Bookburners

The people over at Serial Box are on a mission to bring back serialized fiction. They talk about combining the best aspects of novels and television shows, but this isn't really a new idea. It's just been dressed up a bit for the internet. Stories are broken down into "seasons" and "episodes". Theoretically, each episode should be a self-contained story that takes about 45 minutes to read (just like a TV show!), and the episodes build into an arc that forms a season. (And eventually extends into multiple seasons. Just like TV! Except you're reading, not watching.)

The biggest problem with this format is that you can cram a lot more information into a 45-minute television show than you can into an equivalent-length short story. So a lot of the early episodes are made up of broad strokes. It takes a while, longer than normal, to start caring about the characters and what they're doing.

But I did eventually start caring. I read the entire first season of Bookburners, after all. Though I'm still not sure how much of that is because I liked the story and characters and how much of it was just the convenience of the format. It's pretty easy to read one of these stories during my breaks over the course of a work day. Do that every day and you've blown through an 800 page book before you know it.

Bookburners reminded me a lot of Warehouse 13 and The Librarians. A team of people with a variety of skills are protecting the world from various supernatural artifacts. Eventually they grow into a sort of found family. And the stakes keep getting higher, and the episodic nature of the series eventually gives way to something fully serialized.

I enjoyed it. It wasn't my favorite. I'll probably start in on the second season someday when I'm bored at work. But the format doesn't entirely work for me. I never felt wholly invested in any of the characters, mostly because I never felt like there was really time to get to know them.

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