Working Title

[thetraveler]

So, I'm on the last leg of my writing journey for Book 1 in my series, and I am not doing well as far as the title goes. I have several candidates, and your input on which ones sound the most interseting would make you most likely to pull the book off the shelf.
Series titles:
Traveler (Named so because the main character is one of the Travelers, and the story revolves around the three Traveler organizations)
The Ages (Named because the series spans six 'Ages', or periods in time defined by something that would reveal too much of the plot of the book)
The Gods' Playthings (Named because of the fact that the books deal with a lot of prophecy and fate)
Vessel Chronicles (Cannot say, cannot say, cannot say)
The Deal (Much everything happens in the series because of a deal made between two gods)

Book 1 titles:
Rise
Fateguard
Lockpick
The End of the Fifth Age

Thoughts, comments? They all good? They all suck?

 

[MatthewCEarls]

I personally prefer Traveler as the title to the series, especially if it was the series revolves around. It's difficult to pick a book title because I don't have a good sense of any of the concepts of the novel, but just based on the titles, I like Fateguard the most.

 

[The Din]

I like the God's Playthings and the End of the Fifth Age personally. I kinda prefer to see more obscure titles, though sadly you're more likely to be successful interspersing the cliches. The ones you've got should do nicely, though I'd suggest doing a full search on any chosen title. (I recently changed my own because some evil b***h already used it back in 08...)

 

[Devor]

Traveler
The Ages
The Gods' Playthings
Vessel Chronicles
The Deal

Book 1 titles:
Rise
Fateguard
Lockpick
The End of the Fifth Age

FATEGUARD, all caps.

Maybe Vessel Chronicles, but I suggest you keep looking.

 

[bbeams32]

I prefer The Gods' Playthings and Fateguard of those you've listed.

 

[Ireth]

I like Traveler and Fateguard, myself.

 

[Chilari]

I would avoid Traveler on the basis that you could alienate British readers (and readers from other countries where they spell English words correctly). Some British readers get very annoyed when Americanisms and American spellings make it over here, but when British books go Stateside even their titles get changed - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Northern Lights being big examples, particularly since the film version of Northern Lights was marketed as The Golden Compass over here (I know someone who got confused when they saw the film, calling it a rip-off of Northern Lights, because she wasn't aware that they're the same thing). In many cases, American-authored books that make it to our little island don't get translated into British English with words like traveller and colour. In such cases, reading those books is jarring - affecting reader immersion.

As for the rest, I guess it depends on what your story is about, and the feel of it. Titles must fulfil two criteria - they must be catchy, as you specify, but also they must be appropriate, not just for the story but also for the genre. It also helps if they are specific. Not knowing what your story is about, it is therefore difficult to judge how story-appropriate or specific the titles are. You'll have to think about that yourself, I suppose.

As far as genre-appropriateness is concerned, the Deal is probably the worst scoring of your suggested series titles. That would strike me as a story involving mobsters if I saw it in isolation. Chronicles is definitely a good fantasy-genre word, though I'm not sure about vessel, possibly because I can never tell, without context, if it means ship or ceramic container (and once, when writing an essay about some ceramic containers which had been transported via sea, I got myself confused); but that might just be based on my Greek-archaeology background. I would stay away from The Ages because it lacks specifity from an uninformed position. It could, in isolation, be interpretted as historical fiction - or non fiction. The Gods' Playthings is quite strong as far as genre appropriateness goes, because the only way you can misinterpret it is as non-fiction specifically looking at the mythologies and religions of ancient civilisations.

In terms of the book titles, I'd go with Fateguard. It's the most unique, is short and snappy, and certainly sounds fantasy-ish.

Titles are hard, so I sympathise with your problems. Sometimes they take months to work out, sometimes you can get an idea early in the writing process which just works (I'll admit that on my latest story, which I started writing a few days ago, I had an idea which fit very nicely.) So good luck in coming to a decision.

 

[SlimShady]

Travel and Fateguard, although The Vessel Chronicles sounds pretty good too.