Book series that go on too long

[Caliburn24]

As far as Honor Harrington goes, the last mainline Honor book started the war between the Solarian League and Manticore which has really shaken up that universe and the SL(and the evil people behind the scenes) make for some great bad guys. The potential is there for the next few Honor books to be as good or better than anything so far in the series.

But Weber may very well screw it up. His books have become increasingly slower paced, more talky, more exposition heavy with less and less action. His Safehold series for example is close to 90% scenes of two to four people talking in private about things that we the reader have already heard from other characters. It is quite the slog to get through.

If Weber can find it in himself to write more in the vein of his earlier Honor books, Apocalypse Troll, Dahak trilogy etc. then he could produce some brilliant new stuff in the Honorverse.

The next book in the series will be very telling as to which direction the series is headed towards.

 

[cardinal biggles]

For me, Robert B. Parker's Spenser simply went on way too long, Spenser becomes increasingly smug, and with ever more sugary rubbish about how lovely Susan Silverman is. Equally, the later Parker books are fairly awful and not a patch on the first few.

I've always looked at the Spenser series as literary comfort food. They're quick reads with witty dialogue, and I find them amusing.

Well it seems that both Spenser and Jesse Stone get to live on after their creators death as both series will continue, written by different authors.Perhaps it is poetic justice of a kind given Parker's own (terrible)re-vamp of Philip Marlowe.
As it happens,I love Spenser,I have "Painted Ladies"next up on my to-read pile but yeah,I have to agree that the Susan Silverman character is probably the single- most energy sapping character in detective fiction.(probably a candidate for the "airlock"thread elsewhere on this board.

I hadn't heard that the Spenser and Jesse Stone novels would be continuing under new authors. To be honest, that kind of disappoints me, because I liked the fact that for better or worse, Parker wrote every single one of those books, without the help of ghostwriters or co-authors (I'm looking at you, James "New Cookie-Cutter Book Every Six Weeks" Patterson). You're right about Susan, though. Part of me wishes she hadn't come back after she left Spenser back in the mid-1980s.


I'm really getting tired of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels. I prefer the way the characters are written and portrayed on True Blood better, and the books have become too bogged down in vamp, were, and fae "politics." Please, end it soon.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'm really getting tired of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels. I prefer the way the characters are written and portrayed on True Blood better, and the books have become too bogged down in vamp, were, and fae "politics." Please, end it soon.

Actually, Harris has already announced that she intends to end the series with book #13 or something.

 

[Gaith]

Those Hebrew short stories about that one Yahweh frood. They should really have stopped after Exodus, and forgotten about the rest.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I haven't read the two prequels, though, so I can't comment on them.

For what it's worth, the prequels were actually pretty good. It introduced some interesting ideas to the series, plus some pretty interesting characters.

Would you say they're closer to the spirit of the original three books? I thought the last two had really good characters and that Asimov's writing was much better than in the first three, but the books simply weren't "Foundation" books. If they're closer to the originals, I might have to check them out.

 

[ATimson]

As far as Honor Harrington goes, the last mainline Honor book started the war between the Solarian League and Manticore which has really shaken up that universe and the SL(and the evil people behind the scenes) make for some great bad guys. The potential is there for the next few Honor books to be as good or better than anything so far in the series.

But Weber may very well screw it up. His books have become increasingly slower paced, more talky, more exposition heavy with less and less action.

Unfortunately, that's an artifact of Honor having moved from the command chair of a ship to the Queen's inner council. Honor is at a point where she shouldn't be involved in the action.

If you want "older-style" Honorverse books, that's what the the Saganami Island novels (The Shadow of Saganami and Storm from the Shadows) are for.

 

[donners22]

I enjoyed the Hardy Boys as a light read when I was young, but geez did that series go on and on. They seemed to follow much the same formula too, especially seemingly separate cases which just happened to link up by the end of the book.


Also, probably an unpopular view here, but I do not like the Star Trek relaunch books (other than Enterprise) at all. I wasn't drawn into them at the beginning, but when they decided to start having disaster after disaster (which I had just been railing at Dragonlance for doing) I lost all interest.

 

[JoeZhang]

I hadn't heard that the Spenser and Jesse Stone novels would be continuing under new authors. To be honest, that kind of disappoints me, because I liked the fact that for better or worse, Parker wrote every single one of those books, without the help of ghostwriters or co-authors (I'm looking at you, James "New Cookie-Cutter Book Every Six Weeks" Patterson). You're right about Susan, though. Part of me wishes she hadn't come back after she left Spenser back in the mid-1980s.

I should have made it clear that although I think they went on too long, I'm a big fan of the Spenser novels - I still love reading them.

The Jesse Stone books are interesting in that you can't help but feel that they contain the material that he wanted to write about but no longer fitted into the Spenser books. It was also cool how towards the end, he started to merge together the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall bits of the em.. Spenserverse.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Kind of off-topic, but I'm impressed at how well Robert Crais has maintained the quality of his Cole/Pike novels over almost a quarter of a century now. I only discovered them last year and have read almost them all now and can find no dip in quality.

The only thing that I wonder about is that both Pike and Cole are meant to be Vietnam veterans (albeit that both were very very young, even underage, during that conflict). He hasn't done a Joseph Wambaugh and ignore age and progress of time over the novels. Both men must be well into their 50s now. So how long will Crais continue to have them doing the all-action stuff?

 

[JoeZhang]

Kind of off-topic, but I'm impressed at how well Robert Crais has maintained the quality of his Cole/Pike novels over almost a quarter of a century now. I only discovered them last year and have read almost them all now and can find no dip in quality.

The only thing that I wonder about is that both Pike and Cole are meant to be Vietnam veterans (albeit that both were very very young, even underage, during that conflict). He hasn't done a Joseph Wambaugh and ignore age and progress of time over the novels. Both men must be well into their 50s now. So how long will Crais continue to have them doing the all-action stuff?

Interesting - I'll have to check those out - maybe we need to have a "tough guy fiction" thread as it seems there are plenty of us here reading them.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I really recommend them. Crais has a really readable breezy style and the books have plenty of wisecracks, action, clever plotting and strong characters. And yes, good idea about the thread.

 

[Atticus]

I enjoyed the Hardy Boys as a light read when I was young, but geez did that series go on and on. They seemed to follow much the same formula too, especially seemingly separate cases which just happened to link up by the end of the book.

That's because they did follow a very strict formula:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate

Still enjoyed them

 

[ATimson]

I enjoyed the Hardy Boys as a light read when I was young, but geez did that series go on and on. They seemed to follow much the same formula too, especially seemingly separate cases which just happened to link up by the end of the book.

Were they expecting readers to start from the beginning, or were they expecting the older title to go out of print and for people to just pick up new ones? (Their policy of releasing rewrites indicates the latter, in which case it goes "on and on" because of the churn.)

 

[bluedana]

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (historical fiction set in 1700's Britain and America). The first one, Outlander, is epic and wonderful; the second and third (Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager) are really good, and then the series just goes on and on, so that now it just feels like Forrest Gump in the eighteenth century.

 

[HighteeHeller]

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (historical fiction set in 1700's Britain and America). The first one, Outlander, is epic and wonderful; the second and third (Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager) are really good, and then the series just goes on and on, so that now it just feels like Forrest Gump in the eighteenth century.

So true! I cant even get past the first chapter of the last book. And ive tried..many times.

I'll second the Sword of Truth series, and add the Gunslinger Series to the mix. Good god, the last three books were horrible!

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

But Weber may very well screw it up. His books have become increasingly slower paced, more talky, more exposition heavy with less and less action.

Unfortunately, that's an artifact of Honor having moved from the command chair of a ship to the Queen's inner council. Honor is at a point where she shouldn't be involved in the action.

Wasn't that also the increasing problem with Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels until he did Red Rabbit as a prequel?

I have a hard time getting into the new Star Trek novels now simply because so many cataclysms have rocked the Star Trek universe lately, making the Alpha & Beta Quadrants almost unrecognizable in places.

 

[ATimson]

Wasn't that also the increasing problem with Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels until he did Red Rabbit as a prequel?

Yep, and Teeth of the Tiger with Jack's son. Clancy wasn't able to really run with either approach, though; after Teeth he gave up writing for a while before eventually handing the reins of his characters to Grant Blackwood.

 

[flandry84]

Kind of off-topic, but I'm impressed at how well Robert Crais has maintained the quality of his Cole/Pike novels over almost a quarter of a century now. I only discovered them last year and have read almost them all now and can find no dip in quality.

The only thing that I wonder about is that both Pike and Cole are meant to be Vietnam veterans (albeit that both were very very young, even underage, during that conflict). He hasn't done a Joseph Wambaugh and ignore age and progress of time over the novels. Both men must be well into their 50s now. So how long will Crais continue to have them doing the all-action stuff?

TBH,I think that Crais's books are exactly what is wrong with crime fiction right now.Don't misunderstand,I love the early Elvis Cole novels which were traditional detective/P.I books.
The series seems to now focus on the Joe Pike character who like Reacher and so many others is becoming a totally unbelieveable unstoppable one man army type.No mystery to be solved just bad guy after bad guy to be despatched one after another.
In fact the genuine mystery novel seems to be disappearing under a tide of gore-stained serial killer books.Super-evil geniuses slaying people in ever more diabolical ways.
It seems the "old fashioned"detective novel is way out of fashion.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I can see where you're coming from. The early ones were more of a traditional wise-cracking 'tec, working the mean (or sunny) streets of LA, with Pike as a supporting character. Now the balance is often evenly divided between the two characters, with Pike, a taciturn, borderline sociopath, getting as much time as wise-cracking, laid back Cole. But I'd say they still rely on investigation and gumshoe work as much as on muscle and guns.

The style has changed, but happily (for me anyway), Crais' readibility remains intact.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The Anita Blake books. Lost interest when the books turned into porn.

I expect Anita Blake to be picked up as a Starz series any day now.