One of my favorite contemporary authors, Scott Sigler, dropped a new book this week. Voidstrike is the second novel in his series The Crypt, about the crew of a starship in deep space embroiled in the grip of a war. The series follows the P.U.V. James Keeling, a ship that has been nicknamed “The Crypt” because of the absurdly high mortality rate among its crew. In fact, posting to the Keeling is typically given as an alternative to prison time or even execution for people convicted of crimes. The book is military sci-fi with a dash of horror with plenty of violence and gore. You should not allow yourself to get overly attached to any of the characters, because any of them can – and will – be brutally slaughtered at any moment. It’s fun for the whole family, and naturally, I preordered it immediately.

I haven’t started reading it yet, though, because I’ve got to finish the book I’m currently reading first (that being a re-read of Stephen King’s It for those of you who somehow missed last week’s post). Here’s the question I’m currently grappling with though: although I know that after my sojourn in Derry, Maine is over, my next stop is going to be aboard the Keeling, I can’t decide if I should jump right into Voidstrike or go back and re-read the first book in the series again. Book one, Shakedown, came out about two and a half years ago, and as anyone with kids can tell you, one of the side effects of parenthood is a memory that erodes like a urinal cake during halftime at the Super Bowl. I remember the broad strokes of the book, but I’m fuzzy on the details. So should I go back and read Shakedown again?

Let me make one thing clear at the jump: I am NOT asking whether or not re-reading books in GENERAL is okay, because of COURSE it is. In any given year, I would guess at least half of the books I read are books that I’ve read before because they make me happy, or comfort me, or because I’m doing research for something that requires me to make a return visit. And all of those things are perfectly legitimate. In fact, there is only one reason for re-reading a book that matters at all: do you WANT to re-read it? If the answer is “yes,” then you’re good.

What I’m asking, instead, is whether a re-read in this particular case is justified. Yes, I re-read a lot of books, but it’s rare that I return to one that I read as relatively recently as Shakedown. Most of the books I return to have at minimum a five year gap before I pick them up again. It’s not a rule or anything, but I’m actually quite anxious to get to Voidstrike, so should I just check out a Wiki recap of Shakedown and get to it, or should I take the long way around?

If it was a movie, there would be no question. I frequently re-watch a movie if I intend to watch an upcoming sequel, and most of the time, I feel like it’s time well spent. When Ghostbusters: Afterlife hit theaters, I made it a point to carve out time to watch the first two movies in the series again, and as such a lot of the little beats and references landed in a way that they wouldn’t have had the older movies not been fresh in my mind. When my son told me he wanted to see Zootopia 2 back in November, I sat down with him and I watched the first one again, and that made the jokes funnier and the story more enjoyable. And in truth, the only reason I haven’t watched Tron: Ares now that it’s on Disney+ is because I haven’t had a chance to revisit the first two movies in the franchise yet. 

For the most part, I think this practice is rewarding. Having the earlier installments fresh in your mind can make the new ones more fun – callbacks are easier to notice, the characterization and worldbuilding gels better…it’s like polishing the rust off a bumper before you take a car out for a drive.

With books, though, although all of the same things are true, it’s much more of a time commitment than it is with a movie (unless we’re talking about something like Lord of the Rings, of course — the books are about a half-million words total, but legend has it that the last movie is still finding new endings to append out there somewhere). In the case of The Crypt it would be relatively easy, I’d only have to read one book over again. But what about those longer-lasting series? Think about something like Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. The 18th book in that series dropped earlier this month, and that’s to say nothing of the assorted short stories and novellas also set in the same universe. If there are any Dresdenheads out there, tell me, did you go back to Storm Front (the first book, published way back in 2000) and march your way through the next 16 in order to have everything right there are the forefront of your mind before you dove into Book 18, Twelve Months?

That wouldn’t matter if the books are episodic. Series like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew have continuing characters but rarely have continuing plots, so you can pick up any volume at any time and feel like it’s more or less complete. But one Harry Dresden adventure carries over to the next, and if it’s been a while since you visited him, would you feel like a return visit was necessary? Would you just read a Wiki recap? Would you return to the high points of your favorite books and do a cursory refresher on the others? 

And what about books that have a substantial gap between installments? Not long ago I was poking around TV Tropes (like you do) and I came across a reference to Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. I remember reading – and enjoying – the first book in that line several years ago. The Eyre Affair was originally published back in 2003, and focused on a special “literary detective” who investigates crimes in the worlds that exist inside of books. It’s a neatly metafictional concept, one that allows for a lot of humor and a lot of satire about the way that stories are written, which is the kind of thing that holds a lot of appeal to me. So it’s kind of baffling that I only ever read the first book in the series, because I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. I decided to see if the series was still going, and discovered that the eighth book, Dark Reading Matter, is scheduled for publication in June of 2027. 

Fforde also claims that this will be the last book in the series, which means if I want I can spend the next year and a half catching up on the six books that I never read (after probably re-reading the first one, of course). Out of curiosity, I looked at the most recent book, The Woman Who Died a Lot, to see when it was published, only to learn that it was way back in 2012. That means that there will be a 15-year gap between the final two books of this series. I have to wonder why that is. Did Fforde think he was done with the series back then, only to decide relatively recently that he had one more Thursday Next book in him? Or is this something that was planned that just kept getting pushed back for one reason or another, a process known in literary circles as “Pulling a Martin”?

Ah yeah, you know I have to mention George R.R. Martin and A Song of Ice and Fire. The series that inspired Game of Thrones released its most recent volume back in 2011, and there are reportedly two more to come to finish the series. In that time, the books spun off into a TV series that became a global phenomenon, the TV series passed up the books and had to cobble together an ending presumably based on Martin’s notes for the unwritten books, a spinoff of the TV series premiered and finished its run, and a SECOND spinoff has now begun airing. And there’s STILL no telling when book six of the series is going to come out. 

I’m not going to speculate as to the reason for this decade-and-a-half span of radio silence. I’m not going to try to guess as to what has prevented Martin from finishing the books in this time, nor am I going to try to imply that he “owes” his readers anything, because as disappointing as it may be for his most fervent fans, the truth is that he doesn’t. What I WILL say, however, is that if he were to announce tomorrow that Winds of Winter is finally going to be published this August, the sales of the first five books would skyrocket overnight as readers realize that in the past 15 years they have lost, loaned out, donated, or hurled their books through a window in frustration and they need new copies if they’re going to refresh their memories before book six hits the bestseller lists. 

Sometimes in these Geek Punditry posts, I’m addressing some problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes I’m just throwing out wish lists for things that I would like to happen. And sometimes, like today, I’m just taking some element of storytelling that I find interesting and rolling it around in my brain, here on the internet, where anybody can read it. My question, friends, is this: do you re-read books, especially before the next book in the series drops? How often do you do it? And which books do you think you’ve re-read the most often? I’d love to hear your answers in the comments.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He is aware of the irony of posting about this when volume two of Little Stars is somewhat overdue, but compared to George R.R. Martin, it still ain’t a drop in the bucket.