I’ve got the sequel to Ricardo Pinto’s fascinating The Chosen. I waited for months for this book, eagerly snatched it up, and have been stalled at page 76 for three weeks.
What books or movies did you love but you found that the sequels were either terrible or unbearable for other reasons?
Another book for me: Book Two in George RR Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series. I just couldn’t keep reading it.
Julie
My best example is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. The first book is phenomenally-good, but Speaker for the Dead was vaguely disappointing, Xenocide annoying, and all copies of Children of the Mind should have been sent back to the printer and pulped, to be used for better books.
Kind of like a four-book descent into Hell… but not in a good way.
My best example is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. The first book is phenomenally-good, but Speaker for the Dead was vaguely disappointing, Xenocide annoying, and all copies of Children of the Mind should have been sent back to the printer and pulped, to be used for better books.
Kind of like a four-book descent into Hell… but not in a good way.
Well, it wasn’t good enough of an example to merit two posts… 
Rendezvous with Rama
The first volume, was incredible. Unfortunately, the subsequent novels were quite the opposite…
Allow me to be the first to say: Matrix Reloaded. I have never been so bored.
D’ah! I was hoping to be the first to post Matrix Reloaded!
Movies:
Die Hard 3. I loved the first and second movies, but the whole running-around-solving-puzzles thing in the third movie bugged the heck out of me.
Highlander 2. What a piece of dreck. I remember being in the theater opening night, eagerly awaiting this movie (as I’d loved the first one) and walking out PISSED.
Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2 (although they’re technically prequels, not sequels). I’ll echo Triumph the Comic Insult Dog when I call them George Lucas’ table scraps.
Terminator 3. Not a bad movie per se, just didn’t even come close to measuring up to the quality of T2.
Books:
Simon Green’s Deathstalker series. Loved the first and second books, but they slowly started losing quality till the end of the series. I didn’t particularly like the start of the new Deathstalker series, either.
Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series. Liked the first two, but the third got too bogged down in political shenanigans to be truly entertaining.
The last couple of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. Executive Orders and The Bear and the Dragon just dragged.
Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010. <wince>
Very often Hollywood sequels would be rushed out, on a fraction of the cost of the original, in order to rake in a quick profit. Son of Kong had a dismally small budget and schedule, to the chagrin of the folks who made it and really wanted to do better. Return of the Fly was so underfunded that it was made in black and white, whereas the original was in color. For the climactic “fly with a human head” they used a pitiably bad photo super-imposition that a kid with a home movie camera could;'ve done (the real fly’s head shows through the superimposed acto’s head).
Neither of the two “Mr. Tibbs” sequels to In the Heat of the Night came anywhere close to the original.
The Two Jakes was an unworthy followup to Chinatown. It wasn’t bad, just dull and unnecessary.
Gremlins II: The New Batch. Sure, I got the joke that they were taking jabs at themselves and I appreciate it at that level, but the first one was loads better.
for books, Gods of Riverworld, the fifth book in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series, and the only one to have Riverworld in its title. It’s obviously an afterthought, and completely wrecked much of the premise that made the first four books so strong.
For movies … First Blood was incredible, First Blood Part 2: Rambo was pretty good, but Rambo III was horrible. It had some good one-liners, but that’s about it. I bought the trilogy set, but Rambo III’s gettin’ used as a coaster.
It sucked donkey wangers. Whoever let Jack Nicholson direct the film should have had his nuts hammered flat. Stupid dialog, bad editing, bad writing…a turkey for all seasons.
The Two Jakes was also my first thought. I’ll add Jaws 2, I think they were still attempting to make a decent movie with that one. I’ve heard 3 & 4 were entertainingly bad, IIRC 4 introduced the “This time it’s personal” schtick.
For an oddball mention, The Dark Knight Returns was a great piece of comic art, Dark Knight Strikes Again was an embarrassing waste of ink.
I liked Speaker for the Dead a lot. And half of Xenocide. The rest I can do away with.
And I absolutely love GREMLINS 2. Manic insanity. Loads better than the first’s suburban fairy tale. Of course, that’s my humble opinion, and I know most people would disagree.
Which you may want to keep in mind when I tell you how much I enjoyed the movie FREEWAY. The Reese Witherspoon fractured fairy tale. Thought it was great. The sequel, however, is garbage.
And yes, Dark Knight Strikes Again was garbage as well. Way to embrace fascism, Frank. And yes, American culture is ruled by MTV. Of course. Do you ever turn off the TV and leave the house?
I would nominate both the sequels to The Witching Hour by Ann Rice. Lasher was ok but paled compared to the original, Taltos just plain sucked. The original could have stood on its own- I actually liked Rowan in the first book, but by the last I wished she’d died giving birth to that thing.
On the flip side, just finished Porno by Irvine Welsh- I’m a huge fan of almost all of his works (except Filth which I can’t find anyone who likes that)- Porno is the sequel to Trainspotting - I loved the first book, but the sequel was outstanding and I enjoyed it even more.
One of my favorite books is “The Forge of God” by Greg Bear. I had to force myself to read the sequel “An Anvil of Stars” all the way through. Everything I enjoyed about the first book was missing from the second book. Basically all the characters did in the second book was argue, sleep for long periods and fret about what was going to happen. BO-RING!
One of my favorite books is “The Forge of God” by Greg Bear. I had to force myself to read the sequel “An Anvil of Stars” all the way through. Everything I enjoyed about the first book was missing from the second book. Basically all the characters did in the second book was argue, sleep for long periods and fret about what was going to happen. BO-RING!
Three words: “Leaving Cold Sassy.”
This is actually the opposite of the problem I’ve having with The Standing Dead (the sequel that inspired this thread). It’s very similar to the first book in being set in a horribly oppressive culture on a horrible world with horrible situations and horrible people.
It’s a completely amazing bit of world building, mind you, just too much for me. I’d highly recommend at least the first book to non-wimp fantasy lovers.
Julie
You know what might be good? If Thomas Harris were to write a sequel to Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.
On second thought, though, he might just mess it up. Much of the scariness of Hannibal Lecter derives from how he manages to still be terribly dangerous even when he’s confined in a maximum security prison; it would be tough to write something as compelling about Lecter on the loose–it would be very hard to come up with anything that Hannibal Lecter could do that would be as frightening as the dark, unformed imagings that the reader generates from thinking of his escape in The Silence of the Lambs. Also, I think the essential mysteriousness and rather unfathomable motivations of Lecter are an important component of his character; exploring the history and psyche of Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon was so effective that Harris might be tempted to do something like that to Lecter, but I just don’t think it would work with Lecter–he’s a completely different sort of character from Dolarhyde.
Clarice Starling is a great character, though–it might be fun to see her in another book. But only if Harris stayed true to the character he created, of course.
Yeah, all in all, it’s probably best if Harris just resists the temptation to write a sequel to Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.