You all have run into them…eagerly anticipated book sequels that left you wondering why you plonked down $29.95 for the hard cover because you couldn’t wait the extra year for the paperback.
For me, it was The Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel, the latest in the Earth Children series. Set aside for a moment that her fans had to wait 12 years for the next book. She introduced about 35,000 new characters and it was very difficult to keep track of them all, especially since they wandered in the story for a few pages and disappeared again. Ayla’s incessant recitation of her lineage got very tedious, and Jondalar’s step-father got a new spelling of his name with no explanation.
I finished reading it, then closed it, bewildered, feeling slightly betrayed.
I waited 12 years for this? Or could Auel have gotten away with it if she hadn’t waited so long and built up her fans expectations to a level no one could have met?
After the wait for this book, I expected something much better. I can’t even bring myself to re-read it to try to figure out what plot was there. I’m also certain that if the next one comes out anytime soon, I won’t be buying it.
Sundiver, the first book of Brin’s Uplift series, was an okay book. Nothing exceptional but I did like the whole idea about uplift. After reading it I went out to get Startide Rising, read the first hundred pages then gave up on the story. Terrible, just terrible.
Life, the Universe, and Everything is the one that stands out in my mind. The jokes fall flat time and time again. It reads like something written by a high-schooler who just finished a creative writing class and wants to be like Douglas Adams, but just doesn’t have the creative flair.
Mostly Harmless. While I agree with ITR Champion that Life, the Universe and Everything was the weakest of the first four Hitchhiker books, it at least felt like Douglas Adams was still trying to entertain his readers. Mostly Harmless read to me like he wanted to get them off his back, as in “OK, I’ve written you another one, now all the universes are completely destroyed, and there’s no hope for another sequel ever!!! Now let me get back to my life…”
All of the Myth books by Robert Asprin after the fourth one have been overextended and underwritten pieces of excrement, with barely enough plot to fill a single comic book.
Rama II. I had only recently read Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur Clarke, and couldn’t wait to read II. I didn’t get very far into II before realizing something was terribly wrong. I had to force myself to finish it just to see how it ended, and now have no interest at all in the other books in the series. Only after I finished, I looked again at the cover and read the forward to find that it was co-written with Gentry Lee, whom I hadn’t heard of before.
After reading and loving Orson Scott Card’s Ender series of novels, I began reading his Homecoming series. I really enjoyed the first three novels. The story was interesting (if a little soap-opera-ish) and the characterization was great. Card built up a LOT of tension between some of the main characters. Then, in the fourth novel, Card brings the characters back to Earth–the first humans to return to the planet in 40 million years. The story isn’t bad, but you don’t ever get the big payoff that you were expecting after reading four books! There is virtually no description of what the Earth is like after 40 million years except for the two new sentient species with which the humans interact. And the tension that builds even bigger between the two conflicting characters is never released! One of them simply takes his followers and leaves! No real resolution. Card got me to really like and care about these characters, and then he just has them fade away as kind of an afterthought at the end of the book. There is a fifth novel in the series (which I am reading now) that takes place 500 years later, and it isn’t especially good either.
Wow, nine posts and no one’s mentioned Hannibal? I waited for that sequel for eight years, and when it finally came out, I put aside a whole day off to read it. A huge flaming pile of suck. It didn’t wasn’t even “the bills are due” suckage. It was like Harris set out to write a piece of crap.
Hey, Tom, I’m sure the publishing racket is a pain in the ass, but try not to take it out on the readers, OK??
Crichton’s The Lost World. It was so obviously written AFTER they figured out who would be coming back for the second movie. “Goldblum and Attenborough or the only one’s who signed up again? But I killed their characters in the first book. No, no, it’s not a problem…I’ll make up something.”
Black House. It’s hard to follow up on a book as good as the Talisman but God, you think that King and Straub could have put a little more effort into thinking it through in the 20 years between books. Makes me wonder if they hung out with George Lucas…
Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card. Ugh, this book is horrible. It’s like someone wrote it after looking at short descriptions of the main characters. What happened to the characters we all knew and loved? Like Bean or Petra? Sheesh.
I loved The Talisman, but The Black House sucked like a Dyson. I stuck it out to the end, hoping like hell it would rescue itself and it never did.
Hated the /constant/ Author intrusion. Hated the /total/ change in style from the first book. Hated the plot. Hated the chosen perspective. Hated the needlessly lengthy and detailed descriptions of the town.
The one character in it I really, really liked got killed off. Bah.
I’ve read most of the non Gunslinger stuff King has written and like most of it a lot, even Insomnia, which suffered from slight Gunslingerness, but not so much you couldn’t enjoy the basic tale. Not this, though. It’s like he and Peter Straub set out to break a ton of writing rules and succeeded in proving why they’re there to begin with.
I’m sure the Gunslinger fanbois loved it. I loathed it. May it never darken my eyeballs again.
Petty Pewter Gods by Glen Cook. The first five of the series were so amazing. They blended fantasy and detective stories so well and DQL was alright but then this one just felt so different. Like he was trying to make it something it wasn’t to draw a larger crowd. FSH began to get things back on track but ALS just made it seem like DBZ. Everything has to keep getting bigger and more extravagant until it loses all touch with reality. I just want a detective story with Dark Elves, Ogres and boatloads of Redheads.
King Kelson’s Bride by Katherine Kurtz. What had been, up until then, more then 13 books exploring this ficitonal magic world moved on to being a court piece with so-and-so of the house of this-and-that and the high and mighty whachamacallit of place-a-ma-bob. And many things made no sense. I hope she plans out the next series carefully.