know how to tie it all up. Nothing can irritate or anger readers more than a poorly written conclusion. If I'm going to spend hours and hours reading through a series, it had better be worth it by the end.