Paul’s Blog

As most of my friends and family know, I’m a big fan of fantasy novels. One of my favorite and at the same time least favorite things about these books are their size and scope. Usually as a minimum these books are several hundred pages, and three books each. Many of them are a lot longer, and have more volumes. The problem comes with the waiting between them. You finish one of the books and the waiting for the next one can be as little as a year and as much as five years.

This November, I was fortunate enough to go to a book signing for George R. R. Martin at a Barnes and Noble in NYC. I picked up my signed copy of A Feast for Crows. I had been waiting for five years for this book – the fourth in his “Song of Ice and Fire” series. The last book came out in 2000 and five years is a long time to wait. I did everything I could to savor the book and take my time reading it, only to finish it even then in a week. Five years waiting, one week of reading, and now I still have, at best another year to wait for the next book. I’ll be lucky if it comes out in early 2007.

This past summer, I (along with millions of others) picked up Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. At best I’ll have to wait until summer 2007 for the next (and final) book in the series.

And the longest waiting of all, I started reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series in 1994. The first six books were a birthday gift from my mother. The series is still going…. publishing a book every two to three years. Book ten came out in October 2005, but I’ll have to wait until late 2007 at best, but more likely late 2008 for the eleventh book, A Memory of Light to come out. Twelve years of waiting and in between, every couple of years, a week or two of reading before I’m finished.

I could keep going on listing things, but I had a good year last year. Four or five books I was waiting a long while on came within one year. The downside is that there is little this year I’m looking to get. I’ve started reading a lot of older series though. Its nice to be able to read a series that is new to you, though they have been out for years. I’ll be posting my review (for those who care) of Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series which I’m almost finished soon. At least there is a large backlog of things to read that are already out.