Loss & Gain In Fiction

​I’ve just recently finished reading The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan.  I did a Books Off The Shelf post for the first book which you can read here. 

I’m still planning on posting reviews about the others at some point, but for now, suffice to say, I really enjoyed all three of the books.  I was struck at the end of book three, The Autumn Republic, by a sense of loss.  I don’t believe that it had as much to do with the closing of a story as it did the ending of the relationship I, as the reader, had formed with the characters.  

I’m a huge fan of series style fantasy novels (especially trilogies).  The amount of time one spends with the characters of stories in these series, though, creates a friendship of sorts.  We, the reader, get to live with and even inside the head of these people as they struggle through extraordinary circumstances.  When a story ends, it’s not precisely the death of a friend, but like a friend suddenly moved across the country.  We may get to have an adventure with them again sometime in the future, but for now, they’re lost to us.

It fascinates me—has always fascinated me—that fiction has such power.  But here it is again.  New friends met and lost, but not before experiencing a great adventure together.  New ideas offered up in a format that the mind can see only because it is fantastically unreal, which somehow makes it all the more true.

There is sadness in the passing, but there are so many more titles to read, so many more friends to make.  I still hold to the saying of my favorite coffee mug: So Many Books!  So Little Time!  
​
Read with joy!