Cliffhangers

I Hate cliffhangers. I like Larry Hagman, though.Angie James has become my cliffhanger warning sign. She’s like a giant “CAUTION! DETOUR!” sign at the edge of a literary cliff, warning me away lest I cast myself over the edge and get ripshit pissed off on the way down. She’s warned me off three books now that have cliffhanger endings in the middle of the series, thus ensuring that I will wait until I know the story is completed before I try the series.

Why? Because I HATE cliffhangers.

Some of it is based on Ye Olde Romance Reader’s Expectation, wherein I expect the ending to be, you know, the ending, and I expect it also to be happy. Economically speaking, I like to know I’m buying an entire story when I buy a book.

I have heard many authors on Twitter and Facebook complaining that readers who wait for the series to be complete damage the chance that the series will exist at all past a few books.

My answer: series that contain books which end with cliffhangers damage the chance that I’ll buy the series at all, no matter how long it is. Or how awesome. Because I hate cliffhangers.

There are series wherein each book is a complete tale, with a larger story arc to be completed over the course of several books. I’m down with that. What I am so not on board with is a tale of romance with a killer cliffhanger ending that I have to wait to find out what REALLY happened in the REAL end of the book.

Finishing a book with an ending that leaves the characters with a “happy for now” before laying potential groundwork for the next book is one thing – I’m usually ok with that. There are some long running series (cough cough JD Robb cough cough) that stand alone individually but are made more powerful by the over-arching development of all the characters.

And then there are books that end with the written equivalent of Who Shot JR?

I tweeted about this a week or so ago, about how much I hated them, and someone said, “I guess you don’t like tv much, huh?” Different situation.

Who Shot JR? and the Dallas season finale cliffhanger got a lot of press and is still among the best known cliffhangers  - but viewers only had to wait a few months to get the answer when the fall season started up again.

Unless we are talking back to back releases, readers may have to wait six to eight months, upwards of a year or possibly more, find out what happens. And what if something happens to the author (heaven forbid)? There’s a lot of What Ifs in publishing, from contacts to basic mortality. From my budgetary and readerly standpoint, I want the whole story when I buy a book, or I want to know I can buy all the fractured pieces of the story so I can read them all together.

And I appreciate the warning about cliffhanger endings like you would NOT believe. I will wait until Hex Hall 3 comes out before I read Demonglass, Hex Hall 2. I really liked Hex Hall #1, and thought it was terrifically fun YA. But hearing that #2 ends in a cliffhanger means I’ll wait until maybewheneverpants for #3 before I go for #2.

I will wait for Stacey Kade’s YA series to have the answer to the cliffhanger advertised in the blurb for book 2 before I pick book 3. Packed with romance, lovable characters, and a killer cliffhanger, Queen of the Dead is the out-of-this-world sequel to The Ghost and the Goth. What what? Aw HELL no. Thanks for the warning, but not for me. I wait for book 3. And is there a mention of when book 3 comes out? Not that I can find. Daggnabbit.

I often make the mistake of taking cliffhanger endings personally – you might have gleaned that from the vitriolic rage up in here. I find them so offensive and irritating, most especially if I hath shelled out the doubloons for Ye Olde Hardcover.

But at a dinner discussion at RT, I found a lot of readers felt the same way. One said she was unwilling to start a series that had received incredible reviews, whose fans were clamoring for the final installment, because she heard direct from the author that the final chapters of the trilogy would be at least another year in coming. Another said she was irate when she purchased a romance and found herself within a half-inch of the end of the book knowing that there was no way the author could pull together all the plot threads. It was either a deus ex machina magical ending, or a cliffhanger, and either option was bad. And yet she’d invested so much energy and time and emotion into reading the book, she was mad knowing that her time spent would not yield the expected payoff.

Kevin Smokler of BookTour said at a panel he was on at SXSW that inviting someone to read your book is not like a casual date, or having coffee with someone. It’s dinner and a movie and possibly making out afterward: you are asking the reader to spend a lot of time with your book, so you have to make sure that the product is pitched at the right audience who will find their investment of time worth the price.

This fits my reaction perfectly. In my reading, I appreciate the warning signs of cliffhangers, because I get irate when I’ve invested time, emotion and energy only to discover I don’t have the whole story.

What about you? What’s your call on cliffhangers? This is not a new question, (ETA) and Jane is also ruminating on reader feelings about cliffhangers today, but I’m curious if, with the increasing number of series in all different sub-genres, your feelings about cliffhangers are a little different from mine.

ETA: Laurel wrote about her hatred of cliffhangers earlier this month.

And Mandi at Smexybooks had similar feelings.

Categorized:

Ranty McRant

Comments are Closed

  1. Sandy M says:

    I love series but cannot stand cliffhangers.
    Like you said, if the next title is expected to be released consecutively, that is very different but some titles take years to release. By the time the next title is out, I have either lost interest or have forgotten many major points in the story.
    Perfect example is Christopher Paolini’s YA series. He last published an installment in 2008. The final chapter doesn’t hit stands until this November. 3 years? Bhah.
    Gabaldon has a few cliff hangers too.
    If you know it will take forever for the next installment, resolve the major plot points and just leave an underlying subplot hanging. I tend to do the wait game on my series.

  2. Chelsea says:

    My hatred toward cliffhangers is just one reason why I wait until several books in the series are out until I buy the first one. This way I have more control over how long I have to wait between that horrible cliffhanger and the next book. But sometimes, to my great frustration, I’ll finish a five book reading spree only to have book five end on a cliffhanger, and book six won’t be out for another year. GRRR! I want my characters to be HAPPY at the end, OK?? Or failing that, I at least want most of the pressing issues solved so I don’t lose sleep over them.

    But some series are composed of one hanging plot thread after another with the vague promise that they will be wrapped up eventually in the final book or whatever. Bad plan, authors. The more plot holes you create, the less likely your going to be able to fill them to your reader’s satisfaction.

  3. Aimee says:

    Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series is SUCH the perfect example of this.  While I HATE cliffhangers, there is a certain amount of anticipation that makes waiting for the next part exciting.  If it’s a TV show, where I’ll get to see the exciting conclusion a week or two later (Castle, I’m looking at you), then it’s titillating.  If I just read three books in a five book series, only to have to wait several years for its’ conclusion… Well, let’s just say that I’m not proud of throwing the third Fever book across the room (and maybe also the fourth).  Cliffhangers = wallbangers in my household, but I also never condone book abuse.  Good thing I didn’t read them on my iPhone…

    I have read series’ where the ending wasn’t a WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT, but still had you gasping to see how it’d work out.  The Orcs series by Morgan Howell comes to mind.  But now that I’ve been through a few really hairy cliffhanger series’, I tend to wait until they all come out to read them (*impatient foot tap at George R. R. Martin*).  I think the publishers know EXACTLY what they’re doing when they produce a cliffhanger series, expecting people to clamor to pre-sales, etc. for the next book.  I think that if we’re possibly stunting a series but not being early adopters of their “but that’s not all!” formula, it’s a problem with the publishing, not the consumer.

  4. Lindsay says:

    I voted the “meh” option, but I’m not so much “meh” about cliffhangers as “it depends”. When I’m reading a romance (without realizing it’s an arc series) and I end up with a cliffhanger, it’s rather disconcerting and frustrating and leaves me feeling a bit empty. But if I’m expecting to get a cliffhanger, I don’t mind and sometimes even enjoy. And, of course, it depends on if its done well. It’s especially frustrating if the answer to the “cliffhanger” is painfully obvious and I have nothing to think over or guess on or talk about.

    And yes, TV and movies are definitely different. For some reason, I almost always love cliffhangers with those. Call me strange, but I love the feeling of being left staring at the credits in shock while my jaw plops onto the floor. Books, I could take it or leave it, but I think the main thing is I’d prefer to know about it ahead of time.

  5. Jess B. says:

    A couple people have mentioned Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series as a notorious example of cliffhangers.  And it totally was, and they drove me NUTS in the moment. ESPECIALLY the Book 3 & 4.  But Moning was publishing these books on a very consistent schedule, unlike Dark Tower or Game of Thrones (could be thinking of the wrong series here…).  There were no 10, 15, or 20 year gaps between books, which may in part be thanks to Moning’s previous profession as a lawyer and her ability to cope well with deadlines.

    So far every season of Supernatural has ended on a cliffhanger, and while filming at least two of those season finales, they didn’t know if they were being picked up for another season.  I’m fortunate in that I’m relatively new to the fandom, and was able to buy the first five seasons on DVD.  Season six will be my first “live” season finale and corresponding four month wait for resolution.  It may test my feelings on cliffhangers…

    I’m okay with cliffhangers.  I don’t love them, and I think they tend to be overused, but I can survive them.  Afterall, there are plenty of other books out there to keep me occupied in-between and then there’s always fanfiction – and God knows there’s plenty of Supernaturals fics out there.

  6. aussiegirl says:

    Ok, I read romances for the HEA – thats the whole damn point, and when you have a stupid cliffhanger that has no resolution and you then have to wait ages for the next book – well I just want to scream. So I have found that I now will wait till the series is finished if it’s one of those and then I will read it. I dont mind the series that are standalones with story arcs over a number of books since they still have their happy endings and I am then a happy camper.
    My other hate is the book that you pick up not realising that it is the beginning of a series until you get to the end and then have to wait and see if it will get picked up by the publishers so that you can find out what the hell happened.  Fantasy novels are notorious for that (Magician 1982 – 3 frigging years to the next installment- grrrrrrrrr).

  7. Stana says:

    Cliffhangers annoy the heck out of me—especially with menopause brain! I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning (and it is only 10:15 am EST) let alone wait an entire year to finish the story! I don’t reread books—actually, until I started following your blog, I never thought to reread! Scheduling the rereading of Book 1 or 2 before the newest issue of the series comes out is just one more thing to remember and not something I’ll invest my time in.

  8. JoyK says:

    Like series, hate cliffhangers.  Hey its like just when the foreplay is getting serious and you’re about to explode you’re interrupted.  Bleh!

  9. bungluna says:

    I don’t do cliff hangers. Not on tv, not on books.  I invest my time on a story that has to be complete.  If the cliff hanger is of the “and on next year’s book this is going to happen” I can live with it.  If threads are left hanging all the time, I lose interest very quickly. I also loath villains who always get away and dangling happenings that never get explained.  If you’re too incompetent to finish them off in a few books, I don’t want to follow your ‘adventures’ anymore.

    The only author I’ve forgiven for a cliff hanger is Jim Butcher.  He has an overall plan for his series.  He has already proven that little things left hanging in one book will tie up later on, so I’ll follow him into the next book and hope he never does it again. I don’t think I could take another ending like “Changes”!

  10. JennKinPA says:

    I hatehatehate cliffhangers in books. This is why I always skim the endings before checking out a book in a new series—a lesson learned from CL Wilson’s Tairen Soul series. I loved the first book, but cliffhanger. Found the second one within a week and…cliffhanger. Then, I had to wait a YEAR for the third (cliffhanger!) and the fourth (cliffhanger!), which was supposed to be the end of the series. Only, no, as it turned out. And then, another year-long wait for the last book. (Which wasn’t as good, IMO, because of the need to wrap everything up in one book rather than have fans dropping from strokes waiting for a sixth.) The worst part was that they were fantastic! Which made the itch to know what happened next nearly unbearable.

    After that ridiculous two-year adventure, I want complete resolution (for the H/h and all major plot points) within one book, or else I’ll wait till the series is complete.

  11. Merry says:

    Books written as cliffhanger series tend to include a whole lot of padding. Most of them could be condensed into a single volume without losing coherence. Indeed, it would probably ramp up the excitement level if all that padding were removed.

    Another commenter mentioned The Song of Ice & Fire (George RR Martin) series. The first book is now being televised (Game of Thrones). I read two whole books (very, very hefty tomes) of this friggin’ series before I realized that a) EVERY SINGLE DAMN BOOK would end in a cliffhanger until the end and b) he’s planning several more books. Plus, the next anticipated book has been delayed for FIVE YEARS.

    Cliffhangers tend to make me WRITE IN ALL CAPS. I’m going to wait until the last book comes out and read the synopses of the rest online. Life is too short.

    yet29—there are yet 29 books left.

  12. Marie says:

    As a reader, I feel highjacked into bying another book.  Don’t get me wrong; I love a good series.  But give me a resolution at the end of every book, please.

    As a writer, I refuse to do that to folks who purchase my books.

  13. Jen B. says:

    Wow, such strong feelings about cliffhangers.  I chose Meh in the survey because, while I hate them in the moment, if the book is well written, I will be first in line when the next book hits the shelves.  Many people above mention KMM’s Fever Series.  I loved the hanging at the end.  Yes, even the big scary one where poor Mikala was way mistreated (I won’t say more because it’s too spoilery).  However, my favorite cliffhanger of all times is Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series.  I actually threw book one across the room when I finished it.  To me, my reaction is a sign of the author’s skill.  To be able to illicit that much emotion with the written word is truly a gift.  Don’t get me wrong, I hate the senseless cliffhanger.  There are a few authors I stopped reading becuase it was obvious they just created cliffhangers to force you to read the next book.  That is just tacky.  Great topic, BTW.

  14. Elizabeth says:

    I despise cliffhangers.  I never used to: before I’d enjoy them, since I knew the next book would be fascinating.  But now?  No.  Hate, loathe, abhor them.  Why?  Because my favourite series, The Mistress of the Art of Death, ended the last book on the worst possible cliffhanger (will one of the greatest characters ever die?!), and now the author is dead.  DEAD.  If the author can reasonably expect to live long enough to write the conclusion, then sure – put a cliffhanger in.  But not if the author is going to die herself.  No thank you.

  15. Mayweed says:

    I hate, hate, hate cliffhangers.  I stopped reading the Wheel of TIme series after book 7, I got bored (and I know it’s not romance, but the same principle applies).  Zoe Archer’s series was released in good time, but I didn’t finish reading that either and for completely different reasons.

  16. Nicole says:

    (haven’t read through all the comments, so I’m sure mine will be redundant but this topic makes me furious):

    My personal loathing of cliff hangers stems from one KMM Fever Series- I read at a rapid pace and normally, one book won’t register as more than a blip on my radar, but if I’m invested in a series then nothing pisses me off more than spending 5 hours on a story only to turn the page and have a huge “WTF” moment.

    “I have heard many authors on Twitter and Facebook complaining that readers who wait for the series to be complete damage the chance that the series will exist at all past a few books.”
    -my response to authors is if your series is well-written and captivating enough, I’ll wait and buy the whole thing, no matter how long it takes (I’m looking at you C.L. Wilson, Suzanne Collins, Karen Marie Moning). However, this can backfire as I saw with the Fever series: there were many times I was lurking on comment boards and saw infuriated readers who had dropped the series midway because of all the drama.

    However, if you know that you’re going to write a series and end numerous books in cliff hangers, then I feel it’s your responsibility to:
    a) let the reader know from the beginning it will be an ongoing process , or
    b) write all the books at once and release then over a structured schedule (good luck with that)

    I’m glad that Smart Bitches and Dear Author brought up this topic-it’s something else my avid reader friends and I have talked about at length; they feel I’m completely neurotic for waiting years to read a series, but then I remind them of their anger/angst when they read a cliff hanger and have to wait nearly a year to find out how the next step will play out.

  17. Karenmc says:

    I have too many stand alone books to read, so a string of cliff-hangers isn’t going to be high on my list (unless it’s a backlist and I can pick up all the books at my local USB). When there are follow up stand alones, I may re-read the connected book first (see L. Chase’s Lord Perfect and Last Night’s Scandal), but otherwise, I’m too old and life’s too short.

    room48: there’s no way I have room for forty-eight more books on my TBR mountain.

  18. Mireya says:

    Cliffhangers are evil.  I think that sums it up from my personal POV.  I am very careful before I pick up a book for reading.  I haven’t even touched Karen Marie Moning’s Fae series, despite her being a favorite author, because I knew how it was being done. Thanks but no thanks.  I am 100% with you on this topic.

  19. ReganB says:

    For me, it depends entirely on the type of book and the series.  So, for example, in a romance setting book, I completely expect a HEA and all that involves with that being resolved.  And, like you, have no problem with an ongoing story arc going on (i.e. Tessa Dare’s series).  But if there is no HEA and they’re not together at the end I’ll go ballistic.

    However, if there is an ongoing series that I like reading that suddenly decides to end in a cliff hanger and, well, does so rather brilliantly (i.e. Jim Butcher’s latest Dresden book), I think it can be done well.  But it’s not a romance.

    Overall, I don’t like Cliffhangers as a plot device just to get to buy you the next book.  It denotes a rather lack of courage and faith in the author.  General lack of cleaning up to lead into a series, is always a fun thing, however.

  20. Suzannah says:

    I’m also usually late to the party, by which time the next book has been written, but I recently read the Clan of the Cave Bear series and it would have really annoyed me to have had to wait all those years between books.  As it was, I could pick up the next book and finish the scene from the previous one.  Now if I could just get number 6 from the gazillion people who all have it reserved at the library…

    One recent release I did read that ends on a cliffhanger is A Discovery of Witches, which got a lot of bad reviews on amazon because people didn’t realise that it was the first in a trilogy (and nowhere in the book does it say this.  Maybe I am actually dreaming trilogy, but there has to be at least one more book).  I read it knowing that, and was impatient at the end for book 2, but it was my own fault for reading it.  I gave up on the George R R Martin series after book 2 because I realised that it wasn’t finished and decided I wanted to read it all at once.  Maybe it will be available by the time I retire 😉

    I think as a minimum, publishers should make it clear if a book is part of a series, so at least people can make up their own minds.  Personally I love finding a series that is new to me and reading right through it in one go (the Poldarks, anyone?  And even then the last one came out after years and years, although not in a cliffhanger way).  But I can see that if everyone is waiting for book 5 to be published before they buy book 1, it’s not looking that good for book 2.

  21. DreadPirateRachel says:

    I just finished The Knife of Never Letting Go for a science fiction class. It has the worst cliffhanger ever. I was so pissed that I went to ye olde Wikipedia immediately to find out how the series ends. Guess what? *spoiler alert* It ends with a cliffhanger. What kind of author does that to his/her readers? That’s a terrible thing to do!

  22. Nana says:

    Cliffhangers????!!!!!! Thanks, but no…thanks. I’ve just had it with the already all so mentioned KMM one. I’ve read only 3 of the books and never could actually ‘get into’ them. Not even now. They were just my peak at frustration with the whole…wait…wait…hang on…here’s another one. Sure you’re going to buy it. After some more disappointments, with some other series that kept me from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, for me it was bye, bye with all of them. So now I have in place some rules:
    1. If I buy a book, and it’s in a series and the series is not complete, I know just a nice little place where I can recoup some of the damage: ebay. And bye-bye author, or the respective series.
    2. If it’s a series, the raves were good and it’s completed, then and only then I buy them all. If it’s one good, one so-so, and one weeeellll, or good, then maybe or maybe not.
    3. If it’s just the first and raves are fabulous but the next one implies waiting ‘kingdom come’ kind of patience, I confess, I’m a sinner and I don’t buy it at all. OUT OF PATIENCE HERE!!!!
    4. New added to these policies are authors who promised a book for more than 4-5 years, and did not deliver, and failed to give even the smallest explanations. No matter how auto-buy they were, no matter how much I enjoyed the books, I won’t go to the trouble of using my nice plastic to purchase their books any longer. If I waited that much, I can also wait to borrow from a library, don’t I?
    So, just for the fun of repeating myself in a like-minded environment. Get rid of ‘em stupid cliffhangers!!!!

  23. cayenne says:

    I have hatehateHATED cliffhangers since “Luke, I am your father”.  Any situation where a 2+ year hiatus will follow on the cliffhanger is pretty much cruel & unusual punishment, and I go out of my way to avoid them as much as possible.  Just don’t get me started on Gabaldon’s last book.  Oy. 

    My worst experience is that I got hung up on an SFF series in 1983 whose 7th installment is coming out this fall (and she says that there are at least 2 more to come).  7 books in 28 years! To be fair to the author, in that time, she did a PhD, had family problems, & her publisher went bust, but…28 years.  GAH.

    himself24: I hope I’m not waiting another 24 years for the bloody series to end!

  24. Jazzlet says:

    I try not to start any series before it has been published in full. I have had too many negative experiences, off the top of my head :
    – series that never finish,  because the author is making too much money, even though it’s obvious the original story has long been resolved and each new book has a more ludicrous challenge forour heroes to meet.
    –  series that never finish, because the take-up of the first however many books was inadequate for the publisher. I still want to know what happened to Ann Maxwell’s Rheba and Kirtin!
    – cliff-hangers part way through, then months and sometimes years of waiting for the resolution, all the time knowing that there must be one or the damn series wouldn’t be finished by a novel, but by a short story.
    – seious decline in the quality of the story telling or writing part way through a series.

  25. AfroQueen says:

    The only time I love cliffhangers is when I start a series that already has all the books out.  I can usually take it when it’s a series that has just one book to go, example: I started reading the Karen Marie Moning “Fever” series and went through the 1st four books like a hot knife through butter, but I had to wait on #5, but it was only a wait of like a couple of weeks. 

    I don’t mind the BIG cliffhangers…you know, will the good guys triumph over evil and save the world-type cliffhangers, but the more personal ones, the will they get together or not type cliffhangers, pisses me off royally.  The majority of the romance books that I read, usually have a paranormal/fantasy bent and usually, each book is self-contained as far as storyline goes, it begins, it develops and it ends with perhaps further adventures down the line.  That’s what I like.

    It’s my comfort read.

  26. Leaving teasers to keep you interested in the author’s work is one thing. But leaving you hanging is another. Like the author assumes you are addicted and will come back for more. But I guess that works for many. I have gone on author’s websites where reviews for their book are posted and remarks about the next in the series and I guess the publisher didn’t go for the second as the author goes off on a completely different tack with totally new characters next time. Giving you something to think about at the end is nice, but each book should be able to stand on its own. 
    And as for TV—what about Surface and Invasion?  I was at the least disappointed.

  27. Kathleen says:

    I like cliffhangers.. gives me something to think about… Even though I will admit they can drive me crazy…I know that I alway have something else waiting in the wings to get me through while waiting for the next book to come my way. Makes life more interesting…

  28. Mims says:

    Hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE cliffhangers.  I learned my lesson with Louise Cooper’s Indigo series.  Several years and eight books later only to come to a that’s it?!?!?!  What the what?!?!?!

    This is why I like Law and Order.

  29. Rosemary says:

    Not a fan of cliffhangers. I watched ALL of Downton Abbey up to the very last minutes, thinking it was a standalone series. Suddenly WWI breaks out, not one couple is matched up, and it’s got more loose ends than a cheap set of sheets.

    And I realize—I have to wait until next season to find all of this out. Grrr.

  30. Yes, I do think it comes from reading so much romance – but I hate cliffhangers, too.  I want a happy ending now, dammit!  If I wanted to be angst-ridden or depressed, I’d read the news.

  31. henofthewoods says:

    Melanie Rawn broke my heart with the Exiles trilogy. (Book two would be OK if it were in some other series, but it didn’t have much to do with book one and people were really, really pissed. Then she stopped writing for years – I think she was having a terrible time personally and I don’t want to add to that, it is just that I wanted the books that I expected.)
    Meredith Ann Pierce is a similar case, there was a really amazing book with a second book that took a while and then the third took forever and by the time it was out, her focus had changed and the book wasn’t a great match for the others in the trilogy. (Darkangel – I may have read that 7 times in three years as a teen.)
    So I definitely vote against the cliffhanger – but I buy them, I read them, I will buy the damn sequel if the book was good. They work on me. [So when I vote with my book-buying dollars, it is “Yea!!! Go Cliffhangers!”]
    I have a problem with long series (like J.D. Robb or some of my favorite cozy mysteries) – I miss one and don’t want to read the next. Soon I have read the first five out of 15 and I am not sure which I stopped at, so I would have to start over to really read any more. I bought a second hand set of paperback Kinsey Millhone/Sue Grafton books from A to N. That was intensely satisfying, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read any of them previously for at least 10 years.
    As a library patron, this is particularly a problem. The NYPL tends to buy 8 copies of book 2, no copies of book 1, 1 or 2 copies of the third and fourth – good luck getting them before the copies are lost/swiped. The copies of the second book are always shiny and new when I see them. They mock me.
    There are at least 3 SF series that I have put back on the shelves recently because I can’t find the first. If the author also has stand-alones out of series, I can at least see whether I like her (or him) enough to search out the missing start to a series. And I have definitely been more careful reading a book that is clearly the start of a planned series if there is any indication that the books may not have been written already.

    Maybe I am mixing cliffhanger and continuing story in my answer, but if there is any hint that the story continues, I feel like it is a cliffhanger. I want to know what happens to the second cousin briefly mentioned in chapter eight, and I don’t want to find that out because it is discussed as a past event in book five while I am reading book seven.

  32. H. Vert says:

    Cliffhangers are frustrating; they are not for me.  Series with self-contained stories are much more satisfying.

  33. Daisy says:

    I was very meh about cliffhangers until the Fever series by Moning.  I stumbled upon the first book shortly after its release and being a Moning fan picked it up without really looking at it.  I was all the way through the first one, wondering the whole time what exactly I was reading before I found out there were four more in the series, planned as one over-arching storyline – scheduled to be published over the next four years.  GAH!!

    Publish as many books as you like in a series, but finish the story in each book; don’t purposely leave me hanging.  If your writing is good enough and the story is intriguing enough I’ll be back without the manipulation of a cliffhanger. 

    In Moning’s case, I did hang around and read the entire series – which in my opinion did not live up to the hype – but it wasn’t a must buy for me.  I was disappointed in the author’s marketing ploys between books – oh look!  here’s a CD with music inspired by the series, written and sung by my husband and produced by me – buy it now while you wait.  Here’s some tee shirts and other fan merchandise (the sluttier the better!) buy it now.  Here is the audio book, which includes a booklet of deleted scenes – buy this too! – which for me seriously damaged her reputation as an author.  All the while you wait and wait and wait for the ending in the final book that doesn’t really resolve the biggest questions because guess what?  She has a new series coming out!  And personally, I felt like a great deal of what went into the final book was a direct response to the fangirl clamouring over the past years – which KMM admitted too a bit as she agreed that the inclusion of her highlander characters and Adam Black was only there because her fans wanted them. 

    Okay, apparently I have unresolved issues regarding the Fever series.  My apologies. 

    Back to cliffhangers.  I think if employed correctly, they can be a useful literary tool.  If used too often, or incorrectly they suck donkey balls.

  34. elaine mueller says:

    another late to the party vote against cliff hangers.  won’t buy ‘em, won’t read ‘em.  my mother has been a soap opera addict for 60+ years and it drove me nuts.  i want that hea or i’m not interested.

    i can understand a multi-book edition of a really long adventure/saga/story—like LOTR or WoT or auel’s opus—but a romance story isn’t or shouldn’t be like that imho.

  35. Hell Cat says:

    @HeatherR.

    The last cliffhanger I got suckered into was Kelley Armstrong’s Waking the Witch. She NEVER DOES CLIFFHANGERS but she smacked me with one in that book. For days I kept picking the book back up, because I KNEW I hadn’t finished it yet, but no, I was done. Grrrrrrrrr.

    Cliffhangers in TV are different. Doctor Who has been doing cliffhangers for the past couple weeks, but I know that I’ll get resolution in a week. I don’t have to wait 3 years.

    GAH! Thank you for the reminder. I read Waking the Witch from the library a couple weeks ago (I don’t do hardcovers) and I was all “What?! Wait. WHAT?! THIS IS NOT A STAND ALONE, ARMSTRONG!” I can’t wait for the second part, but still. It frustrated me because I felt like the ending was a nice end-off point. It was classic Savannah and would have held until the next book.

    And Doctor Who, is definitely different. Though, I think the season’s split up all frogged like this series. But you know it’ll be one, maybe two weeks, for a resolution so you’re okay with it. It’s pretty common in Daytime, too. And the wait then is only 3 days. Short-term, it makes sense. Long-term? Not so much. We’re a Society with the attention span of a hamster on speed. This doesn’t work in a consumption market where you don’t have more common weekly or monthly installments. You may get something like 3 months, 6 months, or a year between on a good track. More on a slower.

  36. Real life contains no guaranty of a HEA. It’s one of the major reasons
    that I read Romance. 

    I write Romance and I promise my readers a HEA. By that, I mean a HEA for each book. If that’s a spoiler, so be it. 

    If I get stuck reading a cliffhanger book and especially -if it’s a Romance – I feel I’ve been lied to.  I’m the victim of a bait and switch because had the cover copy disclosed the absence of a HEA – had it even hinted at that – I’d never have bought the book.  And I’ll never buy another by that author.

    Cliffhangers in Romances get resolved before the writer types “The End” – or so I believe.  I think anything different cheats the Reader.

    Maybe Smart Bitches can design a badge that all authors/publishers put on their books – a visual promise of no cliffhangers and a guaranteed HEA.  I’d buy a bunch of those books!

  37. Kate Pearce says:

    They don’t bother me at all, but maybe that’s because I’m in my 40’s and I’m not worried about instant gratification because when I first started reading books, there was no internet and I had no option other than to wait as I didn’t even know when a new book was coming out.
    Dorothy Dunnett pulled off my all-time favorite heart stopping cliff hanger in ‘Scales of Gold’ and I had to wait 3 years for the next installment of that series. When you’ve survived 3 years, 9 months to a year to wait for something to be resolved, doesn’t strike me as a long time. LOL

  38. LG says:

    For me it really, really depends, but, as far as romance goes, I want each individual book to have a satisfying conclusion in terms of the actual romance. Otherwise, it’d be like if J.D. Robb had Roarke and Eve get into some kind of big, relationship-threatening argument…only to say, “sorry, you have to wait for the next book to find out if all will be well.” Big fat “NO” there. If it ends in a relationship-related cliffhanger, it’ll piss off the romance reader in me. Take Ann Maxwell’s Dancer books. Someone recommended them to me as romance. The editions I read said “romance” on the spines and were marketed as romance by the publisher. I had no idea they were originally published as Sci-Fi (I’m pretty sure – the older editions I found in a used bookstore are sci-fi). And I had NO IDEA that the series was never finished. If the non-romance storylines had been left open, but the romance had gotten some kind of conclusion, I don’t think I would have been nearly so upset.

    That said, even non-romance stuff can drive me crazy if it ends in a “to be continued.” As was mentioned over at Dear Author, there’s a difference between a serial story and a series. When it comes to novels, no matter what the genre, I prefer a series to a serial. When it comes to manga, out of necessity really, I read serial stories, but I now have lots and lots of works for which I will probably never find out the ending, because the distributor closed up shop, or the author quit writing it for one reason or another, or whatever other reason.

    As far as the author comment: “readers who wait for the series to be complete damage the chance that the series will exist at all past a few books.” Isn’t that a bit like blackmailing your readers? I just read the exact same thing, in reference to manga and readers who put off buying until a company has put out the whole thing. Yes, I get that the author/publisher wants to be sure that the series will make money for them, and sales for earlier volumes can indicate whether something should continue or not…but there also needs to be an understanding that readers of series invest emotionally in those series, and a prematurely ended series can hurt a lot. For some readers, it’s not worth opening themselves up to that kind of pain (says the person who recently purchased multiple unfinished Tokyopop manga titles).

  39. LG says:

    @Jazzlet – Hah, I hadn’t read the comments yet and just saw that you mentioned Maxwell’s books too. Looks like I wasn’t the only one who was upset. I even searched in vain for fanfic, figuring that a halfway decent ending written by someone else would be better than nothing at all.

  40. Becca Price says:

    me so very much too – I hate, loathe, despise cliffhangers. I will not read the Outlander books until they’re done. Not even going to start Robert Jordan or George RR Martin.

    Some authors, yeah, I’ll trust (Jayne Ann Krentz, Nora Roberts have both been mentioned) because each book has an *ending* for the main characters in that book, even if there’s a longer story arc involved. Multi-volume novels (the Belgariad by David Eddings) I’ll read when they’re all out, and I’ve got some assurance that things will End Well. but open-ended series that end on cliffhangers, I’m not even going to start. It’s just not worth it.

    I’m at a good stopping point in Wise Man’s Fear, but I don’t think I’m going to finish the book until book 3 comes out and I see how he’s going to wrap things up… because, given the framing story, I can’t see how things will end well at all.

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