The Lure of the Trilogy

Jul 2018
City of Blades / City of Miracles - Robert Jackson Bennett – Jo Fletcher Books, 2017
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One of the odder quirks of the fantasy genre is the weird prevalence of the trilogy as a literary format. Yes, Lord of the Rings started the trend, but it is clearly a single story that had to be divided into three for publishing reasons. And Tolkien's tale was based on some thirty years of world-building, so it earned its length (indeed, one of the most impressive features of LOTR as a narrative is just how lightly the lore is worn - it's there and it's important, but for the most part does not get in the way of the action).

Later fantasy writers have much less excuse for inflicting trilogies on their readers. Given the pressure on authors to produce, I would guess that the world-building for the average fantasy trilogy takes a year or two at most, which is not enough to sustain, say, 1500 pages of narrative without some longueurs. Hence the phenomenon of the mid-trilogy volume blues, in which authors struggle to pad out their stories to meet the requirements of their publishers and their readers. While it is always interesting to see the tactics that they employ, often one cannot help wondering whether the story would have been better told if the author had stopped after one volume.
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