I would have said Hannibal, except it made me realize that I don’t care for Harris’ writing very much. I remember the offense being more egregious in Hannibal than in The Silence of the Lambs, but the man loves run-on sentences. It tested my focus throughout the whole thing. The story itself wasn’t that great, either.
I read “A Salmon of Doubt”, a collection of Adams’ essays/short stories/whatever published post-humously. He was exceptionally depressed/pissed off when he wrote “Mostly Harmless”, and, well, that’s pretty much what he was trying to do. (At least, that’s the impression I got.) He did a similar thing in “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, when he advises the readers to skip to the last chapter, which has a nice bit about Marvin. He was busy telling the stories he wanted to tell, and the fans just wanted more Marvin and Zaphod.
While I love King’s “Dark Tower” series, “The Drawing of The Three” always struck me as being the weakest. It wasn’t the best, but it was necessary to get to the next bit in the series.
Sublight - hehehe. Sorry for beating you to the punch, but we’re in the same time zone so no one had a headstart advantage! 
Anyway, I didn’t go into detail about how and why “Closing Time” was such a letdown after an interlude of 34 years between the original and the sequel. Any thoughts?
That’s because the stories he wanted to tell mostly sucked. IMHO. He was an extremely talented, but erratic, writer. Inner demons, and all that. Adams seemed unable to expand and elaborate on, more meaningfully, his universe. Unlike Pratchett, who does it nicely with Discworld. IMHO
I’m not really sure what the problem with Closing Time was, considering that Heller’s other later books, such as God Knows and Picture This, were great, in my opinion. I think perhaps if he had written the same kind of book with a completely new set of characters, instead of continually trying to relate what each character was thinking with what happened to them in Catch-22, it might have worked out better.
I liked the Myth books up until Sweet Myth-tery of Life, but found Myth-ion Improbable unreadable, and have heard enough bad things about Something M.Y.T.H. Inc. that I’m not even gonna bother.
Then there’s Xanth. The first twelve or so books were good though they never got any better than Castle Roogna, Centaur Aisle and Night Mare, the best books of the series in my opinion. After that though, the series had degenerated into sameness. Every book is the same plot with different characters plugged in, and while the puns started out as a cute device, they were the ultimate demise of the series in my opinion. When an author starts letting audience submissions dictate the direction of his stories, well . . . while there’s nothing wrong with writing to your audience, Piers Anthony has taken it to surreal new extremes.
The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremacy. Ludlum took a good idea, and churned it into a psychological mess. I get it already, he’s dealing with his old identity. Poor conflicted soul
Buttercup’s Baby, the long-lost sequel to The Princess Bride. It really sucked. 
E3
WOT definately is up there in both crapitude, and long waits for crapitude. We’ve been on the cusp of several major events for books now, and he somehow manages to draw it out more and more without most of them happening. In the earlier books, the characters traversed the entire continent on determined quests, toppling cities and chasing this or that lead on a huge, creeping evil plot.
But the latest book might as well be called "what some people were thinking about while camped out in the wilderness/taking a bath/resting in a villa/hiding in a traveling circus. There’s even a chapter where the deadly Deathwatch guard warrior commander spends his time sitting in his study or something thinking about stuff.
Not exactly a book, but a graphic novel:
Frank Miller’s DK2
Sounded like a good idea, I suppose, especially since The Dark Knight Returns was great, but this thing was a steaming pile of goat turds. It’s like he decided after about page 5 of the first part he was going to phone the whole thing in. Sad.
How about Scarlett. that piece of crap sequel to Gone With the Wind?
Margret Mitchell must have been spinning in her grave like a top when that overhyped suckfest actually got published.
I thought of this title as soon as I read the thread topic. If only I hadn’t been two hours too late to offer something new. :smack:
Woeg, hunt up Newman’s JUDGEMENT OF TEARS-Anno Dracula 1959 (titled DRACULA CHA CHA CHA in the UK)- it’s much closer to the original than was BRB. Also, Newman has some short stories in the series- ORSON WELLS’ DRACULA (set up like CITIZEN KANE), FRANCIS FORD COPOLLA’S DRACULA (wonderfully like APOCALYPSE NOW- Brando is The Count, Hopper- Renfield,
Sheen- Harker, Duvall- Van Helsing), a Buffy satire, a Count Yorga 1970 one, & ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA aka JOHNNY ALUCARD. The Copolla, Yorga & Warhol ones are on the Net- as is Newman’s own site. I don’t have the links handy tho.
Despite how bad some of William Goldman’s books can be (Brothers, Heat, Control, The Temple of Gold in particular), they’re still better reads (just because his writing style always cracks my stuff up) than the drudge that Stephen King puts out for sequels and original novels these days. Does he have to tie EVERY single book to his Dark Tower series? Was there any excuse to do that to Black House?
He’d probably go back and rewrite IT to have the creature shot to death by Roland if he could. Yech.
And I know this isn’t quite the direction of the OP, but the longest series with the best sequels? L. Frank Baum’s Oz books.
Yay!
Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison was hysterical but the sequels (always cowritten by Harrison and someone else) varied in suckitude.
I think you have to take Scarlett in context. Was it as good as GWTW? Absolutely not. Was it a fun speculation of Scarlett and Rhett after Rhett left? I thought so. I liked it enough to pick up a couple of other Alexandra Ripley books. The Great American Novel? Hardly. But taken with a grain of salt and a sense of fun it’s not that bad.
I have these!
Peace Breaks Out, the sequel to John Knowles’ classic A Separate Peace sucked.
Also, I was terribly disappointed with The Forest House, the sequel to Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
** I Love Paul Pevere, Whether he Rode or Not** is a great sequel to Richard Schenkman’s Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History, but the second sequel, Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of World History, was pretty awful. It’s a lot shorter, and they eked out the pages by using bigger type. All in all, it has the feel of a book rushed into production.
Nevertheless, it’s a pity that neither of the sequels seems to be in print, and never even made it to paperback, while the original has undergone many paperback reprintings.
The Two Towers.
Sorry.
I add my voice to the chorus about DK2, and agree with the mention of Hyperion’s sequels.
Probably the most disappointing prequel ever was the new Dune books by Frank Herbert’s son. Good writing obviously wasn’t a family trait.
Book or movie? As a book, its moves a lot faster than the Fellowship, and has a lot more action. As a movie, Peter Jackson introduced two or three illogical slash out-of-place elements.