It was another long day— I’m still having a great time with this new group of kids, mind you, but seven classes in a row is gonna take a toll– and I want to play video games. So I’m just going to throw a quick book question at everyone and take the night off.
If you pick up Book Three of a trilogy, and it’s significantly shorter– like, a couple hundred pages shorter– than Book One and Book Two, do you feel like that’s a sign that the author has lost interest in the story? Asking because that actually happened today and my reaction upon seeing the book was “Dude, are you serious?”
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About half of those short last books are clearly “contractural obligation volumes”. The other half was that the author finished the story, and it was only split into a trilogy because the publisher insisted (“We are not publishing a 500 page 2nd book after a 325 page first book”). I’ve read several where the short book was “complete the character arc” and then the author starts another series about a different character from the first series, or writes individual novels about other characters.
My phrasing was going to be more “So you couldn’t just wrap it up in two books?” because the contract bit didn’t occur to me, but I agree with FlyingToaster.
Conversely, when books balloon in size as a series continues, I wonder if the author has lost control of the narrative or the editor has lost interest in the project or both. Or contractual pressures are a factor.