I am on the Edge of Eternity, trying to get past the Winter of the World, but the ghost of Divergent doesn’t stop haunting me. So here I am – venting it out in this post.
It all started because I didn’t follow a simple rule. The rule of sequence. The rule that must always be followed when you read trilogies. A trilogy is a story written in three parts. These parts are written sequentially…obviously. They must be read sequentially…obviously. Well…not necessarily, but if you really want a strong, immersive experience – you must read them as the author wrote them – sequentially.
With Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy, I broke that rule. I read Fall of Giants three years ago. Then bad stuff started happening around me (the way it happens in horror movies – where the bout of bad doesn’t seem to stop…) To make matters worse I bought the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth and half-way through the second book, I nearly gave up reading. (BTW, between Divergent the movie and Divergent the novel – the movie was a lot better, but even the movie couldn’t keep me awake! But I am diverging…oops! digressing…) So I stopped reading for a while but kept drawing and painting – mostly commissioned work. During my reading-blackout, Ken Follett got badly bitten by the historical fiction bug and Fall of Giants became the first book in a trilogy.
Unaware of these developments, I received Edge of Eternity, the third book, as a gift. I expected myself to devour it. I did…until I was about half way, and John Kennedy was shot dead. From my extremely narrow viewpoint, Kennedy was the most interesting character in the book, and I sort of enjoyed reading about his escapades with the White House Interns (how cheap of me!) So when he left the plot (of the story) I gave up – not because he left, but because I almost got carpal tunnel syndrome trying to hold that heavy book upright. That book makes you want to buy a Kindle!
Then I did the unexpected. I ordered the middle-book in the trilogy. Why? Mainly because I’m like Hercule Poirot. No, I don’t look like him, and my head isn’t shaped like an egg! I am like him in my love for symmetry and whole-ness. I had book #1 and I had book #3…so I had to have book #2!
Now I have all the three books. I know that if I applied myself to the pages of Winter of the World, I will read it…and yet,
I hope that authors would stop writing trilogies. A concept can be spread only so thin, or you begin to see the holes, and stories can be the told the same way only so many times, or you begin to fall asleep!
That ends my book-rant. Oh, look. I feel better already!
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