Series vs stories
Steven Brust (one of my favourite authors ever, if we're keeping track) recently had his new novel Dzur reviewed over on BoingBoing (I've not read it yet; I own all of his other stuff in multi-volume collections, so I'm going to get this one out of the library and then buy it later, and hey, he's now (justly) a New York Times bestselling author, so I hope my delay won't hurt him too badly...), and as good as the review is, there's a bit that makes me think:
Instead of the denatured extruded fantasy product that you normally find in ten-book series of fat, meandering novels, Dzur manages to stay fresh and snappy and terribly likable, even after all these volumes.
Doctorow is right, in my opinion (and it helps that Brust's novels don't have huge, swollen page counts), but there's a more interesting point hidden in there, I think. Yes, technically all the Vlad novels are one story, but the difference between them and something like Robert Jordan or even George RR Martin's work is that it's not the literary equivalent of "decompressed storytelling" (the often misused technique currently intermittantly ruining comic books). It's not actually one huge story spread out over many books, it's many books about the same character, with many stories, some over-arching, some not. It's like the difference between something like the Sopranos and something like House (the season premiere of which was fantastic, by the way). There's a reason the Vlad books don't say on the cover "Book x of y of the blahblahblah series," the same way Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels* don't. The Vlad Taltos novels are not detective fiction, but there's a sort of anaolgy there; you just need to know it's another Spenser novel, and there will be some recurring plotlines but also a complete novel. It's not just part of a story, but it's not an isolated work either.
*(Steven Brust: "I adore the early Spenser novels. Early Autumn is my favorite. I think Teckla was the first book I wrote after getting into Robert B. Parker, and I think it shows." The difference is, Brust has Vlad's equivalent of Susan Silverman leaving town hurt more, because it's not resolved nearly as quickly or neatly, or possibly at all. Also, Brust describes the Vlad books as "a world created by Fritz Leiber, tropes created by Michael Moorcock, a voice stolen from Dashiel Hammet, and a style taken from Roger Zelazny," which is a terribly great way to describe them, I think.)
Instead of the denatured extruded fantasy product that you normally find in ten-book series of fat, meandering novels, Dzur manages to stay fresh and snappy and terribly likable, even after all these volumes.
Doctorow is right, in my opinion (and it helps that Brust's novels don't have huge, swollen page counts), but there's a more interesting point hidden in there, I think. Yes, technically all the Vlad novels are one story, but the difference between them and something like Robert Jordan or even George RR Martin's work is that it's not the literary equivalent of "decompressed storytelling" (the often misused technique currently intermittantly ruining comic books). It's not actually one huge story spread out over many books, it's many books about the same character, with many stories, some over-arching, some not. It's like the difference between something like the Sopranos and something like House (the season premiere of which was fantastic, by the way). There's a reason the Vlad books don't say on the cover "Book x of y of the blahblahblah series," the same way Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels* don't. The Vlad Taltos novels are not detective fiction, but there's a sort of anaolgy there; you just need to know it's another Spenser novel, and there will be some recurring plotlines but also a complete novel. It's not just part of a story, but it's not an isolated work either.
*(Steven Brust: "I adore the early Spenser novels. Early Autumn is my favorite. I think Teckla was the first book I wrote after getting into Robert B. Parker, and I think it shows." The difference is, Brust has Vlad's equivalent of Susan Silverman leaving town hurt more, because it's not resolved nearly as quickly or neatly, or possibly at all. Also, Brust describes the Vlad books as "a world created by Fritz Leiber, tropes created by Michael Moorcock, a voice stolen from Dashiel Hammet, and a style taken from Roger Zelazny," which is a terribly great way to describe them, I think.)
