A note to publishers

Okay, book series are all the rage.  It’s actually hard — at least in the Fantasy/SF realm — to find a one-off book any more.  Readers like it (more enjoyment of vested characters), it makes sense for publishers (known audiences), and so on and so forth.

That having been said — publishers, please identify books that are actually part of a series.  Not just for the OCD types like myself and Margie who like to start series with Book #1, but for folks who want to at least have a clue that There’s Backstory You Might Not Be Aware Of.

Case in point:

A few months back, I picked up a copy of Cally’s War by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane.  I’ll confess that I was initially attracted to the book by the best cheesecake cover since the original paperback release of Friday,  Add to that an attraction to kick-ass warrior women and an interesting looking back cover text, and it was worth picking up as a reserve paperback for when things got slow. 

I did do my normal due diligence.  It was all off on display by its lonesome, so I couldn’t easily look to see if there were other similar books, or books with the same back cover clues, as this one.  There was no indication that the book was part of a series.  Clearly there was backstory to the situation — but that’s true for any SF novel.  But there was no “Part 5 of the Posleen Series” or “From the Best-Selling Author of Cally’s Basic Training” or “Another installment of the greatest military fiction series of all time” or anything like that.

Nor was there, in the beginning of the book, any sort of “What has gone before.”  The backstory was brushed away with some in media res bits, and never really came out.  There were hints.  There were signs.  And there was much confusion on my part as I tried to figure out who was who and who worked for whom and who the various groups were and which were the white hats and which were the black hats and which were the gray hats and …

Now, some of this is the fault of the authors and/or editors.  But really, by the time I was two-thirds of the way through the book, I was still lost in some of the setting, still wondering if I was being particularly dim.

Finally, close to being done, I looked in the front of the book in the “Other books by” section.  And, yes, the books seemed to be clumped, and Cally’s War was fifth in one of those clumps — but the clump didn’t have a series name over it, the books weren’t numbered on the list, and the titles didn’t really relate solidly to each other.

At last, I made it to a Buns & Noodle and looked at the first book on the list, fairly certain but not confirmed in my suspicion that I was in the middle of a series.  And, yes, looking at the back cover synopsis, I could see that I had just read a book some volumes downstream from the beginning of the series.

For the record:  Decent enough book, interesting setting, moderately enjoyable characters and situations, but significant writing dings for not assuming that the person picking the volume up isn’t a first-time reader.

Indeed, I once read in the world of comics that a number of writers and editors work with the assumption, “This may be the first issue of X that someone has ever bought.”  Some don’t.  That’s why more comics are giving “What has gone on before” synopses at the beginning of each issue (and in the intros of trade paperbacks), rather than recap exposition in the story itself.  Regardless, it’s a good practice.

So … I give a fair thumbs-up to John Ringo’s Posleen War series (and bless Amazon, at least, for so identifying it, even the the books themselves don’t), currently up to 9 books (of which Cally’s War is #5).  I just finished the first in the series, A Hymn Before Battle, and enjoyed it, too.

But to Baen Books and editors and cover designers throughout the industry:  I do wish I’d known to read it first.