Agreed. I wonder if they didn't think they could sustain it for 8 more films, or if they would have to pay the kids too much to split the last four books up.
Book series that go on too long
- Thread starter JoeZhang
- Start date
Agreed. I wonder if they didn't think they could sustain it for 8 more films, or if they would have to pay the kids too much to split the last four books up.
Studios won't be shy about splitting books up in the future. It worked out huge for Harry Potter and will obviously double the movie for Breaking Dawn.
That and a 27 year old Daniel Radcliff might ruin my suspension of disbelief.
Oh dear God! I've started the the series twice and each time by the fourth book it's so obvious he's milking it I've lost complete interest.
Very much so, 'Mission to Minerva' was a mind numbing boring slog through the mechanics of making time travel work that overshadowed the characters. I was very disappointed with it. I can see the complaints about
'Thieve's World' though I enjoyed it all the way to the end. I liked Lynn Abbey's revisit to the world as well. Ursula LeGuin's Earth Sea Trilogy should have been left as a trilogy, I didn't care for 'Tehanu' at all.
How do folks feel about the Honor Harrington books?
Turtledove rules especially his misplaced legion books.
This, oh dear God this. I'm surprised that there hasn't been an earthquake from all the grave-flipping Frank Herbert must be doing. Dune does not lend itself well to a Star Wars-style expanded universe, and Brian Herbert's shoddy writing does not help the situation at all.
I think that Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series went on far too long. I love the first few books to death; the latter half of the series, not so much. Pillars of Creation was already pretty shoddy, and the Jagang storyline had already been going for about 5 books; then the final few books went and beat on that dead horse for a grand total of 9 books devoted to a single story arc. I have yet to read the latest book (the first one in 14 years to not mention facking Jagang), The Omen Machine, but I seriously hope that it's the very definitely final book.
For what it's worth, the prequels were actually pretty good. It introduced some interesting ideas to the series, plus some pretty interesting characters.
I thought Forward the Foundation was a wonderful book. (I would rank it fifth among Asimov's fiction volumes, after the Foundation trilogy and I, Robot.) Unlike the other sequel/prequel novels that he wrote later in life, it seemed to serve a purpose - as an elegy of sorts for Asimov himself, in the person of Hari Seldon.
I also thought it was the only later Asimov novel to introduce characters as memorable as those in his early novels - particularly Wanda Seldon and Hari Seldon himself, who is both a different man from the one he seemed in Foundation, and wholly consistent with his appearance there; it's akin to meeting Theodore Roosevelt the man vice Theodore Roosevelt the legend.
I haven't read Mission of Honor or . . . whatever the most recent book was called, but I thought the later Honor Harrington books were at least the equal of the early books in the series (certainly of at least all of them except The Short Victorious War). The Shadow of Saganami and Storm from the Shadows, were especially a return to form, as, I thought, was At All Costs - when not busy detailing the relative throw rates of missile barrages.
For my own taste, the Ender series has grown too expansive. (Yet I await every new novel.) The strength of the series seems to be diluted with every new installment, with the possible exception of Shadow of the Giant, which profited from a fortunate intersection with the epilogue of Ender's Game that elevated the novel above other recent books in the series.
Last edited:
James Patterson's Alex Cross series.
The plots were getting thinner and thinner.
I may also say the same of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series once I get through them all again. I stopped after TRACE last but I'm testing the waters again.
The plots were getting thinner and thinner.
I may also say the same of Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series once I get through them all again. I stopped after TRACE last but I'm testing the waters again.
If you wanted a place to stop, Confessor was it; that was the finale to the Sword of Truth arc. The Omen Machine isn't meant to be any sort of a finale, just another story in the lives of Richard and Kahlan.
I fully agree. It was a great prequel that actually introduced many interesting things about the series. Was it that one that also introduced Dors Venabili? I liked that character quite a bit. One of the better prequels I've ever read. Anyhow, I found the early Hari Seldon pre-Foundation quite interesting.
The Anita Blake books. Lost interest when the books turned into porn.
^ That's when you lost interest?!!!!!
Was it the one where she turns out to have super vampire sex powers that require her to have sex constantly? It literally went from sex scene to exposition to sex scene to exposition to shoot out/sex scene to exposition and that was pretty much the whole book. She may as well be on the Harlequin rack at that point.
The padding in George R.R. Martin's fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire is reaching the point that one wonders if his initial plan for a book trilogy - as opposed to this increasingly ponderous seven-tome epic - wouldn't have been a better idea.
Frankly, The Hitchhiker novels should have ended after the second or third one (anyway, before So Long and Thanks For All the Fish). I remember having all the Adams books in an omnibus, and while I blazed through them the series had seriously ran out of steam by the end.
And even with the concessions to the second and third books the first was easily the best. Adams was very funny, but he wasn't able to make a kind of endlessly amusing weird comic universe in the manner Pratchett did (the only really long running book series I have any fondness for).
Like with Hitchhikers, totally a book series I would have wanted stopped when the author was still alive - in retrospect, God Emperor is just a good book to go out on.
Frankly, The Hitchhiker novels should have ended after the second or third one (anyway, before So Long and Thanks For All the Fish). I remember having all the Adams books in an omnibus, and while I blazed through them the series had seriously ran out of steam by the end.
And even with the concessions to the second and third books the first was easily the best. Adams was very funny, but he wasn't able to make a kind of endlessly amusing weird comic universe in the manner Pratchett did (the only really long running book series I have any fondness for).
Like with Hitchhikers, totally a book series I would have wanted stopped when the author was still alive - in retrospect, God Emperor is just a good book to go out on.
When I first bought the Foundation Trilogy I had no idea there were other Foundation books. Since I wasn't wild about the original trilogy, I've never been interested in hunting 'em down.
While I agree that So Long & Thanks for All the Fish is dull & pointless, I actually love Mostly Harmless. I think Mostly Harmless is the best book in the series. It's certainly the only one to have a strong, comprehensible plot. I love Arthur the Sandwich-Maker. The sequence of Ford breaking into the Hitchhiker's Guide offices had me on the edge of my seat in a way I never thought Adams could do. And Adams expertly captures the voice of an angry teenage girl with Arthur's daughter Random.
I haven't read And Another Thing yet. Does anyone like it? Is it out in paperback yet?
Similar threads
