Friday, July 29, 2011

Blow up your world

So the reading has gotten really good for me lately. I'm deeply entrenched in the Karen Marie Moning Fae series. (I'm getting to the RR Martin books, promise, Molly). And while it drives me batty that Moning ends every book on a cliff hanger, she did something between book number three and book number four that has made me a serious fan.

She blew up her world. She didn't change the rules, or take the heroine in a different character arc, she simply changed the world, at the perfect time and in a way I truly didn't see coming. It's something I wish Laurell K. Hamilton had done with the Anita Blake series, because I loved that character and didn't buy into where she took Anita, but had she changed the world, she could have kept the books interesting.

But these fae books, I'm completely on board now. Excited to see what the author does next, because she's proved that anything could and will happen and that's pretty exciting. RR Martin does that with the Throne series. He proved with book one that anyone could die, at any time, and with that, there is a sense of unpredictability to it.

Now I'm thinking how can I blow up my own fictional world, because there is no better way to keep a series fresh.

3 comments:

Karen Whiddon said...

Sinead, I haven't read Moning, so can you explain in a bit more detail what you mean by "she blew up her world?" I write a long series for HQ and am interested in this possibility

Eileen said...

How do you blow up a world without changing the rules?

What Martin did was very intense. And yet as I read on in the series, I realized it was completely necessary.

Anonymous said...

Hey Karen, I didn't want to put any spoilers in the post, but I'll spoil here in the comments.
Spoiler Alert!!

In the first three books, Moning set the book in Dublin where fae (all evil) are entering out world in greater and greater numbers. On Halloween in the third book, the walls between the fairy world and ours have to be re-inforced because they are crumbling and what she does, is have the walls crumble and a world where the fae overrule our world and essentially rule Dublin and so the last two books(I assume, as I'm half way through number 4) become about how to take our world back.

But in the process billions die and the book takes on an apocalyptic feel, and the world changes, but none of the fae rules change.

And I truly did not see it coming.

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