Lois McMaster Bujold is my favorite author, but Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is weak by any standards. There’s almost nothing for the main characters to overcome, and the dialogue is dull.
Same here. I’m sure I read Mostly Harmless but couldn’t tell you a single thing about it. On the other hand, I still remember being very disappointed in how bad and pointless So Long… was.
The Dirk Gentley novels I didn’t really care for the first time but then I re-read them for some reason and they quickly became favorites. I’d rate them above everything except the original Hitchhiker’s Guide. But, given my original impression, I can understand that others might not have cared for them.
I’m pretty sure Widows Walk was where I gave up on Robert B. Parker after he’d written the same Spenser novel about 4 times in a row, just rotating the sidekicks. It felt like he just didn’t care any more, so why should I?
At his best (i.e. the middle books of the Matthew Scudder series), Lawrence Block wrote some of best mystery/detective fiction of all time - absorbing plots, wonderful characters, crackling dialogue.
Then there was crapola like “Small Town” (2003), in which Block’s inner creepy old man emerged to create embarassingly bad erotica.
I hadn’t realized that Block, before becoming famous had written a slew of low-rent fiction under pseudonyms, including such glorious titles as “Campus Tramp”, “High School Sex Club”, “$20 Lust” and “Gutter Girl”.
I disliked Snuff more than Academicals, enough so that I still haven’t yet read The Shepherd’s Crown or Raising Steam. I need to fix that.
I think Matter is part of the unspoken rule that every Anglophone writer needs to try at least one Regency historical novel. Slow, but I liked it more the The Hydrogen Sonata.
The Ringworld Throne is the worse book Niven has ever written. Long, dull, mostly about characters I couldn’t care less about. And would Niven make up his mind already about how powerful and intelligent Pak Protectors are supposed to be? One moment, they’re Superman crossed with Xanatos; the next, they’re a bright human as strong as a chimpanzee. At least Protector was short, though I liked it much more than Chronos.
I’ve not read all of Charles Stross’s books, but you could easily skip The Annihilation Score, and not miss much in the Laundry Series. Combines comic book superheroes with way too much love of bureaucracy and spiced with lament after lament on the plight of educated, Western middle-aged professional women.
I liked King’s Cell, for the first hundred pages or so. As usual with his work, it goes down the tubes as soon as the supernatural gets invoked. Provided you realize The Gunslinger is totally different in tone than the rest of the ‘Roland’s Universe’ works, and are fine with it, the series is great right up till about midway through Wolves Of The Calla. I really should have stopped there. I will try the Keyhole book, since many of you have recommended it.
I quite agree with Song of Susannah. I read it in one sitting knowing that if I put it down I wouldn’t restart reading it.
Wow, color me gobsmacked!
I absolutely LOVE Dirk Gently!
David Weber is a fairly prolific SF writer and I have been a fan of his Honor Harrington series for nearly 20 years, but his next-to-last novel in the arc, Shadow of Victory, was an obvious case of an author falling in love with a minor character from a previous book and basically repeating the story-line from the previous book(s) so he could tell you all about him. It wasn’t even a real compelling character, and it led to his final book in the series being compacted and an unsatisfactory conclusion.
Only novel of his I regret spending the money for the hardback.
You reminded me of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series.
The first book, Clan of the Cave Bear, was the best of them. The writing wasn’t all that good, but it was an engaging, thought-provoking tale, and it got me started on the series. Clan of the Cave Bear was also the shortest book in the series.
The second book was the second best and second shortest.
The third book was the third best and third shortest. See a pattern here?
The fourth book was bloated and only the fourth best.
The fifth book was bloated beyond belief and flat out unreadable. Didn’t make it halfway through before I bailed and swore off Jean Auel forevermore. If the series continued after that, I don’t want to know.
Lots of other nominations for Stephen King, but for me it was Dreamcatcher (although I haven’t read some of the other ones mentioned). King himself admits he wrote most of it while under the influence of pain killers after his accident.
I’m binge-reading the Vorkosigan Saga in narrative order, approaching halfway through (just this morning finished The Borders of Infinity). I’m loving it. Haven’t hit a clunker yet. But I’ll consider myself forewarned.
You know, the Vorkosigan Saga has got to be one of the longest series ever assembled. That Bujold has maintained such a consistently high quality throughout (so far as I’ve gotten), for so many decades, is a remarkable accomplishment, worthy of some lifetime achievement award.
Well, he was a friend of Dorothy after all, wasn’t he? 
The latest “Longmire” book. Didn’t even bother after reading the reviews.
Personally, I gave up on the Honor Harrington series when I picked up a book in a bookstore, wasn’t sure if I’d read it, so I read the synopsis on the dust jacket… and still wasn’t sure if I’d read it. All of the later books were the same damn story.
Three pages and no one has nominated RAH’s JOB? I came up for air after reading it and wondered if I could get the two days of my life back…
Very few Heinlein fans will argue that Job was good. We just won’t agree with you that it was his worst.
I won’t claim that it is good, but I enjoyed it.
Has there ever been a lengthy fiction series featuring particular characters that didn’t get stale/sloppy/boring towards the end?
Another example: Dick Francis’ books were consistently well-written and entertaining but went downhill late (even before he brought his son in as co-author). I got about halfway through the last one I bought before abandoning it in an airport, something that would have been unthinkable in years past.
Many readers apparently get so invested in keeping their favorite series going that they enable mediocre and even atrocious writing, by the original author or copycats. Just let it go, fer crying out loud. Move on to something new.
I will say that Job was a good novel. it was just very unlike everything else he wrote, good or bad. Job must have been the second or third Heinlein I red (the first was definitely NOTB, but I’m not sure whether “Ttime Enough For Love” came next for me), so I wasn’t as deep into the future history stuff as I would later become.
Of course, nothing compares to the wonders that awaited me in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.”
Well, you’re persistent, I’ll give you that.