Dean Koontz keeps mentioning the third book of his Moonlight Bay Trilogy, as if he’s working on it. For the last twenty years.
The book that got me hooked on audiobooks was Fear Nothing. Keith Szarabajka’s breathy, contemplative tone was perfect for Christopher Snow. “Forced to spend his life in the dark due to a rare genetic disorder that makes him vulnerable to light, Christopher Snow is thrown into an eerie thriller he seems hardly able to handle.”
The second book, Seize The Night, paired Christopher with the same reader, and introduced some classic SciFi, including a dash of time travel.
The third book…? Well, Koontz recently claimed that he’ll finish it when he’s done with the 7th book of the Jane Hawk series. Ummm, Dean? You just published Book 5 and that wrapped up the Jane Hawk series. Time to get to work!
Although those first two books were so good, and read so well (I’ve still never heard such a perfect pairing of protagonist and narrator) that if it’s not up to that standard, it’s okay with me if Koontz just retires (or moves on to… whatever… preschool horror, canine cookbooks?).
Don’t forget the sword with a value of 25 guineas, which Hornblower was always supposed to have received as a reward for his heroic actions against the Spanish frigate Castilla, but the novels differ as to whether it occurred as he was a Lieutenant (as referenced in the original trilogy of novels) or as actually depicted in Hornblower and the Atropos, which came later and had him as a post-captain at the time.
I believe his age, when carefully scrutinized, was also inconsistent between the original trilogy and later written works (born July 4, 1776 according to later works). I believe, but cannot recall specifically why I believe this, he was supposed to be older in Beat to Quarters.
I agree completely. Reading his books is like reading the Lord of the Rings, except it’s been two volumes out of three and Frodo hasn’t reached Rivendell yet. I think it’s telling that the name of the series is “The Kingkiller Chronicles”, and yet not only has the hero not killed a king, the book hasn’t even *mentioned *one yet.
Ed McBain always said his last 87th Precinct book would be “Exit.” He had been writing a series of the book with one word alphabetical titles long before Sue Grafton, but he never got to finish it with Exit.
Until 5 minutes ago I would have added the final book in Jerry Pournelle’s Janissaries saga to the list. But Amazon has Mamelukes down for a June 2020 publication. The story was finished by Jerry’s son and David Weber, so there is a chance it will be good.
Annie - Sue Grafton never got to Z, and her estate has said that nobody will be writing the final book and that we should just get used to incompleteness.
It might be too early to really say there won’t be another one, but I’m starting to doubt that Jasper Fforde will be writing any more novels in his Shades of Grey series.
He published the original Shades of Grey novel (now retitled Shades of Grey 1: The Road to High Saffron) in 2009, and has, since then, made mention of possible sequels (or a possible prequel). So far, none of those have materialized, and he’s published at least six other novels (either for his other series, or stand-alone) since then.
Not sure if this counts exactly, but Patrick O’Brian died before he finished* “21”, his sequel to “Blue at the Mizzen”*, where Jack Aubrey finally gets his step to Admiral.
The reason I’m not sure if it counts exactly is that “Blue at the Mizzen” was the 20th Aubrey/Maturin novel, and ended at the point immediately after Jack gets promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue, which was a fine end point for the actual published series.
Or another Nursery Crime book. Talented guy. His last Thursday Next novel was in 2012, per his wiki, so I don’t have a lot of faith he’ll return to that series either.
On GRRM, what do you all think about the rumor that GRRM’s progress with GoT went into the toilet when his assistant/co-author Daniel Abraham jumped ship to do his own thing, starting 2002-ish? At least that’s what Abraham’s wiki suggests is when he started really cranking on short stories, and writing his own novels in 2006 onward. Along the way becoming one half of The Expanse writing team? Given GRRM very publicly went out and asked Amazon to keep funding The Expanse show, maybe Abraham will help GRRM get over the hump for the last two novels?
Obviously GRRM is extremely talented, and even more obviously, he’s had no idea what to do with ASoIaF for the last decade or so. Depending on your like/dislike of A Feast for Crows, maybe even longer.
EDIT: Continuing with the theme, we won’t see Larry & Jerry’s new version of ‘Smash the Earth with a big rock.’ Or another Burning City story or Moties story.
I’ll admit to being unfair to Forester. All of the other books I mentioned had long periods when people were awaiting them and asking if the author was ever going to finish them.
That was not really the case with Forester. He had slowed his pace somewhat. His most recent completed book had been published in 1962 when he died in 1966. But there’s every indication that if he had lived, Hornblower and the Crisis would have been completed and published within a year or two.
As for the unauthorized completions, there’s one by John Mahon and one by R.W. Smith in addition to the Parkinson one you mentioned.
Martin has openly acknowledge that he gets bored with his established series. He says his pattern is that he thinks of an idea for a series and writes the first works in it with that initial enthusiasm. But then that enthusiasm fades and he’s left with the prospect of grinding the rest of the series out. Meanwhile, he’s thought of a brand new idea for a different project and he’s full of enthusiasm for getting started on that. So his pattern is he’ll stop working on the old project and begin working on the new one.
It seems pretty clear this pattern would have held with A Song of Ice and Fire in normal circumstances and Martin would have abandoned it by now. But the popularity of the television series put too much money on the table for Martin to walk away from so he kept working away at it. The question is whether he will keep doing so now that the series has ended.
If Abraham was the lubricant that kept that particular authorial machinery moving, and if Abraham feels obligated to help GRRM out since Martin went to bat to keep Abraham’s TV show on the air, I can see the last two books getting cranked out.
Largely following how the TV show was plotted, and holding true to the endings for all of the characters—since I think Martin had those in mind from the beginning of the TV show. Arya killing the Night King isn’t jarring, if the setup had been better shown. Similarly for Bran being King, Jamie running back to Cersei, and so on.
It’s just that Season 8 was so obviously quickly cranked out onto the counter, like unsold prime steaks being turned into ground beef, because D&D wanted out of this job so they could go fuck up Star Wars even more than Rian Johnson. And make a titanic amount of money in doing so. But I think a more talented writing team could get to the same end state of GoT, and do so without making the audience go, “Huh? I followed this show for ten years for this shit?”
Hunger helps keep artists from getting bored (and discipline gets them to work even when they are). GRRM doesn’t look like he’s been hungry for a long time.
I’d really like to think GRRM will finish ASoIaF, but I put the odds at ~50/50. It’s at least possible. I doubt we’ll see any new Hornblower books though.
Not specific books, but J.D. Salinger was a recluse for 50 years, and when he died I heard all about how the books he wrote during that time as a hermit were going to be edited and finally published by his family. But that was 2010, and I haven’t heard anything since. Does anybody have the inside scoop? Or has that project died on the vine?
Even if another author picked up Hornblower, there’s not a lot of room left- Forester had pretty much mined out the entire period of his career already; this new author would have to find little interstitial spaces in the existing narrative, write fun adventures within them, and all without messing up the existing Forester canon.
That’s a tall order- I can’t really see too many cool adventures that could be written that wouldn’t have changed Hornblower’s subsequent career trajectory and thereby clash with the existing canon.