I don't know if there's already a topic about it, but.
I would like to know if after the first 3 chapters there is any more betrayal against jeff?
Also is it really necessary to read the first 3 chapters? I mean I have an idea of what goes on in them, but I don't want to see the details.
I saw so many people talking about how good it is that I want to read it, is it really worth it?
No more betrayals.
I feel it is worth reading, but be aware it is a very long story. RoustWriter has been posting 1 chapter a week for over 15 years and they aren't short chapters.
My guess is that Roust set forth to write a very different story and it got away from him in a good way. That could be wrong, but the early chapters play out as almost an entirely different book than the remainder of the story.
It's not necessary to read them word-for-word, but it's important to know what happened, because it will be referenced quite a few times in varying levels of detail.
Does it really get better? A tried reading more but after chapter 8 I gave up. The first 3 chapters were just nonsensical and I would actually like to find out if there was a good reason why Arlene and Diane did what they did but somehow those two characters feel so fucking shallow. They didnt care much in the first 3 chapters and thought the solution would be more sex, just with Jeff. Whats worse, it works. They control him with just a bit of pussy.
Short, mostly non-spoiler-y answers:
1) In my opinion, it gets better, but that's my opinion. Some people will strongly disagree.
2) Yes, there's a good reason (within the terms of the story) why they did what they did. It's fully explained, though it takes quite a while to get to the explanation.
3) I definitely wouldn't say that they 'control' him, especially not long-term. Long-term it's somewhat of the eternal dance of men trying to make women happy and women trying to make men happy. Within the context of the story, both genders are really extra-motivated to do so.
The bigger point is that the story through chapter 8 bears almost no resemblance to the long-term story at all. Until you start getting a flood of additional characters, it's not even vaguely hit its stride, and until (as mentioned in the synopsis, so not a spoiler) the healer turns up, you're missing enormous pieces of the puzzle.
Or, maybe simpler: Arlene and Jeff is (mostly) a sci-fi story with action/adventure elements. Until it starts reading like a sci-fi story, you're not reading the 'real' story, you're reading setup.
Until it starts reading like a sci-fi story, you're not reading the 'real' story, you're reading setup.
That is a very accurate description. The problem is that a lot of readers will quit reading before they reach that point and another set of readers will be disappointed that it doesn't continue in that direction and then quit. Which leaves a smaller set of readers than it could have. A rewrite of the setup could generate a lot of new readers because the cruelty is not really necessary for the rest of the story. With a little creativity the healer can be introduced anyway, even with it's initial misunderstanding of the human physiology.
Another problem is that taking everything up until now is actually multiple books without 'finishing' a previous 'book'. In a way it's clever because you only realize a previous story line is abandoned until you are way into a new story line.
A rewrite of the setup could generate a lot of new readers because the cruelty is not really necessary for the rest of the story. With a little creativity the healer can be introduced anyway, even with it's initial misunderstanding of the human physiology.
I've said the same thing many a time, but alas. Rewriting is never as fun as adding more, and some authors aren't interested in it at all. At least telling people that it's a sci-fi / action-adventure story gives them an idea of how long they have to hold out. Also, the first few chapters really are the worst, even there.
The 'books' in Arlene and Jeff have never made sense to me, and I say that as someone who will happily say that my own book endings are arbitrary. They make sense to me, and I prefer them to other options (and can discuss why), but they're arbitrary. I just can't really figure out why Book 1 or Book 2 of A&J end where they do. Thus, Book 3 is the 'best', because it seems to have little chance of arbitrarily ending and starting another book.
Side note: A&J is hardly the only story with that issue. Cainneach McEinri's 'Sarah's Saga' stories start out with 'Mistaken Identity', which is oh so very, very, VERY much more cruel and dark than anything in A&J, yet morphs into a fairly satisfying, quite enjoyable science fiction story. I hate to think of how many readers run screaming, though (or drop the story because they can't bear to slog through it to get to the good parts).
Anyone who has read the novel 'The Princess Bride' will be well aware of the idea of 'the good parts version'. A&J could use one of those.
It is quite safe to skip the first three chapters, believe me. I have only read them once on the first pass many years ago. Now I pick up with Jeff excited about his new deal.
I recommend all of the chapters in both Arlene and Jeff as well as "Three Square Meals". The only thing I have found distasteful is the gradual shortening of the chapters. Myself I prefer chapters to be in the 35-50k range. The short ones, 4-15K seem like they were written on a smartphone on the way to a day job on a bus.
I dont understand being so squeamish over 3 chapters of a 3.5 million chapter story cause some intense things happen.
I dont understand being so squeamish over 3 chapters of a 3.5 million chapter
3.5 million chapters? I don't think there are any stories on SOL quite that long yet. :)
I think you meant either 3.5 million words or 3.5 million characters, but I'm not sure.
I dont understand being so squeamish over 3 chapters of a 3.5 million chapter story cause some intense things happen.
Because (fortunately) the first 3-5 chapters are not even close to being a representation of the rest of the story which is a lot better.
I can't say that I'd recommend A&J. While I enjoyed the first book, even it felt a little weird at points b/c the author didn't explain things well enough. It was decent, but.... could have been measurably better with a little tweaking.
The second tale, though, went completely off the rails. I tried my dangdest to stick with it. Got up past the first 100 chapters and was trying hard, but the author made it impossible to get invested in anything.
Some folks will tell you that it's like a soap opera with something new happening every chapter. You're supposed to like the constant changing and all that. And some people might enjoy that. I didn't.
As soon as you get used to one character, they are disappeared. All thirty thousand billion wedding scenes are the exact same. Wives come and go. There's a ton of lead-up that ends up going nowhere. On and on and on.
And for someone who is supposed to be the big bad alpha of alphas, he sure lets his wife lead him around by the nose. After awhile, his First wife got to be very annoying with all the talk about bringing in yet more wives even though Jeff was adamant about not wanting more.
That wouldn't have been too bad if the number was reasonable, but it got to the point where Roust was just disappearing wives that we'd spent gobs of time getting to know. They simply never got mentioned again as new wives were brought in.
For me, I like some build up and then some pay off. This story just doesn't deliver that. If you like watching Days of Our Lives and such things, you might enjoy A&J. That's about the best I can say.
Three Square Meals is an order of magnitude better.
