I’m curious who you think the one good protagonist was. Or are you referring to one of his recurring characters that he re-named as needed for several different franchises?
$10 says his next story is about a writer in Maine that almost gets killed by a car.
Frank Herbert
The first 3 Dune books are phenomenal. After that: WTF is going on?
Sorry for the double post, but it sayss something when his latest book in the Incarnations abot Nox was not picked up.
I did not like Fight Club as a novel (but I was potentially spoiled by loving the film first), am ambivalent or pretty eh on the rest of his books (besides Pygmy, it’s waiting for me at the library) but I loved Survivor. I read his books because I like his style but usually his books just fall short of me wanting to say I liked them.
Actually, the funny thing about King is that he used to be really good, then he went through a big long “suck” period (We get it, Steve. You got hit by a car and it changed your life. We sympathize, but we’re tired of hearing forty-seven different versions of it). But nowadays he’s actually pretty good. *Duma Key *and his latest book of short stories were both more in the “old-style King” vein. Maybe he’s finally worked through the whole accident thing and is ready to stop obsessing about it.
Of course, I’m probably one of about three King fans in the world who wasn’t terribly impressed by the Dark Tower series (what can I say–I like his horror, like *Carrie *and *It *and The Stand), so what do I know?
Came in to mention Card, Asimov and Clancy. It’s a shame about Card’s politics because “Speaker for the Dead” is one of my favorites of the genre.
Im the opposite of this sentiment, I don’t like his horror much but I enjoyed the first 4 of the Dark Tower, especially Wizard and Glass. Infact the bulk of Wizard and Glass with a dash of The gunslinger could have been a great story all on its own. The wolves of the calla was ok-esque but the last two were difficult to finish.
Ira Levin started out brillant, maintained his brillance through several books, then turned really good. But his “Son of Rosemary” was not so much custard as durian fruit.
I would nominate Martha Grimes, author of the Richard Jury/Melrose Plant series. In the first half of her career, she wrote some wonderful mysteries (The Man with a Load of Mischief, Help the Poor Struggler, The Old Silent), but her last 12-15 books have been wretched, Dust being one of the worst novels I’ve ever read. Thank God I checked it out of the library so I didn’t have to pay money for the damn thing.
What about John Sandford? The first couple of books in his Prey series were pretty amazing pageturners, masterpieces of suspense. Then I got about maybe 4 books in (Silent Prey?) and the serial killer protagonist was this ridiculous psychotic meth-head who seemed to be a mishmash of the killers from all the previous books. I couldn’t continue the series after that.
I tried the Kidd series, but that just seemed lame from the get go.
Do these get better again? He’s been writing about one a year since the early '90s.
Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole series. Adoloscent angst is funny; adult angst is ridiculous.