The reason I stopped reading a series I loved:
Frank Herbert's Dune series. I made it through God Emperor of Dune, but balked at the others. The books were getting too long and not as interesting.
Jean Auel's Earth's Children. I liked Clan of the Cave Bear, read the next two. By the third I figured out if Auel cut out duplicating the same for or five pages of descriptive landscape, most of it repetitious, the number of pages would be cut in half. The third book I started skipping not only the description, but the sex scenes as they were repetitious.
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan books. Again the books were getting too long, and after Executive Orders I didn't think there was much further to go. He lent his name to other series but used ghost writers and they were second rate.
Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders. I stopped at Moretta Dragon Rider of Pern. I was time to go on to someone else.
Anne Rice. I read the vampire books, the Witches of Mayfare, The Body Thief, The Mummy: Rameses the Dead and it was time to read something new.
I've started a number of series on Unlimited and after reading the first three or four books the next ones you had to pay. If the series was good enough and the price was under three bucks I'd spring for a few. If the price was too high, Sayonara.
James A. Michener. He never did a series, but I once tried to read all the books he had in print. I spent two years reading only Michener and barely made a dint. He beat me. The Source is still one of my all time favorite books and I enjoyed all of them, but it was time to move on.
Barry Sadler and Tony Robert's Casca series. There's now 52. I've read, listened and re-read the first 22 books for decades. Tony Roberts took over the series and has now written 25 of them. Books 49, 50 and 51 I felt he phoned in the stories. All of them fit a formula, but he was rehashing times and places already covered. The last one I debated about bothering with. Since it's on unlimited and only takes about six hours to read I got it. This one is Casca: The Rough Rider. It still has the formula, but the place and time was new so it made for an interesting read. I'm not sure I'll stick with the series in future.
18 comments:
I loved the first few Earth's Children books, but you're absolutely right about their flaws (especially in the later books). That series needed a better editor for sure.
FYI, your link on the Long and Short Reviews site is broken.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts on this topic, Patrick. My favorite by James Michener will always be "Hawaii". I read the story during the summer of my 17 year, and he opened my eyes to historical fiction.
Thanks for stopping by. I have read some of all these, but I've not read the entire series of any of those. And it's been years since I've even read those (like high school old).
Glad you agree, Lydia. Thanks for the heads up. I'll fix it.
Mary, that was a good book. It starts with lots of geology, just like Alaska. He can put a lot of information in his stories.
Judy, you can get burned out on some authors and then go on.
those sound like good reasons. Sometimes the authors have to raise the price of the series from free because they can't afford to do a bunch in unlimited. there's no right answer to unlimited, but I know I've run into that with books I read. I don't think the price jump from free to 5.99 is good, though. Man. That's high.
Good post! Thanks. :-)
My son and husband loved the Dune books, until the son took over when his father died. Then they went downhill. I loved all of the Pern books--the ones that Todd, Anne's son, wrote, were okay. But he often has very young girls (under 18) with older men (early 40's). Bleah. Yes, Ann Rice got WAY too wordy. I never even finished the Mayfair Witches books.
BTW, you put a comma, not a period, in your blog eddress, so I have to fix that to come here. FYI.
Glad we're in agreement, Megan.. With unlimited you get paid for the number of pages read which if you have a book with over 200 pages gets you more in royalty than if it's priced under 2.99 with a 35% royalty.
Fiona, I couldn't fix the first one and did another one. We're in agreement on the Dune and Anne Rice.
Good list, and good reasons. I really do feel like some of these would be fine if they were still getting edited the way the first books were, but they're so popular that it doesn't happen -- and that's a shame.
Yes it is, Michael.
I've heard other readers make similar comments about Jean Auel's books. I read two of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series, but lost interest.
Glad we agree, Tricia.
Ooh, I used to love Michener's books! They'd keep me occupied for aaaaaages they were so big and juicy and interesting. I haven't read one in years though. Ta for the reminder of an author I used to love.
Happy to ablidge, Cathryn.
I've found that some authors I've read don't know when The End has come and the series carries on far too far. Sounds like you've encountered that a bit, as well.
Some of that may be contractual obligations, Dixie. Others want to please their fans, I guess, not in that category.
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