In case you missed my review of Sound, you can find that HERE.
Take it away, Shelley!
The release of Sound
brings the SOLID series to a close. Maybe.
You see, my feelings on the subject are so conflicted that
I’d have to say, if the series had a FB profile, its relationship status would
be “it’s complicated!” Don’t forget—the story of Clio and her friends was only
ever intended to be one standalone book, and look how that turned out. ;-)
To avoid spoilers, I will somewhat cryptically say that Sound does end, meaning that many things are resolved, there’s no last-page
cliffhanger, and, as a writer, I
believe that readers can close the cover with a reasonable sense of closure.
However, not all of
the questions are answered, which, as a reader,
kills me. Because I’m that person–the
one who turns the last page of a book and says, “But what about that girl in
the coffee shop (substitute any character from your current read who claims
maybe one line of passive text and is noticed by pretty much nobody); what
happened to her?”
I like—no, need—all
the ends of a story to be tied into neat little bows. I’m not the person who
can just assume the characters will live happily ever after; I grew up in the
generation of storytellers whose signature move is the last-minute twist, after
all! So until I’m actually told that Romeo and Juliet died and stayed dead—that they weren’t reincarnated
or resurrected as zombies—my inner voice may continue to pose, “But…” And
that’s the part of me that’s having a hard time letting the SOLID series end with an unwritten
ellipses rather than a bold-print THE END.
Yet, it would’ve been wholly unsatisfying in a different way
to cram all of the answers into Sound
and the three short months in which those first three books take place. The
story that I’d sort of thought of as a summer fling that would end neatly and
finally without so much as even a promise of a future, instead left me sitting
in my room at the end of the season having accumulated so much more than I’d
planned to and no way to shove it all into the bag I’d brought.
So it seems my choices are to leave that metaphorical extra
stuff on the floor, walk out, and close the door; or to pick up all of it—the old things and the new
ones—and write one more book to contain everything. If I went for the latter,
I’d have to set the book several years from now, giving the characters time to
organically unearth all of the
answers. And if I were to do that,
I’d probably have to alternate chapters between that future present and the pre-C9x
past, which would mean it’d make the most sense for the book to be titled Split…
Not that I’m making any promises. ;-)
You can get your copies of Sound and the rest of the series here:
SOUND (#3) is NOW AVAILABLE for purchase at:
http://amzn.com/1478377003 (Print Edition)
http://amzn.com/B009Z3OKDQ (Kindle Edition)
http://amzn.com/1478377003 (Print Edition)
http://amzn.com/B009Z3OKDQ (Kindle Edition)
Settling (#2): http://www.amazon.com/Settling-Solid-Book-Shelley-Workinger/dp/1460981723/ref=la_B003VRNPCE_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1352229392&sr=1-3
