Saturdays in Books

Wow could I have easily started this series here. Like my husband got to since we listened to this on a recent road trip. It's much better than the first two, but includes all of the descriptions of how magic and the world work, making those first two books irrelevant. Fuck, he even describes why his blue car isn't really blue again.

This sort of repetition annoys the shit out of me. I understand wanting to ensure a reader can pick up a series at any point and be able to follow it, but as an existing reader I often feel like I'm either being treated like an idiot or having my time wasted by the need to reiterate just how magic works or what makes these vampires different or whatever. Admittedly, it worked well enough here that my husband didn't feel lost, but we have the technology to fix this. I really wish e-book and digital audiobooks had a "beginner mode" setting so that all the duplicate exposition could be tagged to appear only to people new to the series. (Originally, when I discussed this with the friends I was visiting, I suggested "i'm not an idiot mode" to remove the extraneous content, but beginner mode will probably be easier to market.) I'd get enough time back to read at least one more book every year.

So, not great, but a lot of fun and do yourself the favor of skipping the first two.