I didn’t know those were continuing! I’ll have to pick one up. Thanks.
I never got into the **Wheel of Time **series, but I’ve heard positive things about Brandon Sanderson writing the last three. Of course the most positive thing said is always that he knows how to meet a deadline.
No. I read And Another Thing but that was mainly because I was very depressed about the ending to the previous book, and if nothing else I am grateful that the characters were removed from the jam they were in. But the continuing authors never measure up.
Sometimes.
I read L. Sprague deCamp’s and Lin Carter’s additions to the Conan the Barbarian series. And decided that, 90% of the time, the pastiches were noticeably inferior to Robert E. Howard’s work. I never had any interest in Robert Jordan’s contributions.
I enjoyed Colonel Sun, but I have never felt any urge to read any subsequent Bond novels.
In the case of the Dune series, one look at the blurb on the back cover, and I immediately knew that I did not want to read any of them.
I am mildly curious about Betancourt’s additions to Zelazny’s Amber series, but I have not yet had the nerve to try them.
I was going to say almost exactly the same thing. Goldsborough wasn’t as good at creating the familiar comfortable world of Nero Wolfe, but his plots were actually a little BETETR than those of Rex Stout’s later books.
Depends. I could probably tolerate an author with a very identifiable style making a short story contribution. I liked King’s Sherlock Holmes short story all right. If Neil Gaiman wrote a Conan story or Alan Moore did a Martian Chronicle, I’d probably like it.
He’s put out two more recently, starting with Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, authorized by the estate.
I like the Goldsborough books pretty well, even if they’re not Stout.
I’ve read all the post-Fleming Bonds (except the ones featuring Bond as a boy), and have generally liked them. They’re not Fleming. I didn’t really care that much for Colonel Sun, and the first couple of Gardner novels were pretty disappointing, but then he hit his stride and cranked out some that were pretty good. Some of Raymond Benson’s were good (I think he understands the character better than the other imitators). But Sebastioan Faulkes’ Devil May Care feels more like a Fleming Bond novel than any of the others. I know that an awful lot of critics disagree, but his take hits all the Fleming notes.
The two more recent ones, Deaver’s Carte Blanche and William Boyd’s Solo, are good thrillers, but don’t have the Bond “feel”.
I even read the Christopher Wood novelizations. Wood’s Bond movie scripts were abysmal – the most puerile entries in the series, but his novels are actually better than the movies, for what it’s worth.
The first one Sanderson did was much better than Jordan, admittedly that’s not saying much, but the last one sucked nearly as much as anything Jordan had done. It sucked in a different way but it still sucked.
And I like Sanderson, Mistborn was damned good work.
ETA: If it’s a series I’ve been reading I’ll give a new author a chance, so far I’ve been lucky in that the original author have finished the series I loved. Wheel of Time doesn’t count because I had already developed a serious hate of RJ and the series both. GRRM is about to make my list.
I should add that I’ve read a LOT of Holmes pastiches. Most aren’t even close to Doyle’s feel and style, but are enjoyable anyway (especially Nicholas Meyer’s three novels). A lot of the pastiches fall into the “sequel to famous story” category or “Let’s fill in the never-before-reported adventure that Watson refers to” or the “Sherlock Holmes Meets famous character from history or literature”, and these have been done with varying degrees of success. I find Rick Boyers’ “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” pretty well done. But the all-tiome best, ion terms of feel, is the collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by John Dickson Carr and (sometimes) Adrian Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur’s son.
I’ve also read a lot of post-Howard Conan stories. I’ve come to agree with the people who don’t care for L. Sprague deCamp’s addition to the corpus, and his attempts to shoehorn them into a consistent history, but he, at least, hadf the requisite knowledge of ancient history and technology and practices. I haven’t cared for most other practitioners. And I’m particularly disappointed in Harry Turtledove’s Conan of Venarium. I think Turtledove wasn’t comfortable writing it as fantasy, which is odd, considering that he’s written fantasy before, and pretty well (The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump and others).
I read the first and had no interest in any beyond that. So much of what made Zelazny’s books great was missing that it felt like generic fantasy. It left so little of an impression that the only thing I remember now is that the antagonists were lizard people or something like that.
Sometimes. I’ve read a couple of post-Robert B. Parker novels, Spenser and the Western series. I thought the first one of each was good.
I give them a try. If they’re good, I keep going. If not…
Someone upthread mentioned Spider Robinson. I did like “Variable Star”, (a novel written by Robinson based on an outline by Heinlein, but felt that it didn’t quite match the best of either.)
Generally not, since it’s rare that I keep going with a series of novels. When Pratchett stops writing Discworld, I’ll stop buying any of the books.
There are exceptions. For my money, the best Ellery Queen novel is The Player on the Other Side, written by Theodore Sturgeon. Avram Davidson’s Queen novels were also pretty good. But both authors were ghostwriting the books, so their participation wasn’t revealed until long after the books came out and they were published when Queen were both alive, so they could keep an eye on quality.
Depends…
If it’s a long continuing story left unfinished, I will, just to see how it ends (Wheel of Time, for example. And I disagree with G0sp3l, BTW. The last one was a fine conclusion, IMHO.) Bonus points if the original author gave his blessings to having the story finished (as Jordan did). But if it’s something that stands alone just fine as is (Hitchhikers, for example) I feel no need to read what amounts to fanfic for hire.
Sometimes…
John Betancourt did a fairly good job extending Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” series.
Robin Wayne Bailey did a very nice job with a “Fafhrd and Gray Mouser” novel. It wasn’t as good as Fritz Leiber at his best…but was definitely better than (alas) quite a bit of what Leiber wrote. (The later Fafhrd books just got worse and worse and worse…)
Some writers have done better “Dune” books than Frank Herbert’s own “Dune” books.
A lot of later neo-Lovecraft stories have been damn good, and many are far superior to anything Lovecraft ever wrote. A lot of Conan the Barbarian novels have been fully as good as what Robert E. Howard wrote.
There was another thread about Felix Francis taking over Dick Francis “franchise” of horse-racing thriller novels. Some hated his work, but others thought he had the right stuff.
Christopher Tolkien did not have the right stuff.
When they announced that there’s yet another book to go my expected probability that Martin will finish A Song of Ice and Fire dropped to zero.
I will read whoever finishes it off though. But my personal rule now is to not start a series until the author has completed it.
Mainstream books don’t come in series, usually, unless you’d like to count the “sequel” to Gone with the Wind and other such nonsense.
I have read the Bedford/Brin/Bear Foundation books. They were better than the very last Asimov one, but more limited in scope that the original three. And way too much Hari Seldon, action hero.
The Ron Goulart additions to The Avenger series on the other hand were pretty good, as good or better than the original ones.
On the other hand there is the Gentry Lee (may he suffer the hell of his absurd religion) Rama books where he was going after the crown so admirably worn by the guy writing as Pel Toro.
Mostly I avoid this kind of book.
As a compiler, keeper of the records & historian, he has done excellent work. As a entertaining author…
Yep. Kiss of Death. Why bother?
And the fans are reacting. I reviewed a book of Short stories that GRRM just edited (he had one small tale) and all the reviews were hit by many Unhelpful votes.
I hate when fans do that- it doesn’t hurt GRRM at all, but it does hurt the reviewer.
Let’s say hypothetically that Stephen King had another Dark Tower or 2 book(s) in mind…
Roland did F up at the end of the Final Book… maybe he has to start over.
…but S.K. passes away. Let’s also say, hypothetically, that Clive Barker has agreed to take up the series. I’m buying those books, no questions asked.
Corry, Ckald, I hit the wrong key.