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.
Cait, I think by the time Gabaldon finishes her Outlander series, it will have taken longer to go from the 45 uprising to the end of US Revolutionary War than it actuallY TOOK to go from the 45 uprising to American independence.
And although I began buying all her books in hardback form, considering her series a “keeper”, when Echo in the Bone came out, I ditched them all and am slowly repurchasing them on Kindle—screw that noise—her books weigh too damn much (with far too little story) to haul them around in hardcover form. While I’ve actually enjoyed the Lord John series (because they’re complete stories!!!), I wish she’d put him on hold long enough to finish off Jaime and Claire already.
The reason the last season of Gilmore Girls was written by different writers/producers. The original producers were fired. Also they wanted to do two moe seasons not one. But they wrote the show they controlled the plot. It was awful they were fired. It ruined the show.
I still love it though
Oh Gack! That’s 48 years…DG will be dead! Not just me!
Cait, I think by the time Gabaldon finishes her Outlander series, it will have taken longer to go from the 45 uprising to the end of US Revolutionary War than it actuallY TOOK to go from the 45 uprising to American independence.
While I’ve actually enjoyed the Lord John series,I wish she’d put him on hold long enough to finish off Jaime and Claire already.
DG boxed herself into a hole when she said in the beginning that Jamie can’t time – travel and I don’t care what the die hard fans say, she’s regretting it and can’t think of a way to kill him off without upsetting fans. Geesh, Bring them both to the future and end it already. The readers were promised 5 book, then 6 and we’re passed 7.
Sorry had to rant and rave here a bit
Cait
Cait, I think by the time Gabaldon finishes her Outlander series, it will have taken longer to go from the 45 uprising to the end of US Revolutionary War than it actuallY TOOK to go from the 45 uprising to American independence.
While I’ve actually enjoyed the Lord John series,I wish she’d put him on hold long enough to finish off Jaime and Claire already.
I despise cliffhangers. Loathe them. Vehemently. Ditto on everything Sarah said (and better than I could), but because I feel passionately about this, I need to rant a bit…
First, I define a cliffhanger as ending a book somewhere other than at a natural lull. I can forgive the book ending without resolution if there is no possible way to get to a good stopping point by the end, and some attempt is made to provide some sense of ease about the immediate future.
Sherwood Smith’s Inda and both of Patrick Rothfuss’ books come to mind as good examples of how to do this right. Actually, I think the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 movie is another example of finding a good place to stop that doesn’t feel like a cliffhanger, despite the final image. In all these examples, the installments are part of a larger story and there’s no way to complete it in one go—but there’s a natural lull and/or something in the ending gives hope for the immediate future or relieves the worst of the anxiety.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series is the prime example of the opposite: how to write a cliffhanger that will piss me off enough to endanger my ever reading any more books by that author. Her endings in that series are deliberately contrived to end at the worst spot, especially when adding a chapter or two, or even the scene of foreshadowing, would alleviate the worst of the anxiety and still leave plenty of issues to work on in the next book.
One of my main objections to cliffhangers in books is that they take my attention away from the story; you know, the can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees analogy, only it’s worse—I can no longer see the lovely forest because of one single grotesque and rotted tree that upsets me but I can’t seem to look away from it. I become focused on a specific plot point (what happens next to resolve the cliffhanger), and that jolts me out of going along happily in the story’s flow.
My other major problem is that no matter how “well done” (generating anxiety over the characters), cliffhangers in books, and in TV season finales, ALWAYS feel like a manipulation into getting me to read/watch the next installment in the series. The emphasis is on style instead of substance; i.e., on a gimmick instead of on the merit of the story to get me to care about what happens next. And I really don’t like feeling manipulated. I want authors to make me worry about the characters because the story is that good and then provide a satisfactory payoff by a good ending—I will definitely be on board for any future installments. Ending on a cliffhanger cheapens that worry, and provides a less satisfactory payoff whenever that end is finally reached—and increases the chances that I will feel it worth continuing.
Whoops… that last sentence should read “—and DECREASES the chances that I will feel it worth continuing.” (I missed putting in a “not,” originally.)
Cliffhangers don’t bother me, possibly because my first genre was fantasy in which even most things that start as stand alone books don’t stay that way, and books in a series may or may not each contain a stand alone story.
In fact, even when a series is finished when I start reading it I never buy more than one book in it at a time, in case somewhere in the middle it starts to suck and I wind up with a lot of books I don’t actually want. This is called The Anita Blake Rule. As a result I usually wind up reading other things in between books in a series even when I haven’t caught up with the author yet.
Add me to the hate cliffhangers group.
And I agree with AndreaZ that Karen Marie Moning is an example of how to do cliffhangers badly. Moning has so thoroughly pissed me off as a reader that I will never buy a Moning book ever again. I love Moning’s Highlander books, but after the gang rape ending of the 3rd Fever book you couldn’t pay me to read a new book by her ever again. And when I heard that she ended the 4th book badly too..I felt sorry for the people who had continued with the series. I still think that Moning’s lyme disease destroyed her writing as badly as thyroid problems destroyed Linda Howard books.
Just.Let.It.Sit.There. After reading Sarah’s post and all the replies I went home and read Hard Bitten. How ironic. I love, love, love Chloe Neill’s writing and this series, mainly because of the character development and relationship building that takes place over three books. After finishing Hard Bitten I was stunned. All I could think was “This is what we get???” Then I hear that the author has said “Trust me.” Oh, no she didn’t! Shades of KMM! I probably will read Drink Deep because I just can’t help myself [banging head] mainly to see if the plot twists the way I’m guessing. Which will make it worse, because I don’t think the twist is worth the damage done by the cliff-hanger.
@ Cat S – I probably will wait for Drink Deep but now I want to know what the cliffhanger is!!!! Just knowing there is one has me tearing my hair out thinking what it could be which is almost (but not quite!) as bad. 🙂
Hi, I knew about KMMs Lyme Disease. What is this about LH? I have wondered about her last few books as they are pretty bad, And this vampire thingy…another Cliff-hanger – almost More of a TO=BE CONTINUED. BURN and ICE , Let’s just say, I’m sure glad I took them for a pre-drive from the library. I might pick them up at a 50c garage sale.
Cait
‘I still think that Moning’s lyme disease destroyed her writing as badly as thyroid problems destroyed Linda Howard books.’
I voted ‘meh’ because it DEPENDS on the type of cliff hanger AND the type of book for me to decide whether I love it, or hate it. If I’m reading Romance, there better NOT be a cliff hanger. I like my romance novels self-contained, even if they’re in a bigger world, like … Stephanie Laurens cynster/bastion club books. If I’m reading fantasy I don’t mind them so much. Sometimes, I’ll even LOVE the cliff hanger (if it’s amazing) like in the latest Jim Butcher book – and can I just say I’m SO EXCITED for Ghost Story (SQUEEEE!!!) Anywho, the thing I absolutely CANNOT stand is a cliff hanger in a book with TONS of characters/plot lines and no one knows when the next book will be coming out (Kate Elliott, Kristen Britain) because (usually) when the next book finally DOES come out, I’ve forgotten what happened and need to reread all the other books, which is slightly upsetting because there is SO MUCH to read.
Depends on the cliffhanger. I have to second what BethSmash said about Jim Butcher there, so it can be done well. But most of the time, it is probably going to be annoying.
Weird moment: I just finished reading Thursday Next 6. I looked for my old review of the book after that and that review said that book 5 ended on a cliffhanger. I was all, “what?” I don’t even remember how 5 ended any more, so I looked on the Internet. I… don’t think that cliffhanger was followed up on in book 6? At least, TV Tropes said it was a (oh, go look for yourself) and I don’t remember the cliffhanger scenario coming up in book 6 at all.
Worse cliffhanger I’ve had to deal with Karen Marie Monings Dark series the 3rd book (which I WONT NAME) ended in a heck of a bad way. I refused to buy it or the last one until I’d read the review.
…
I HATE it when that happens. One of my favorite fantasy authors, Robert Aspirin, did that with his M.Y.T.H books. Sweet Mythtery of Life ended with a cliffhanger that wasn’t really addressed in the following books (sigh).
ALSO, I’d just like to point out how many of us love Jim Butcher, and that makes me happy, since I’m constantly lending out my copy of Storm Front to help create more fans. We could all, quite conceivably, hate him because of the events of the last book, which I don’t want to spoil for those of you who haven’t read the Dresden Files (seriously you guys… get on it) but it is a testament to how great an author he is that we still all love him, and aren’t TOO upset with the cliffhanger or the 3 month delay. For those who don’t know the new Dresden Files book USUALLY comes out in April, but this year it’ll be July.
I learned to dislike cliffhangers the hard way.
You might have heard of a TV show called The Vampire Diaries. Well it’s based on books by L.J. Smith. She wrote another series, Nightworld, that I was completely enthralled with as a kid. I held those books in the highest regard. I own the entire 9 book series. But the series’ last and final book has never made it to print and I’ve waited for 10 YEARS for it to be published!!!! 10 FRACKIN’ long years! It is the ultimately cliffhanger to a book series, a series without ending!!! With L.J. Smith’s recent success with The Vampire Diaries, I figured the renewed interest would push forth a finale to this awful lingering cliffhanger. Instead, ANOTHER Vampire Diaries book gets published and the Nightworld fans get shafted again! I’m sorry if I seem bitter, but I’ve been waiting for a decade to finish this series and it seems I might never at this rate.
There are a lot of writers who do a really good job having self-contained series books that also have overarching story arcs that don’t get resolved til the end. I just reread Eloisa James’ Duchess books, and the way there’s a main romance in each book but the three main characters have to suffer through someone else’s book(s) before they get their HEA is beautiful. Dorothy Sayers did a good job wrapping up a mystery in each book but having the character arcs continue from book to book.
And of course there are, what, 20 Vorkosigan novels? I read them in completely random order the first time and each one was good.
It just feels like a cheap trick when there’s a big cliffhanger on a main point, like the writer couldn’t corral the shape of the whole series into something that worked and had momentum of its’ own.
@Cait
re: Linda Howard
Info about her thyroid problem affecting her books came out last year after another disappointing book. This was posted by DearAuthor on August 5, 2010:
“Linda Howard writes that a health issue has changed her voice and she’s struggling to return to the voice she had prior to her health issues. She says she posted, not in response to negative reviews, but in response to a young woman who asked her why her voice has changed since 2005.
This is such an interesting post and I’ve received a number of varied responses via email. Would love to hear your thoughts.”
Linda Howard disclosed that it was a thyroid issue.
Incoherent ramblings:
I checked out the ending of Hard Bitten, and I am definitely waiting till November to even think about buying it. (There were four books that I was interested in that came out 5/3, and I could only buy one.)
Years ago Laurell K. Hamilton wrote a book called Nightseer. It was the first book of a series(?), but because of a fight with the publisher she never finished the story. This was pre-Anita so you know it was a long time ago. Darn it, I don’t care about Merry Gentry, finish Nightseer already!
The only cliffhanger I ever liked: Janet Evanovich. High Five. “Nice dress. Take it off.”
I’m anti-cliffhanger because I want to be immersed in the story. If we stop for 8 months while the author churns out the next book, then I’m no longer interested.
Also, I hate that in the next book we have to waste 10 pages with the Exposition Fairy while she brings new readers up to speed.
I so agree with this—this may make me permanently crazy, not knowing whether the secondary protagonist is going to live or die. I have heard she had another book in the pipeline when she died, but not whether it’s in the MOTAOD series.
Do Chloe Neill’s characters ever run into Jim Butcher’s characters in the neighborhood?
I HATE cliffhangers! Despise them! I feel they are a cheap plot device and frankly, if people are already hooked on a series, and the series has a loyal following, why the need to add a cliffhanger? This will only serve to anger the readers and create trust issues between the author and the reader. I just read the ending of a book (the book and author shall remain nameless because I’m too angry to write the name) that pulled a cliffhanger of ridiculous porportions. I don’t want to invest my time, emotions, and money into her characters and any of her books again.