Remember author Terry Brooks and his
world-building fantasy series, Shannara?

Bookstores both brick-and-mortar and virtual
have been graced with
Book 3 in the current series-within-a-series,
The Fall of Shannara.
This penultimate title is
The Stiehl Assassin.

I have lost count of how many Shannara books there are;
most of them I have read at least once.

Brooks, who has books on other topics,
says that with Book 4, the last,
he will no longer write about Shannara.

Those of us who read these authors and their series:
it's a unique experience, isn't it?

Brooks' latest release is nicely timed,
with the television adaptation of
George R R Martin's Game of Thrones
just ending in front of untold quantities of viewers.

Is this like going down a rabbit hole?
Or is it more than that?
Is it merely entertaining,
and is it pretentious to presume anything more than entertainment?

Think of other series that were a long time finishing.
Isaac Asimov with his Foundation, Empire, Robot braiding of three strands into one enormous series.

Stephen R. Donaldson taking decades
to finish the Thomas Covenant series.

Robert Jordan dying, and having to leave it to
Brandon Sanderson to finish The Wheel of Time series.

The Malazan Empire series, ... others?