Trilogies: The Bane of My Existence

Welcome to my first ever discussion post!

Everyone knows what trilogies are, and if you don’t then you’ve seriously been living under a rock. A trilogy is a set or series of three books- an easy enough explanation. But what may not be easy is reading them. So that’s the topic of today’s discussion- trilogies.

I used to love trilogies. I mean it’s the perfect number! With standalone books you are left wanting for more and with series containing more than 4 or 5 books you quickly get bored and discouraged. Nobody’s got the time for that!

But recently I’ve started to develop a dislike for trilogies. Let me list the reasons why!

1.The Plot

If you’ve read enough trilogies and actually paid attention to them you’ll begin to realize that as we increase the number of books, the quality of the content, especially the plot, goes down drastically. The plot seems stretched to the point that you no longer like the story which is really disheartening because you loved the first book! Why couldn’t the author just have left it at that?

For me, this was what happened to the Divergent series.

The first book- Divergent, was quite amazing with a unique concept and a strong and interesting story to tell. I was hooked. But as we went on to Insurgent and Allegiant I lost track of why I was reading the series in the first place because there was literally no sense in what was happening anymore. And now I’m no longer a fan of this series.

 

2. The Characters

So the first book of a trilogy has these adorable and delightful characters you would die for and you simply can’t wait to discover more about them but haha they’re all dead by the end of the second book. Or the author just focused on the main character and let the others get sucked into a whirlpool of darkness, because who cares?

My personal worst: the characters’ personality just degraded after the first book or so and honestly who are they even anymore? Did an impostor take upon the protagonist’s name and appearance because this isn’t the character I fell in love with!

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO RUIN THE CHARACTERS?

Or kill them off.

Cassandra Clare is partly responsible for this because in the beginning of The Infernal Devices series I really liked Tessa, the female protagonist, and I could actually relate to her. She loved reading books, was brave and kind and never wanted to be a burden on anyone. But in the next two books she morphed into a plain and characterless women who fell in love with two boys and just cannot chose. JUST PICK ONE!

Although we did get new and better characters and dwelled into the backstories of some side characters as the trilogy went on, I still wanted the old Tessa back. But now the author has permanently ruined her for me and that’s just sad.

 

3. Powering Through

This isn’t that common but sometimes in trilogies the first book is insignificant and trash but people really hype up the other two books and tell you to just power through and somehow read the first one because the next two are heavenly.

Why did the author even write the first book then?

Why couldn’t you have just skipped the useless first book and combined the second and third books to make one heartbreaking and beautiful book? But no, you got dragged into the hell-hole of trilogies…

4. Novellas

There is this new trend nowadays in which authors write a trilogy and later go on to insert short novellas in between. Why? My brain cannot comprehend this mystery.

Could that so very important information written down in the novella not have been included in the three books itself? Why didn’t you go on and make a longer series then because now it already feels like we are reading one. And honestly, sometimes people even skip the novellas altogether because it doesn’t hamper your reading of the trilogy as a whole.

I skipped a couple of novellas from the Selection series because it was just the whole series in the point of view of other characters and there was no need for them. And although I absolutely loved the novella ‘Destroy Me’ in the Shatter Me series I didn’t read the novella in Adam’s point of view because I intensely disliked that character and somebody told me that the whole novella was just him pining over the female protagonist. Ugh.

5. Changes and Details

It’s a pain when the first book of a trilogy takes place in one world and the next two in another but you really loved the first one. Why do there have to be so many changes?

I loved reading Inkheart because it was set in the human world and was easy and fascinating to read with a mix of fantasy and everything but going through Inkspell was a struggle because suddenly we were in a totally different, make belief world where we knew only two or three of the old characters. Sure the world was interesting but everything was really overwhelming like what is happening? After re-reading the beginning of the third book- Inkspell like 5 times I completely gave up.

And quite opposite to this, sometimes authors make changes in small details of the book, hoping that we won’t notice or maybe they didn’t realize they were changing something in the first place but whoops that side-character doesn’t have a mother anymore. Oh and the antagonist that died in the first book? Yeah he didn’t really die and yaay he’s back!(Totally pointing at The Scorch Trials)

No, not again. Never again.

 

But despite all this I do still read trilogies because it’s not like I don’t have anything better to do, right? *TBR wailing distinctly in the background*

Yeah, it requires a lot of hope and courage.

 

Let’s discuss!

What are views on trilogies? Like them or hate them? Or maybe you have a love-hate relationship with them. Do you agree with me that sometimes the plots stretch way too thin to the point that they are barely visible? And do you discard a trilogy mid-way or just power through? I rarely leave trilogies in between because how would I have written this post then, haha. Did the number of whys in this post bother you because this whole post could literally be titled why?

Let me know in the comments below!