A friend and I sat down for lunch a couple days ago, and all she wanted to do was complain about the book she'd just gotten done reading.  So, like I often do, I started questioning her and picking apart what hadn't worked.  Since she's also the one who was the unfortunate recipient of my previous "Middle Books" rant, and since the book she complained about was the latest (not last) book in a series by an author she normally loves, we ended up focusing on middle book issues.

We began with what worked:

• It was a well-written book, with a strong plot, strong characters, and it completed its major story arcs...

Which means it's not any of the problems that I mentioned in the previous post.  It's not a "chapter" book, nor is it a "move the ship" book.

• ... but it was still a deeply unsatisfying read.

Why?

After some discussion, we pinned it down.

Many authors write ongoing series that have very large over-arcing plots: save the world from armageddon, win the war, stop the world-war before it starts, etc.

• For the sake of this middle-book-problem, these series-types include both series that follow one character, and series that each book is a new set of characters on a common background.

So, the simplified picture for these types of series books would look like this:

It's easy to see that each book significantly advances the overall arc of the series.

But what happened in the book my friend complained about --and several other books I've read-- is: (Read more)