alg's Book Meme 1: i.e a srs post for once

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alg's BOOK MEME

Day 01 - A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

ETA: Spoilers are in white text.

Hilari Bell's The Goblin Wood. Its a single book that I wish had spawned a duology or something. Essentially you get a weakling witch that makes up no skills with awesome battle tactics. But her homeboys are the goblins, which humans don't like. Hijinks ensues when the Lawful Good knight tries to take her out. The witch fights to protect the goblins and the knight learns a lesson in tolerance how JRPGs are always right and you never trust the apparently Lawful Good leaders. Cheesy, but more fun than it sounds. In the end the witch and knight leave the world with the goblins so mankind can't hunt them down. Except for one goblin family. So I always wondered what happened to the future goblin family (some secret goblin society?), or what happened to the world traveling lot (I mean, where did they go, were there people there, did they end up fighting or getting along with the new people? The questions never end!). Goto 1

Non spoiler version: The ending felt abrupt to me and I always wondered about the interesting protagonists and their new life and adventures. I especially like the heroine and wished I could've seen more of her. Goto 1

1: While technically the book was a complete tale, I was always left wanting more.

As for ending too late, I suppose I'll blather on about my mixed feelings about the Golden Compass trilogy (His Dark Materials?). I loved the first book, was eh about the second and was mixed about the third. I really could go on and on how disappointing this series became for me. How the ending of the first book had me thinking there'd be some epic holy war. How there's going to be some decent analysis of the complexities of faith, organization, and how doing the right thing can be vastly different based upon beliefs. But instead its a mostly hollow religion is bad, everyone else is good. The most complex you get is Mrs Coulter, a woman who wants to do the right thing but is torn by her family. However, she pretty easily sides with Asriel and it kind of deflates this tension. She's pretty awesome until the end though. That and the epic tru wuv romance shoved in at the last five minutes. This is even more empty after you've seen the reuniting of Asriel and Coulter which just has much more emotion, complexity and believability to it.

I have a million and one more complaints, but in the end most of me wishes the Golden Compass had just stayed one book. A small part finds two side characters redeeming though.