The Rise of Series and Sagas

            Lately, all you see on bookshelves and movie theaters are sequels, trilogies, and series. It seems as though the world doesn't want the normal one part story anymore, and sagas have been on the rise. Whether these sagas are Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight or the Hunger Games, these multiple part stories are not only popular but very profitable for the authors of these books. Take J.K Rowling for example. Not only is Harry Potter one of the most famous franchises in the world, but J.K Rowling is the first author to make a billion dollars off of books, which were eventually made into movies. The movies and promotional deals got her the billion, but the books got her the movies and deals in the first place. 

            So why do we as fans enjoy series and sagas? To be honest, I don't necessarily like sagas. I have read the Twilight Series and the Lord of the Rings, polar opposites in quality and plot, and both of them left me upset. It is not that I do not love reading, but sagas are both annoyingly suspenseful and extremely sad. I'm not a big fan of the cliffhanger. When I see a television show, I hate when they cut to commercial right before revealing the big surprise at the end. It just gets me angry. That is what a saga does to me. Once I finish the first book I have to read the second one and I get sucked into the vortex. Sometimes I want to shake the authors and just tell them to get to the point. I can’t spend another sleepless night wondering what happened to Frodo and Sam at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring and even when the story ends I’m still upset. (*spoiler alert*) Like what happened to Frodo and Bilbo when they went into the West. What does the West look like, and how did they live out their lives? (*end of spoiler*) It forces the reader into a fit of anxiety because we become so invested in these characters that we need to know everything about them and we need to know it right away before our journey with them is over.

            When it comes to the extremely sad part of why I don’t like sagas, it has to do with being with these characters for three or more books and having to say goodbye to them all of a sudden, never hearing anything more of them ever again. When I’m reading a one part story, my journey with those characters is short lived. But, if we are talking about a book like Harry Potter, where most of us spent a span of 10 years reading these books, we have more time to get invested in these characters. We form relationships with them, one sided relationships but relationships. They become a part of our lives, and all of a sudden, with the flip of the last page and the period at the end of the last sentence, we lose them. They are no longer a part of our lives, and the journey we took with them long gone. The books become documents of our lives together. We are no longer experiencing life with them, the words become like old journals we look through for memories and nostalgia. We are no longer living in those books, but instead they become old records we flip through for a reminder.

            I was not a big fan of the Twilight Saga. The books, in my opinion, could have been better written. Yet, when I read the last page of Breaking Dawn, I cried. And I was not a devoted fan. I cried because the journey was over. I was never going to hear anything more from Bella and Edward. That upset me. I had spent four books listening to Bella go on about how perfect Edward was, and I had to see her act like a fool in love and a damsel in distress at the same time. She annoyed me, her actions were that of a hormonal irrational teenage girl, and since I did not want boys to stereo type all girls as being that crazed while in love, I kind of resented her. Honestly, she could have been a stronger role model for girls. Still, even though she bothered me and even though her transformation from human to vampire was a little ridiculous, I cried when her story was done. I missed her, and part of me was enraged about not knowing what would happen to Bella and Edward.

            Yet regardless of the annoying cliffhangers, the extremely long plots and the bittersweet endings, readers love sagas. Almost all of the popular fantasy series I know have been turned into movies or television shows. Maybe it is because these stories become such a huge part of our lives that we love them. We get to have stories like Harry Potter that become a part of our lives for ten years. If you ask any Potterhead, those ten or so years were the best years of their lives. Getting lost into a magical world is wonderful, and getting lost into a magical world for years at a time is even better. My father once told me that fantasy novels and movies were pointless because they deluded people from reality. I told my father that the reality was that anyone could find magic in the world; they just had to be willing to look for it. In a way that is what fantasy books do for people. They open up the possibility that this world is so much more than what it seems. They open up the possibility that the impossible can be possible and that magic came be found in this world, even if it is found in the pages of a really good book. 
~Sarina T

P.S. I would love to hear from any of you. What do you think makes Series and Sagas so popular?


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images used in this blog post. The views and opinions in this post do not reflect the opinions of the other two bloggers. They are just views and opinions that everyone is entitled to and they are not facts.