Books: When good series go bad

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by this thread, I started thinking about various series that I enjoyed for awhile until they started going horribly, horribly wrong. As I mentioned in that thread, I rather liked the first three Magic of Xanth books when I read them as a child, but the series soon degenerated into inanity, repitition, and cheap sexual innuendo after that.

Some others that spring to mind are:

[ul][li]The “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series by Laurell Hamilton. I loved the original concept and the first few books. Over time, however, it started getting a bit silly as she had to keep defeating more and more powerful enemies (at one point, she handily defeated a Neanderthal vampire who was the oldest creature on the planet). Plus, the books started focusing more and more on her sex life with vampires, werewolves, were-jaguars, etc. I don’t mind sex in novels, but when the entire plot revolves around her trying to decide who she should sleep with, well, at that point it’s time to take your royalties and go home.[/li]
[li]The “Book of Swords” series by Fred Saberhagen. This series got its start with “Empire of the East,” which I really enjoyed, which then spawned a whole series of “Swords” books: The First Book of Swords, The Second Book of Swords, The Third Book of Swords, etc. These books were basically one large extended narrative which I found intelligently written and engaging. Unfortunately, the series then meandered into the various “Books of Lost Swords,” and these were, without exception, utterly boring crap.[/li]
[li]The “Dracula” series, also by Saberhagen. Again, this started with an interesting idea (Dracula as the misrepresented hero, finally getting to tell his side of the story) that was intelligent and engaging for four or five books before becoming self-derivative, poorly written, and short.[/li]
[li]“The Chronicles of Amber” by Roger Zelazny, comprised of the First and Second Chronicles (written years apart). The first Chronicles was brilliant, both in concept and execution, and the second Chronicles started off really great as well. But then things started going wrong. To be fair, I enjoyed all the books except for the last one, in which all the dangling plot elements were resolved haphazardly in the space of what seemed like 10 pages. Things like the mysterious assassin who has been trying to kill the main character for the entire second series shows up at the end and says something to the effect of, “Oh, sorry – I’m the one that has been trying to kill you, but that’s only because I thought you had killed my father. I was wrong about that, though, so hopefully we can all just get along.” IIRC, Zelazny died a few years after that last book was published, and I’ve always wondered whether he had to wrap it up in a hurry because of failing health.[/ul][/li]
In general, it seems that any decent series ends up sucking if allowed to go on too long, but these are the ones that stick in my mind the most. Anybody else have some examples they want to gripe and moan about?

Barry

2

Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” started to go downhill after “The Vampire Lestat.” I can’t even read her stuff anymore.

3

The Belgeriad by David Eddings was a good read, but then he went and reissued the same books, simply changing the prefix of the main characters names (IIRC, its been a while) I mean, come on, if you are going to rewrite the same book over, at least give us new names!

Oh, and it was a thousand years before, same geographic area, same bad guy, feh.

4

I actually liked Rice’s vampire books up through Memnoch the Devil. But the subsequent ones (Pandora, Armand, etc.) were awful.

I recently read Orson Scott Card’s “Homecoming Series.” I thought it was really good through the third book, but I didn’t enjoy the fourth or fifth at all.

5

What? There were more?! I got as far as Tale of the Body Thief (I like the Talamasca stories) but could barely finish that. I remembering hearing aobut [i[Armand* but at a glance, it was a rip off of Lestat. It’s not a good sign when an author starts to rip off her own work.

Her writing has really declined to the point where it’s purple prose and Harlequinn Romance porn.

6

Card’s Ender Wiggins series (incl the Bean stuff).

The first book was great, the last one was torture

7

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series. Went from some truly excellent technothrillers like Hunt for Red October and The Cardinal of the Kremlin to jerk-off wish-fulfilment fantasy in The Bear and the Dragon.

8

Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time” series has gone from truly superior to truly awful, all in only what, 11 f**king volumes?

9

Oops, sorry, I see Jordan was already tasked for his decline in the cited thread.

10

I agree with NoClueBoy about Card’s Ender series. The first book, Ender’s Game is phenomenally good. The second, Speaker for the Dead, is all right but doesn’t measure up to the first. Xenocide, the third in the series, wasn’t really worth reading at all. Children of the Mind, the fourth book, should have all its print runs collected and sent back to the paper mill for pulping. It was so bad that I think it’s scared me away from the series for good – I won’t even touch Ender’s Shadow. I think this is the best example of a truly great first book, with such a steady degradation of concept in later books.

I also agree about Anne Rice’s Vampire books. I loved Interview and Lestat, but starting with Queen of the Damned it just turned into a whiny piece of tripe. Though, to be fair, I haven’t read the last few she’s cranked out.

11

Avolonian, you nailed it. And it’s not like Card isn’t still a good writer since Ender’s Game. Just look at Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. Proof that he CAN still write.

So, why is he vomitting on us with the Ender series?

12

Patricia Cornwall, anyone?

Kay Scarpetta, M.E. was mildly interesting, in a read-it-on-the-plane kinda way. Now she’s the most hapless, snake-bit character on the planet.

Put her in a room with Jessica Fletcher and Andy Sipowicz and we’d have some serious money changing hands on who dies first.

13

Jane Auel: Clan of the Cave Bear was a good read - the right blend of science, nifty ideas about proto-humans, and a good plot. But she couldn’t even keep it up for more than one book. The second in the series read like a prehistoric soap opera, and from what I’ve heard it only goes downhill from there.

14

Regarding Annes Rice the Vampire Chronicles, Il agree that some of those books were seriously painful to read, but Marius story[the Vampire Marius: In Blood and Gold] is actually really good, as is The Vampire Vittorio. That ones a vampire tale not related to any of her other ‘famous’ vampires.

15

I second Auel. I still have a soft spot for Ayla and the first two books, but Mammoth Hunters was awful.

Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series takes a sharp dive in quality after the death of the best character, Sulla. Her Caesar fixation becomes more and more annoying with every book.

Another author who seems to have lost focus is Sharon Kay Penman. Her first books were taunt interesting historical novels about England and Wales. However her Welsh fixation has taken over to the point where even the novel about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine spent as much time in Wales with original characters as it did in England with the supposed stars of the book! Her books just ooze “Cymru 4evah!” these days, and that’s all well and good, but if she wants to write about Wales shouldn’t she, oh, just write about Wales? Instead of shoehorning Welsh characters in like she did in When Christ… which started off about the civil war between Maude and Stephen in England, only to have a big chunk of the novel’s gut focus on a supporting character hanging out in Wales.

16

So tell me, Dooku, did you think that Isle of Dogs was as horrible as I thought it was?

I still want to like Kay Scarpetta, but that book was horrendous.

17

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!

Sorry to use so many consonants there, but my friggin’ POODLE was actually using the computer there.

I actually threw Isle of Dogs across the room and stopped reading after Lassie cracked his knucles and got on the keyboard. One of the WORST books I’ve ever read. Whatever she was trying to do there, she failed miserably.

And just what the hell WAS she trying to do? It was waaay too violent for all the humor that was in it. The humor was horribly unfunny, unless making fun of the uneducated is funny. The sentient, talking fish and animals was like something out of an 8th grade essay. The blatant racism, regardless of how she tried to gloss over it, made me uncomfortable. And the entire City on the edge of their seats as they follow along with that putrid crap mystery writer was insulting. If that guy tried to submit those shitty columns to any newspaper in America, he’d get them back with form letters.

Phew! It took me about 60 seconds to type that. I guess I did think it was as horrible as you did. :slight_smile:

18

This sounds exactly like how Buffy went bad. Which came first?

19

The Hitchhiker’s books.

Hitchhikers was wonderful, Restaurant was passable, Life was inexcusably bad. Never even got through Mostly.

20

The George R.R. Martin edited “Wild Cards” books really started to lay stink bombs when they went from many authors writing small stories to one story spanning several books. The entire second volume is ass.

Second to the Ann Rice books after Lestat.

Hammers Slammers by David Drak has sucked on occasion. But the worst thing he does is make one new short story and release it buried in a bunch of previously published storys. So I end up having a crap load of repeats.

Thieves World has some latter-day suckage.

the In Hell series (Heroes In Hell, Kings in Hell, etc) went down the toilet and never concluded the main plot elements. Admittedly they painted themselves into a corner with some of the physics of Hell.

Amber was great until the last book. Zelazny had cancer even then I think and that prompted his slapdahs work on that one. Still, it’s my #1 movie making fantasy.

Dune ended up really turd-tastic.

Dreampark was not good after the first two.