My subscription for “The Mongoliad” ended a few days ago and I did not renew it.

My initial enthusiasm for it melted away after half a year. I haven’t read a single chapter since June or maybe even May. Serial novels don’t seem to work for me. I prefer to read a book at my own pace. I just cannot stand to have to wait for the next chapter for a week or maybe even two or three weeks.

It’s the same with tv series. I watch the first episode and maybe the next two. Then I get impatient and if the series isn’t really gripping or otherwise fascinating, I don’t watch it anymore.

I had expected that The Mongoliad would keep me reading longer because Neal Stephenson is part of it, but somehow it isn’t like any other book from him.

I suspect that either he doesn’t participate in the writing of the book or that the serial character of the book isn’t doing it any good.

Though I don’t know anything about writing fiction books, I can imagine, that it’s quite hard to write a book if you cannot return to an earlier chapter and fix a part or add something to make the whole book work better. The Mongoliad looks – at least to the point where I left it – like a cronologically sorted collection of stories about some people. The stories themselves are OK, but somehow there is something missing, something that makes me want to read on.