Good calls on Stirling, Weber, and Ringo. It’s like they have a great idea…and then use it all up early in a series, and just don’t know where to go with the rest…
::sigh:: Yes, I know, I’m resurrecting a zombie. I want to complain about Hamilton’s books, after just purchasing the latest one. And I didn’t want to start a new thread.
The book, Smolder, is half a book. It doesn’t pay off for anything. First, 95% of it is just porn, and her poly relationship philosophies, and how everyone near her is changing to it. I’ve loved the Anita Blake series because they were awesome supernatural detective stories, with really involving characters. Now, I find myself paging over multiple pages of it because its all descriptive text on their multiple-partner sessions. I think maybe 50 pages of the story dealt with the supernatural goings-on, and Anita’s wedding. After dozens of books, we get the promise of meeting her family… which won’t happen until the next book. It literally feels like she wrote a thousand page book, and just broke it in half to put out a new publication.
I miss seeing Dolph for more than 4 sentences. I miss T-Ed interacting with her at kills, I miss seeing Peter growing up. I miss seeing Animators, Inc., and their other cases.
And I feel dirty because I’ll keep buying the books for those 50 excellent pages of character development and plot. ::sigh:: Which encourages her to keep writing scads of porn.
I borrow them from the library. Saves me money.
The series turned to shit after Obsidian Butterfly.
Sounds about right. Was the the first one with a graphic sex scene? Or was that Narcissus in chains?
I remember that, it didn’t really bother me, but it didn’t really do much for me either.
Then the next book had several, which I saw as a waste of potential paper that could have been used for plot.
After that, it seems as though there was more sex than plot, and I quickly lost interest. I think Micah was the last one I managed to get through.
She had that other series that I started, but it was even worse, starting out trying to make Penthouse blush, and getting more ridiculous from there.
I’ll still occasionally (been a number of years) reread some of the first few books, but I always stop after Blue Moon, as that really is pretty much the pinnacle of the series and of Hamilton’s career, IMHO. (It was also the first one that I read.)
Merry Gentry? I read the first one which was . . . hentai enough, but actually had an interesting world / concept. I couldn’t make it past the second because, well, the porn utterly overwhelmed the plot. Not that porn is wrong, but it became the focus and the world building became bedroom dressing.
Patricia Cornwell on the Kay Scarpetta novels. I read one of the more recent books in the series and it was mostly descriptions of food(to die for) and architecture.
I have what I call the Thomas Lynley Rule - most police/detective/mystery series will start at about 80% plot, 20% drama/backstory…over time, however, the author will fall in love with their creation, and the text will go to about 50/50, or sometimes even worse.
There are exceptions, but there are also a lot of examples.
Yeah, I probably got as far. I know I finished the first one, which wasn’t too bad, but I don’t think I got through the second one.
Holy crap!!!
The Rinkworks site is still up!!! I have NOT visited it for over a decade. It will give something to binge read on slow days and bring back some nostalgic stories. (I recommend their Computer Stupidities section to anyone reading this.)
Thanks for the reminder!!
Glad to be of service
Ha, I came in to say that. Then I saw you did.
Then I saw that I had originally brought up Cornwell back in August of 2021, in this very thread! Ha! No recollection of that, of course.
What did it for me was not so much architecture and food, but when she killed off a character and brought him back to life…well, that, and the way her niece, who had originally been a volatile and very interesting character, became perfect.
Jemisin’s Great Cities trilogy has only two books in it, and already the second one seems uninspired.
now see the series i read are the reverse … you don’t actually care to about the main plot you’re there for the characters like arry blocks burglar series or Westlakes Dortmunder series
Although he only wrote one or two actual series louis l’amours westerns were pretty good (thereare 750 0f them and yes you can buy a complete set …)
Clive Cussler comes to mind, the first few Dirk Pitt novels were very good but they soon went downhill, the story lines became more and more far fetched with way to many internal inconsistencies and errors, then he started giving himself cameo appearances in the stories, I pretty much gave up on him after that.
Nowadays, like many big name authors it looks like other writers are actually doing the writing and his name is being used for the recognition value
Never mind. I was going to rag on David Gerrold for not getting on with The War Against The Chtorr but I see it’s been done.
How has this thread lasted so long with no one mentioning JK Rowling! The first few Harry Potter books were great. Then she got too popular to edit, and the books got long and unwieldy, with glaring plot holes. And i gather she’s now writing political screeds thinly discussed as literature.
You are consistent. 
Hahaha but I can’t settle precisely on the name it seems, even though it’s the same series.
What are you referring to? I can’t match this up with any of her recent novels or scripts.
As you say, this doesn’t seem to be true of any of her fiction. She’s written the Harry Potter books, some other novels set in the same universe, and some adult novels. She’s also talked a few times about her political opinions, which don’t seem to be very popular. That doesn’t seem to be relevant to the quality of her fiction. Even if the Harry Potter novels were as great as many people think (and I don’t think that they’re quite that good), that’s irrelevant to whether her political opinions are correct.