Yellowstone: Book 4 (the Conclusion)
“This was an enjoyable survival-thriller story about life following a super-volcano, and I might read Bobby Akart again.” There it is. That’s my entire review. I’m taking the rest of this post to bone-pick this author and others regarding their interpretation of “book series.”
I’m just going to say it: this story did not need to be four books long. I elected to read it because I love survival stories, and a four-book series sounded better than a single novel (at the time). Having finished them all (Hellfire, Infernal, Fallout), though, I’m strengthening my opinion that this was not a four-book series but rather four parts of a single book published separately. Yes, there’s a difference.
Let me explain what I mean. I love book series and have long advocated for them as I’ve read to my kids. We’ve fallen in love with a number of them over the years, though they don’t all follow the same rules. That’s Ok.
Take the Harry Potter books, for example. These seven hefty volumes are true novels, each story covering a full year in the life of young Potter like seasons in a TV series. They’re not episodic, and you can tell that the author took her sweet time crafting each installment with the care of an artist.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is slightly different. Yes, these books are designed for a younger audience than Potter, but they’re far shorter and don’t assume themselves to be seasons in a series but rather episodes to a single story. They’re wonderful.
I feel that The 39 Clues carry that same episodic feel Unfortunate Events, though they come in several 13-book blocs, much like episodes in a multi-season series. In fact, I get exhausted just thinking about how long it would take us to get through The 39 Clues entirely, and we’re only in the first “season”!
This “series” by Bobby Akart is far less than episodic. It’s mere parts to a single story, and quite honestly, it feels like cheating by the author, like, “Look how many books I’ve published!” It’s disingenuous and I personally don’t like it.
If you look at Akart’s history of publication for this “series” (not to mention his others), you’ll see that he published these four Yellowstone books in July, August, October, and November 2018, not even allowing the story to steep in his own mind before he sent his pages off to the publisher. I don’t know what kind of deadline those cutthroats put him under, but why publish a part of a book per month instead of crafting one singular novel every six months? More importantly for us consumers, why make readers pay for four quickly scrawled parts to a book instead of one lengthier, better-produced, man-sized novel?
I love a good series, but I don’t like getting yanked around by quick-sells and marketing schemes. Like I said above, I might read Bobby Akart again, but only if he makes a standalone novel—which according to the Wiki site just isn’t his thing.
©2023 E.T.
Read More from Bobby Akart:
- Yellowstone: Hellfire (2018)
- Yellowstone: Inferno (2018)
- Yellowstone: Fallout (2018)
- Yellowstone: Survival (2018)
Read More Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Novels:
- The Last New Yorkers by George Allen England (1911)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
- The Last Ship by William Brinkley (1988)
- Minority Report and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick (2004)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
- The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins (2008)
- Son of Heaven (series) by David Wingrove (2011)
- Contamination (series) by T.W. Piperbrook (2013)
- The Giver by Lois Lowry, adapted by P. Craig Russell (2019)
- Fairy Godparents: Raising a Fairy Child by Indahari Setyo (2020)