Would it Kill Ya?

[subplotkudzu]

Got 50 pages into Jack McDevitt's "Omega", happy as a clam to have discovered a sequel to "Engines of God" - which I read 6 years ago and had a large impact on my Star Trek game. 50 pages in and I toss it aside, realizing that this is not the sequel to "Engines". It's the sequel to "Chindi". That wasn't the sequel to "Engines" either - it was the sequel to "Deepsix". "Deepsix" was actually the sequel to "Engines."

OK, so I obviously haven't been tracking McDevitt's work obsessively, but some sort of reference to this on the cover or the flyleaf would have been nice. Including that the author also wrote "Chindi" on the cover, and including reviews of "Chindi" inside, is meaningless -"Chindi" could just be his last SF book (Hell, I bought an unconnected book of his the same day). The only books specifically mentioned as being related was "Engines". Part of me is happy that apparently I now have several books by an author I enjoy out... except I now have an idea how books 2 and 3 nd, having gotten some way into book 4.

Grump.

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read Polaris, the second book of a series of three books by McDevitt, before I read the first book in the Alex Benedict series (A Talent For War).

The publisher did little to set me straight that this was a sequel, probably because of the reluctance of many readers not to buy a sequel if the first book isn't available.

Perhaps we should take a page out of ex-A&Er Viktor Haag's strategy book, and only purchase an entire SF series only after all the component novels in the series are published and are available.

::B::

[mylescorcoran]

But that strategy requires patience, and an ability to guess when an author is actually finished with a series or just bluffing.

Take for example the Vorkosigan stories by Bujold. Has she stopped writing them indefinitely or is there another one in the works? Or Le Guin's Earthsea. Anyone could be forgiven for reading the first three and thinking that was it, only for Tehanu to appear decades later to continue the series (though many would dispute its place in said series).

And did I mention the patience thing?

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

One could claim I already practiced patience - it was 6 years between my read of "Engines" and this one, and during that time I only read one other Mcdevitt (Infinity Beach, which was OK but not great). I'm obviously in no great rush, but if I'm going to make an impulse buy with a gift card in Borders, I'd like to impulse buy the right damn book.

"Eternity Road", the book of his I switched to, is turning out to b quite engaging, but it's not the one I was jazzed up to read.