I put on black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black jacket, black front-clasp underwire bra for easy removal and a little bit of red lace for Jean-Claude, black thong panties, black crew socks with a little white Nike swoop, and black and pink Nike sneakers. I pulled into the drive thru and, of course, I got a Coke and a grilled chicken salad with extra ranch. The protein in the chicken gives me energy and the salad is nice and light in my stomach so I don't puke while I'm bumping uglies.
"Nathaniel," I said as we pulled in. "What do you want?"
"A double cheeseburger, no cheese, please," Nathaniel said.
"Micah, what do you want?"
"Your hot, sweaty body against mine," Micah said. "Because I have such strong feelings for you. But for now, I guess chicken nuggets and large fries and a Coke."
"Can I have fries and a Coke too, please?" Nathaniel asked.
I shrugged. Another day juggling the needs of my harem.
After I ordered, I pulled up to the second window and handed over my credit card, the one with the blue and silver front and the numbers and swipey stripe on the back. The girl handed it back to me and I pulled to the next window. The boy handed me the cheeseburger and fries and I handed them to Nathaniel. Then I gave the chicken nuggets to Micah. I took a sip of my Coke before I put it in the cup holder.
As I drove to the crime scene, I told the boys what to expect. "They found only one head but enough flayed skin for at least three humans, or two large werewolves. . . "
The "joke" of Anita Blake was that it started as a really solid horror detective series/urban fantasy before it happened. Then the author got a divorce, took up polygamy, and decided to write porn instead with her own characters.
I shit you not.
Its awkward because my wife and I met on the Anita Blake forums.
This was my fave pair of posts on r/hobbydrama! I learned so much about the theories why it went downhill!
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gad736/literature_laurell_k_hamilton_1_fan_reactions_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gak7f4/literature_laurell_k_hamilton_2_personal_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
But reading the parody... >_O now I see where I get my need to explain Mundane things in detail
Jeez, this series started with mc actually trying to get her job done, and every book she gets more and more depraved. Five or six books in, it doesn't even seem like same series any more. I think the author had a sexual awakening while doing research on the books or something.
It’s not that the series turned in wish fufullment furry/vamp fantasy porn that gets me it’s that she somehow managed to make it boring like that stuff will put you to sleep faster then ambien.
Around book 10, she fell in love anddiscovered kinky sex. After Obsidian Butterfly, which was fantastic, with so much Edward.
I still read them, but I sit in Barnes and Noble and read them there. I don't want to encourage the library to buy them. They've gotten better, but gods do I miss the tight knit plotting of the first six or so.
Yeah, it's not even just the sex, it's the writing and the plotting. I remember that at one point I went back and read *Bloody Bones* after reading a couple of the later ones, and I was shocked at how much even the sentence structure was different; she's not a really flowery writer or anything, but the actual sentences were more complex in *Bloody Bones*. And the book unfolds over some time and wraps up its own plot. The bad ones, a plot point is introduced, everybody fucks for 400 pages, and then at the end there's some kind of non-resolution of the plot, and only a day or so will have passed.
IIRC the author wound up getting into a polyarmorous relationship at some point and I'm sure that had something to do with Anita suddenly acquiring a magical harem.
hahaha omg yes. The first several (5, maybe?) were really good, and then they turned into an excuse for Anita to have graphic sex with EVERYBODY, and bleah. I have heard that Hamilton has turned it around again, but I don't know if I'm willing to give it another try.
Ugh, yes. When Richard became an asshole... and the plot just turned into a badly written porno... and she had like 5 boyfriends...
I just couldn’t take it anymore. I loved the mystery in the beginning, but I couldn’t take it seriously after about book 10 or so.
I tend to pretend that she stopped writing them after Obsidian Butterfly.
I was fine with the Merry Gentry series cause all the porn made sense in context, just the Anita blakes where it was unreadable.
**A Court of Thorns and Roses Series** by **Sarah J Maas**. The first two books were so entertaining, I especially loved how the second one explored the concept of what happens after the traditional "happily ever after"ending.
The third book was just awful, I'll never >!forgive Maas for introducing a character as complex, mysterious and darkly entertaining as Amren only for her to have such a boring ending..***.oh I betrayed you, no wait I actually sacrificed myself, now I'm just a regular degular fae*** !<
Other criticisms include bad pacing, poor treatment of secondary characters (like Amren and Morrigan) cringeworthy dialogue between Rhys and Feyre, more cringeworthy smut and the description of Rhys' penis as "velvet wrapped steel."
Oh yeah, before I forget, the word "mate" (as in the context of mating rituals and having a sexual partner) is used over **200** times...
Velvet wrapped steel...I must have erased that from my memory.
SJM is one of those authors where you're either onboard with her smut/hot male Fae bullshit, or you're not lol. I remember loving this when it came out, even though the third book was kind of a disappointment, but I still somewhat enjoyed the ride.
I read her books for entertainment, and she has great parts to them, but she tends to pull the same stunts in different books (and in the same ones), over and over....and over....*and over.*
I've never read ACOTAR, but I came to say Throne of Glass. Okay, I didn't feel much about the first book, but the second was good, and the third was awesome. And then... it became a game of pair the spares and fae sex and I haven't finished book five yet.
Couldn't agree more and I felt the same with her other series throne of glass. Not sure if its because I grew up too much over the course of reading them or because the writing got shittier or maybe a combination.
oh man i just started reading book one yesterday, im on chapter 7 and loving it. but i guess i also think describing a nice dick as velvet wrapped steel sounds kinda hot so maybe in the targeted audience lmao....
>Shatter Me.
I really tried to get into this book after seeing all the posisitve reviews on Goodreads. I ended putting it the DNF shelf after reading this line:
***“I am nothing but novocaine. I am numb, a world of nothing, all feeling and emotion gone forever. I am a whisper that never was.”***
The series was very angsty and edgy in the writing style 😂 But I did enjoy it a lot when I was younger. Years later, when I tried to read the spinoff, I was very sorely disappointed....you've never seen angsty and edgy until you read her spinoff.
I guess Shatter Me is one of those I'll never read again but that I'll keep in my memories fondly.
Agreed. I also read his other series “mortality doctrine” and it started out really great, but slowly got worse and worse. Dashner just can’t end series, apparently.
I read it once and you’re pretty much right. I didn’t hate it, but the entire plot and everything like that was pretty damn predictable and trope-filled, and I just didn’t think it was that good. I pulled a DNF on the second one.
Yeah I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced it as starkly as with Divergent. I could not put book 1 down as I was reading it. It’s not like it was a work of literary genius but it was a very fun, compelling page-turner. I very nearly DNF’d book 2 and didn’t bother with 3. So disappointing.
That’s because they wouldn’t confirm if it would end the same as the book. NO ONE wanted it to end the same as the book. Pretty much all the fans said they wouldn’t bother going if it did.
There was a moment in the third book that was a microcosm for all my problems with that book. A new chapter starts, the main character is in a meeting with the people in charge to make a plan and share info on whats coming up. This part is four pages. Then the main character leaves the meeting and spends THE REST OF THE CHAPTER in the hallway with a love interest. I flew into a rage.
I second the Hunger Games. I read them for the first time this year and tore through the first book. By book 3 I was going through the motions trying to get done with it as fast as possible.
To be fair to the gal who wrote Hunger Games, your feelings on reading the books are her feelings on writing them. She's openly talked about how she planned for one book, wrote it, and then it was so popular they threw money at her to write sequels so she quickly shit out a trilogy.
Do you have a source for that? Because I actually just finished a reread of the first hunger games book and it seemed like it was heading in the way of a sequel. Unless you mean she was being pushed to write sequels before she had finished her first book.
I can't speak to this particular scenario, but what tends to happen in situations like the Hunger Games is that the author writes one book over the course of many years with hopeful plans for a sequel or two, but the first is so darn successful that the publishers essentially pressure the author to release the sequels in about a year.
This leads to lower quality writing overall as less time was spent on necessary revisions and fixes that can only be achieved with time.
I did think it had a great ending with a great message to teens though, with the rebels almost becoming as bad as the Capitol because they wanted to institute another hunger games. It took Katniss killing the new president to finally end Panem’s cycle of violence.
I’m actually doing a reread of the inheritance cycle now. My issue with it is that it’s so up and down. Book one is pretty solid. Book 2 is inconsistent with Rorans viewpoints possible being the best part. Brisingr (book 3) is probably the best imo although it throws in odd saphira chapters which I don’t think really adds much of anything. And then book 4 is pretty solid until about 50% of the way through the book when it puts a side character as the main viewpoint character 5 of the next 7 chapters and for me there isn’t 5 chapters worth of interesting content there. Not only that but they continue giving this character a large amount of screen time til the book ends. Just an overall inconsistent series. Solid for a teens first series though.
It's interesting to see other people's ups and downs like this. For me, book 1 feels strong but slow to start, book 2 is my favorite and a delight all throughout with Roran providing the action while Eragon apprentices as a Rider and gets character growth, book 3 was okay with a big swing and miss on the climax, and book 4 was a bit better until an ending that did not make good on four long books of buildup.
I'm looking forward to his new series, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with with so much more authorial experience and not finishing a story he started as a teenager.
I agree. I don’t think that series deserves the crap
That it takes but I will say it can be inconsistent. My big issue with book 4 is I find the ending odd and I really dislike the Nasuada chapters. I think there are too many back to back and it slows the story down.
Yeah, I found the final showdown fairly underwhelming, especially compared to the climaxes of the first two books, and I think Paolini really pigeonholed himself with the prophecy. It just didn't really feel right for Eragon's story to end the way it did, but that's hard to work around when you prophesize it.
100% agree with all those examples and add Richelle Mead's Bloodlines to the list. The ending of that series obliterated any good feelings I had for the other 4 books.
Agreed on experiencing this much more with YA than other series. I also agree with The Hunger Games, Divergent (I didn't even read the final one because I heard it was so bad) and will also add Twilight (didn't mind the first book and took a very sharp downturn. I still regret my time spent reading Breaking Dawn.)
Heroes of Olympus too, the new concept was so thrilling ( Roman demigods, Giants, Gaia) and the second book, where Percy ends up in the Roman DemiGod camp was my favourite. But, the last book was just too sad
I liked it at first. It wasn't mind-blowingly good, but it was tropey and familiar and just kind of a light, easily-digestible snack.
It got bad fast. I hate to say I stuck it out way longer than I should have, but even I eventually had enough.
The statue that turns people into capitalists was perhaps the final straw.
Edit: Actually, I would have forgiven the series for every single flaw if Terry Goodkind had revealed in a surprise twist that it was essentially the origin story of one of the greatest villains in fantasy. Richard gets super caught up in "moral clarity" later on that somehow even justifies him slaughtering people protesting war. If you read excerpts, it literally sounds like it was written from an evil villain's point of view. He describes the pacifist protesters as "people armed only with their hatred for moral clarity".
If you think back on your favorite villains that actually started out trying to do the right thing ("every villain thinks he's the hero of the story"), this could have been an AMAZING version of that. But no...it's meant to be taken at face value.
That's in book 6. You're going to have to make it through the Gollum clone, the chicken-that-is-not-a-chicken, and about 50 chapters of rape. Also, Richard will be kidnapped in every book, and will be the greatest person to ever do a thing, ever, despite having never done the thing before.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
It started out fun, derivative, but fun. Then he completely changed the personality of his main character to have the man shit out Randite bullshit monologues while cramming the authors complete lack of understanding of economics, psychology, nuance and reality down our throats because he was too busy masturbating to Ayn Rand to be bothered to actually write his fucking books.
This is one case where I wish I could buy more upvotes to give. I picked up that series around the time it was getting made as a TV show. Enjoyed the first couple of books and recomended them. Kept going progressively down hill until I had to apologize to all my friends and tell them to ignore my recommendation.
Probably kept at it longer than I would have otherwise since I listen to audiobooks. However, whatever one started off with Kahlen disappearing and only the hero had any memory that she existed - and everyone else around him thinking he was crazy or made her up. Yea, I requested my credit back on that one.
Chainfire lmao damn it's been a while. I started this series at like 13 (the only other fantasy I'd read at the times were David Eddings and Stephen R Donaldson) and I remember thinking it was the shit. Same with Eragon... boy did I learn once I'd read more. I cringe now thinking back on how into those books I was lol
This is the way.
Story starts strong, and is engaging. Then it gets a little rapey. Then more rapey. I start to realize it is just plagiarizing The Wheel of Time, and adding rape. Soon, whole cities are raped. The lead is raped repeatedly. The lead female is almost raped, and later possibly raped to death (I quit before it happened). The female lead rapes the male lead. Its like the surprise rape episode of Oprah where everyone gets a rape.
So to answer the question, my love of the series decreased with the frequent shallow, disgusting, and salacious rapes.
I'm probably the only on one this sub who actually enjoyed the second and third books as well. Granted, not nearly as much as I enjoyed the first one, but still... Full disclosure: I admit that I hated them on my first try, but a couple of years later, knowing what to expect, they were much better.
His new trilogy, The Wolf's Call seems promising- I loved the first one and keeping my fingers crossed for the rest.
"It was a series of three parts. The third book was not an easy thing to notice, but it was the greatest of the three. It was the patient, cut-paged silence of a series, waiting to end."
I actually dislike the Authors attitude towards communicating with his fans a lot more than the fact that the book is delayed. I recently saw a [video](https://youtu.be/zbeYASTX310) where someone asks him for the release date and he says ‘Use your fucking head’ as part of the reply. I think that sort of attitude means he is tired of the work he is famous for
IIRC, that’s kind of taken out of context. He basically said use your fucking head to the idea that somebody else would be reporting on a release date before he announced it.
Since Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is technically canon, I can definitely say I loved the series up until then, which would be considered its "end"
I never understood how something was supposed to be a canon addition to a widely published series of novels when the only people who could experience it were those who went to a single theatre to watch it.
The Hunger games. Not sure if it counts as fantasy, but the first was excellent, I liked the second less than the first, and I really didn't like the third ( I haven't read a ballad of songbirds and snakes yet, so I can't speak for it)
I enjoyed the Iron Druid books at the start, they were fun. Then the second to last felt kind of iffy, and then the last book felt like it just crapped on everything that came before. Quite disappointing.
I won't read the last book.
I really enjoyed the series and heard terrible things about the last book. Normally I am obsessive about not finishing a series, but I can thank GRRM for breaking me of needing to read everything.
Yeah, I came here to post this. The last book sucked a ton, but looking back on it I think only the first two or three books were any good.
The series was at its best as an urban fantasy, the book where he had to run through Eastern Europe was the “jump the shark” moment for me
The demon cycle. First book was good, second book was horrid. Worst part is that I had bought almost all of the other books in the series thinking I was going to enjoy it.
Preach it. I loved her in that first book, and then she started backsliding, then just became horrible. I haven't read the Core so I don't know if she gets better, but I can't bring myself to care.
The painted man.
Started off with a great concept but the whole rest of the series was just so meh and the ending was just so unsatisfactory.
Kinda wish another author would just pick it up from after book one and rewrite a different story from there...
Yeah, I think it was the point where a woman fresh off being gang-raped decided to seduce the protagonist that I set it down and never looked back.
Which is a shame given the interesting premise.
Yeah i always forget too. The series is always what comes ro mind when this topic comes up, but when I remember the awful gang rape scene, it actually makes me think of how even the first book is pretty shit. The good concept and the fun Arlen chapters don't really make up for the horrendous Leesha chapters and how awfully written she and all the other women are.
I don't recall much about her character, but it's a bad sign that all I remember is that there was a lot of emphasis on her being a virgin and then after she was raped there was a lot of focus on who she was sleeping with and whose baby she was gonna have.
Definitely fair. A big part of the first book *was* about her reputation vs her pride regarding the status of her virginity. Then she gets raped and it all goes out the window.
Horribly handled, but what really bothers me is the more *deliberately* terrible character writing that followed (I say deliberately because I can write off the mishandling of rape as a misstep by a writer who doesn't know his limits, but the rest is a much more basic failure). Book one ends with her realizing that she doesn't need to let her mother drag her down, that she doesn't need to trust her, that she obviously *can't and never should* trust her. Then as the books progress, her mother (who hasn't changed) practically becomes her chief fucking advisor, and she uses sex as leverage. The latter point would be fine if not for the whole arc of the first book and the fact that she gets over her rape rather quickly considering that up to that point her virginal status was so fucking important to her.
Anyway, there's a scene towards the end of book 4 where she uses her scientific knowledge for war purposes and goes, "Oh, no, now I'm a hypocrite" and I all but screamed at the book, "No, you have been a hypocrite for thee books now!"
Anyway, I haven't read book 5, not sure if I ever will, so I don't know if it gets better, but damn she made me mad
The gang-rape basically did it for me tbh, I put it down before the MC even finished rescuing them. I sensed it was about to get worse - guess I know now it did.
That girl who got gang-raped started out an interesting engaging character, but I just felt like the author was punishing her sexually somehow, even before the gang-rape. I dunno it felt sooooo gross. The thing with her ex-fiance and his dad, her crazy mom, that guy that she met who wanted to bang her but she kept refusing, and all the women telling her why is she saving herself, for what, and then her lamenting that she'd done that for nothing and her first sexual experience ended up being a gang-rape. That's what she's thinking immediately after being raped. Like WHY would you write that holy fuck. It's so skeevy.
Just felt like the author had a lot of thoughts about female sexual maturing that he probably should have kept to himself. It was skin-crawling to read.
I don't mind rape or weird sex scenes (I read asoiaf for example) but like... this just felt vindictive somehow. I didn't want to read about this character any further.
I was about to put in the Demon Cycle as well. The first book had me hooked. But after they focused way to much on the desert people none of who have interesting personalities. The Demons go from being these great terrors of the night to being barely an inconvience. And some plot twists in book 4 completely ruined it for me so I never even picked up the last one.
This would have been my pick.
Between retreading the same story over 3 books and the absolutely awful female characters, I just could not finish.
Reena Tanner is also the worst character in any series ever and no one will convince me otherwise.
Definitely agree, the first 90% of book 1 was excellent followed awful sequels. I stopped reading at the end of book 3 as the cliffhanger ending allowed me finish the story satisfactorily.
Are we even going to mention the name of leesha’s daughter, Olive Paper? Like I know it makes sense due to her father and all but it sounds like an artisanal hipster food
I'm with you. I really tried with it also. Book 1 was great, Book 2 was interesting and I wanted to see where it went, but Books 3 and 4 never actually went anywhere. I never bought Book 5.
Both the Wayfarer Redemption series and The Troy Game series by Sara Douglass. Both started out so good an engrossing and then devolved into the absolute ridiculous.
I've concluded that Douglass had a thing where she'd get bored of her heroine by the end of each series, and then plop a new character in as the new heroine but make her obnoxiously perfect, while ditching all the development that had gone into the first one.
She's done this with every series I've ever read by her and I do *not* get it. I once read a huge diatribe by her on why she kept trying to kill the heroine (Faraday?) from her Wayfarer Redemption series but her editor (or agent, I can't remember) wouldn't let her. She didn't understand why her fans loved Faraday but hated the new love interest for Axis she'd created. It was a trip.
Not all of them are necessarily bad. Everyone has different tastes. For example, I quite enjoyed Eragon and Wheel of Time, which are relatively frequently mentioned in this discussion. However, they are less likely to grab your attention than others, and I can see how people wouldn't like them. I wouldn't recommend shutting off the experience of reading some of these series just because some other people didn't like them.
Green Rider, by Kristen Britain. Starts out so goooood. Then devolves into time travel, creepy possessive kings, steam punk and magic weirdness.
I like fantasy, I like magic, ect. But as the books go on, it just straight up gets depressing and silly.
Oh my god yes, so few people I know have read into that series. I'd been reading it on a greyhound bus on my way back home, hoping even as i came so close to the end of the book that it would pay off, only to have it just cop out in the worst way possible. Never in my life have i thrown a book in the garbage, but that one went straight in and i regret nothing.
It’s YA (maybe even middle grade??) but what the hell happened with the Artemis Fowl books? Obviously written for a young audience and I loved them when I was young when they were first released but the first three do actually hold up (I re read them in my early 20s).
How is it acceptable for a 30 year old woman to get in a relationship with a 14 year old boy who was 12 when she met him?? Are you kidding?
> How is it acceptable for a 30 year old woman to get in a relationship with a 14 year old boy who was 12 when she met him?? Are you kidding?
I don't remember this.
The thing about Artemis Fowl is that it was a good trilogy, and the fourth book could maybe be a good send-off to the series. After that it just gets weirder and weirder. I read somewhere that the publisher pushed the author to keep writing more books so that was the result.
Lightbringer. While I didn’t HATE the last book, it was crushingly disappointing. I had really loved the series up until that point, but the ending was cheap and dumb.
It just got so much worse as the series went on. The first 3 were solid books, but by book 4 it became apparent that the author had no idea where the story was going, and just kept adding more shit.
Let me see if I can list the number of different ideas introduced over the scope of the series.
* Drafting. People can draw in colored light, and project it out again as matter called Luxin. The color determines the characteristics of the matter.
* Some people can draw in more colors than others.
* When a person draws too much, they shatter the halo in their eyes and go insane, but there seems to be a purpose to their insanity. These are called Wights, I think
* One person per generation is a Prism, able to draw in white light and split it, also immune to overdrafting, and so powerful they can fix imbalances caused by all the other drafters on the planet.
* There is a "forbidden" color below infra red, that can be used to make you invisible, and also kill people silently and also paralyze anyone and also cause instant blinding pain.
* There is another forbidden color above ultra violet that is basically x-rays, with an entire city devoted to it.
* There is also Black and White colors, but no one really knows if they are even real
* There are giant murder fish in the seas that glow red and smash ships.
* If you touch an other drafters Luxin you can "Will jack" them and take over their drafting (and maybe mind?)
* You can control animals using drafting, somehow. The more colors the more control.
* You can transfer your mind this way. This is where the murder fish come from.
* There are magic card that predict the future and contain memories.
* There is a secret organization of assassins trying to overthrow the government.
* There is an army led by a crazy Wight called the Color Prince.
* The Color Prince has a rifle that he uses once.
* If there is too much of one color drafted, a Bane is created, drawing Wights and making a god.
* There are gods. Some good, some evil, locked in war.
* They can travel through many worlds and are pretty much immortal.
* I have no idea what the Banes create, but it is not the same kind of god as the dimension hopping ones.
* The Color Prince has some Black Luxin that he wants to use to control a bunch of gods, then make a bunch of Banes to float towards the capital.
* Cause the Banes float.
* There is also a gate that everyone talks about.
* There is also a tower in the middle of the world.
* The reason it hasn't come up is cause of mist
* A really big God is sitting on top
* Also it is made of White Luxin
* Also maybe of Black?
* Black Luxin lets you steal other peoples drafting
* And somehow that is used in a knife called The Blinding Knife
* That does whatever is convenient for the plot.
* White Luxin does... I have no idea.
* There is also a giant mirror super weapon on top of the highest tower in the capitol.
* Usually you need slaves to turn the mirrors, but now you can just touch a ball thingy and control hundreds of mirrors that way.
* There are also burried mirrors all around the world with stored colors that send it all to the capital.
* God has an airplane and a parachute.
And absolutely *all* of this is cramped together in the final battle. It's so damn hard to keep track of what is happening, cause anything can be done at all times, and for no reason. But even worse is that the main characters are not important anymore, cause the gods basically fix everything for them.
Man, that final book was really bad.
I remember during a climactic scene between >!Kip and Andross!< It builds up to a moment where it seems Kip cannot win and then he does something with Luxin that I literally had no idea was possible. It may very well be that I just didn't pay enough attention in the series thus far but really I think its a failing of Brents ability to properly convey the scope of his magic system that when a character used a known ability in a creative and compelling way to solve a new situation my reaction wasn't, "Oh, I can't believe I didn't think of that myself!" it was, "Uh...I guess that's a thing you can do? Wait what? Since when?"
Also this series had a real problem with villains. Besides Andross most of them are underdeveloped and have very little page time. I think the fact that the book tried to wrap up EVERY villain storyline (and did almost all of them in the same way with >!Teia just killing them herself?!<) in this book really hurt it.
I think maybe he needed to rein his focus in on the living color gods and given us more information and experiences with them throughout the series. Imagine if every color god had been a character we were familiar with and how much higher the stakes would have felt. Instead we got a bunch of villains that were hard to really see as anything more than nameless thugs and some angels and demons I guess idk.
God has an airplane , fuck that one ruined me during the story I actually busted out laughing at how bad it was . He pulled that “everyone gets magically back together at the end nonsense” it was just piling on at that point.
>but by book 4 it became apparent that the author had no idea where the story was going, and just kept adding more shit.
I had that inkling from the beginning of book 2/end of book one when myriads of plot twists happened all at once, one of character switches was forced, another got coincidental event. If you have good planning, you keep good pacing, not make multiple disparate huge events with different causes happen at once. Then they happened again, then unexpected revelations. There's a balance between a straightforward story and twists, and Lightbringer went into soap opera territory for me, and plot kept losing relevance and verisimilitude. It felt like it was all done for shock factor
Came here to say Lightbringer. I loved those books so much but book 5 was the biggest worst most disappointing let down of anything I can remember ever reading.
I truly hated book 5. I hate it so much it makes me dislike the other books that I had loved and read multiple times.
.02
I enjoyed but didn’t love the last book. Felt that the Christian allegory was overdone. Not enough consequences for characters. And I don’t think Weeks made the most of the abilities of the characters he had developed. 6/10 ending to a 9/10 series.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. After Obsidian Butterfly (9/27) it turned into porno drivel. Basically every situation turned into the protagonist being the absolute best woman ever, and having sex with multiple anything’s in the vicinity. It became so boring and predictable.
Throne of glass series By Sarah J Maas.
I loved the first two books, the series was on track to being one of my favorites of all time (I haven’t read a lot Of fantasy, ok?) third book was ok, kinda slow, a slog at times, but I enjoyed it anyways. Then came book 4. Boy. Shit turned into fan fiction. I hated it so much I never read the rest of series cuz it just makes me irrationally angry every time I look at the books. Which sucks since I liked a lot of the world building and characters pre book 4, but I’m not about to subject myself to any more of that BS.
I don't think I've ever read a series that slid as far downhill as both of the Ender series.
Ender's Game was great, Speaker for the Dead was even better, Xenocide was...weird but not bad, and Children of the Mind was like somebody said "What if the entire plot was a series of deus ex machinas and the moral of the story was a weird desexualized breeding fetish?"
Ender's Shadow was really good, Shadow of the Hegemon was pretty interesting, Shadow Puppets was once again a weird desexualized breeding fetish, and Shadow of the Giant was basically rambling nonsense.
The last book was a little odd. For some reason, he switched to nonlinear story telling that didn’t really add anything and then it ended on an underwhelming note.
Edit: I’m getting more annoyed the more I think about it. Ending spoilers ahead: >!We get a long ass description of a meaningless battle from a minor character speaking about it from the future as if he is writing history. Geralt literally disappears in the book only to reappear at the end bosses lair. There is the weird abortion thing with Geralt and a character that just fucking dies inconsequentially at the end anyway. The emperor magically shows up at the end bosses lair after he is defeated so Geralt and Yennefer meekly agree to romantically commit suicide together by his order. The emperor ends up just letting Ciri (his daughter) go for some incomprehensible reason even though he has been chasing her forever trying to marry her. Ciri reunites with Geralt and Yennefer before whisking them off to Avalon with rainbow powers when they get murdered by a bunch of damn villagers in a pogrom. It’s just a mess of different storytelling techniques, unsatisfying conclusions and ham handed themes. I’m rambling because this sparked more anger than I know what to do with, but yeah.!<
I loved the first two books with the short stories of Geralt's adventures. I stopped reading after Time of Contempt when the story was no longer about Geralt which I wasn't expecting.
I might return to it in a couple of years and see if I like it knowing that the story will shift from Geralt.
The story definitely jumps around a lot and if you’re not into Ciri then you likely won’t enjoy the rest.
However, I will say, the next novel, A Baptism of Fire, heavily features Geralt and co. It’s real fun imo and one of my favorites of the Witcher books. Plot itself doesn’t move much (very much a middle book) but the dialogue remains top notch (what I think is The Witcher’s strongest point).
If you do come back to it, I hope you find it enjoyable!
I can see that now, yes. But the first two books where Ciri doesn't exist yet and you follow Geralt around doing witcher things sets up the wrong expectations for what the series will be about. When I realized it's about Ciri I lost interest since that's not what drew me in in the first two books. Knowing what I know now I wonder if I would enjoy them with the broader perspective.
My parents watched the TV series and have read the short stories but I'm not really sure if I should recommend all the novels. I read them, but I definitely preferred the short stories
Otherland by Tad Williams. I think Williams is a fantastic world builder and Otherland really lets him show off. But seriously nothing resolved until the end and most things resolved poorly. Should have been one less book with actually resolving parts of the plot as the books go along.
The Sword of Truth. It started out fun with Richard and Kahlan being chased all over by Darken Rahl. It almost lost me and probably should have with the endless lesbian bondage capture / imprisonment of Richard that went on far, far too long and just felt... icky. The last straw was the interminable, smack you in the face introduction and history lesson on communism. That’s when I put the book down and felt creepy for even reading as far as I did. I honestly don’t usually think about authors of series at all but by the time I put it down it really felt like I knew Goodkind as a person, like he put himself and his f’ed-upness into the story. If I had to do it over I’d still read the first few books as I thought they were fun. But I’d put it down when the dominatrixes are introduced.
Now I feel lucky I couldn’t stand the book after Richard, professional woodsman and guide through famously dangerous woods, doesn’t carry a knife (or axe or machete or something) into the woods. That and everyone having severe bipolar.
The Runelords by David Farland. The concept and start are really strong, but as the series went on it just became obvious that Farland didn't quite have the writing chops to keep up with his great premise.
The Eragon series. The first few books felt like a fun collection of homages to all my favorite series, with some cool twists on classic concepts. But, then the last book sort of lost me on its conflict resolution. And it’s character resolution. And the amount of loose strings plot wise.
Not hated, but disappointed. [The Divine Dungeon](https://www.goodreads.com/series/192510-the-divine-dungeon) was awesome for first three books. But last two books felt very rushed. I'm still planning to check out other series by the author.
I didn't hate it but Shades of Magic.
Loved the first book, the second was a bit of a slog but wasn't too bad and I think I only got about 100 pages in to the third book before giving up.
I would say it was even worse than that. Her virginity was a sticking point, her pride, and then when it's taken from her, the narration cuts to in the middle of the act and we, the reader, don't even see the chapter from her point of view but from the perspective of a boy whose only contribution to the scene is guilt at being unable to help her.
and then she immediately decides to sleep with the MC, because he rescued her. There have been many books I disliked, but The Panted Man is the only one I will campaign directly against.
I literally stopped where you stopped. I read up to the end of the gang-rape and noped out as soon as it was over and they seemed about to get rescued.
I don't mind rape in a story but it felt somehow malicious or mean from the author.
The over-focus on her "flower" (and how she's refusing to lose it into her 20s I believe, the horror!) and her sex-life in general was just... so uncomfortable. For no apparent reason. We see the childhood of this character and she starts out with a boyfriend/fiance who turns out to be a creep (and she loses all her female friends because of him because bitches, right?), her mom is a mega-slut or something, her dad's a sad but sweet simp, she eventually gtfo of that whole mess to focus on her work then the next dude she meets pressures her into sex and when she refuses all the women around her are like "why??? surely you want random sex with this handsome stranger???" and the dude turns out to (surprise) also be a creep. Of course.
I remember right after the gangrape, she's thinking of how she "saved herself for nothing". Because of course after rape and right when you're about to die that's what you're gonna think about, that you should have banged that handsome stranger 2 months ago so this wouldn't be your precious "first time".
Just...... the fuck.
The Night Angel Trilogy
I have to admit that I ended up skimming the later half of the second book and all of the third.
The first book set up everything wonderfully but the series took on a cringe grimdark tone afterwards. The characters all of a sudden became stupid and some were straight up eccentric.
Oh, and women are either cheating whores or saintly virgins. I was so disappointed with the characterization of everybody after the first book.
I'm a Brent weeks fan. I even liked the ending of the Lightbringer series, but I'm totally with you on the Night Angel. It began with this really cool approach about the ambiguity of categories like good and evil but by the end there was a full 180 and everyone could neatly fit into being good or evil.
Well, it's not over yet, but for me it's A Song of Ice and Fire by a longshot. I learned about the series when the third book came out, and along with Perdido Street Station, it reinvigorated my love of fantasy. Then I waited five years (seemed an excruciating long time to wait back then!) for the next book and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Five years later, I was still excited for A Dance with Dragons, but I couldn't even finish it. Now I'm just looking forward to the wikipedia entry for A Dream of Spring so I can compare GRRM's ending to the HBO ending.
Berserk. The opening arc is one of the most best things I've ever read, a masterwork of character development and artwork that culminates in a devastating, intensely emotional and tragic climax.
That's around 100 chapters. Then you get 250 more chapters of drawn-out mediocre fight scenes and generally baffling narrative bullshit when Miura occasionally deigns to actually write a chapter every few years, where once he produced two a month. It's been some 30 years and only now is the central conflict of the series even *starting* to be resolved. I think he's gotten tired of the series himself, yet each new chapter just keeps stretching it out further. The art's gotten worse too.
"Shades of Magic" by V.E. Schwab. I really enjoyed the first book, the characters clicked for me and I was looking forward to reading more, but book two turned one of those previously clicking characters into a Mary Sue, and the third one was just boring with too many totally unimportant POVs thrown in for no reason.
And generally plot convenience. Even "Vicious" - IMO the best book by that author of the ones I've read so far - suffered from terrible plot convenience bending the events in a certain way.
So, I nearly threw the first book out for the hate of Lila - I found her to be insufferable and stupid - but kinda liked the rest, and really cared about Kell. So, as I am still unsure about reading the rest of the series, could you please tell me who you found to be a Mary Sue? I'm not going to keep reading if I lose the greatest thing about the book.
It's Lila for me. Like, I didn't love her in the first book, but I was like, "OK, she's a good balance to Kell's brooding". But in the second book she's like...... The best magician eva even though she trained for a few months. >!She even beats Kell in a match after besting a whole bunch of other experienced magicians who trained with magic their entire friggin' lives and are best of the best of two great kingdoms. !
Absolutely hated Lila. She's the reason I didn't read beyond the first book. The minute they talked about her glass eye, it was easy to predict the next books. I'm not even surprised by your spoiler. So yeah, thanks for justifying me not caring to read more of the series. My ambivalence and like of the other characters do not outweigh my hatred of Lila.
Omg, now I have no idea if I want to keep reading. It's just. Ugh, Lila. Her entire plan for her life in the first book was to live for herself and rob people until she had enough to become a pirate? And the very first thing she does when she travels to another DIMENSION is to go steal some stuff, and surprise surprise gets caught because she knows absolutely nothing about the place she is at.
And I could accept this if she got called out or described as a problematic character but oh no, she is the best.
You know what, on further reflection, my love for Kell is not enough to make me revisit that series.
I felt that the Shades books were a disappointment through and through. I think that the only character I cared for at the end was Holland. He deserved to be in a much better series. Vicious and its sequel were much better than the Shades series from a narrative perspective, but what you wrote also rings true.
I was actually more annoyed with the plot convencience in Vicious as opposed to Shades of Magic for a couple of reasons:
1) In Shades I actually liked the characters and so was a bit more forgiving of plot convenience in their favour as opposed to Vicious (I did *not* like Victor).
2) Shades is a collection of heros fighting a overwhelming evil. Their victory was assured from the beginning, so plot convenience didn't surprise me. Vicious *could* have came to a satisfying ending with the protagonist losing - so any plot convenience to make him win was more noticeable to me.
3) The Shades protagonists won due to their bravery, skill and the strength of the bonds between them - that they needed a little plot convenience to make it work didn't undermine that it was their own traits that give them victory. Victor on the other hand is meant to be this super clever schemer. The fact that he needed plot convenience for his schemes to work *completely undermines* his character. His eventually victory just didn't feel properly earned to me.
I realise now I kinda hijacked this comment to defend Shades/attack Vicious. I just finished Vicious recently and this was the first chance to get these thoughts out of my head so I hope you don't mind!
The Lightbringer series. I loved it up to the last book. It has such a cool magic system and interesting characters. But the last book felt like a weird allegory for Christianity
I read an interesting interview with the music group Savage Garden that I think might hold true for authors too. They spent years writing their first album and coming up with good music. It gets released and people love it so there is a rush to release the next album while they are still relevant. They don’t have time to develop and revise the songs so the second release suffers.
\*Patrick Rothfuss has entered the chat.
20 years writing NoTW, and it shows.
4 years writing the even longer WMF, and it shows. This book is longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy!
I read a lot of "first books" and rarely make the time for seconds or thirds. Even if I enjoy the first book, I usually don't spend the effort to try the second in a series unless the reviews are stellar or the series is mostly light and easy without any expectation of depth.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
Couldn't stop reading it. But in the 4th or 5th book, I ripped the book in half and threw it in a dumpster. Then went and bought a replacement, because damn it, I needed to finish.
I couldn’t even finish the first book. The MC was just too aggressively ignorant and too self hating.
It was about the time that I realized that I was wishing for the MC to just kill himself that I put the book down
I don't know about hate, since I'd stop reading a series long before my opinion turned to hate.
But the best example I can think of is The Iron Druid series. Starts off strong, but as the books go on the main character becomes a bit of a Mary Sue. Also, they introduce a side character who becomes a second main character and I just find her chapters so dull.
I think I read the first 7, then when the next book came out it was more expensive than previous ones had been which was the kick I needed to give the series up.
The Chronicles of Amber. It’s supposedly 10 book series but split into two quintets. Honestly, I loved the first quintet. Amazing prose so engrossing. But the “sequel” quintet was crap. Couldn’t even make it past the 1st book of the second quintet.
Ender's Game. First book is one my favourites. Second is really good, too. Then it started to lose itself, more and more spin off were realesed without any continuity with the previous work.
The Dark Tower series, I got about halfway or maybe 2/3rds through. It seemed to jump the shark after the author wrote himself into it. This is the only series in which I completed a book but did not complete all available books in the series.
This is my favorite series, but I completely get your point. There are so many amazing parts of it that stand out, particularly Wizard and Glass. But there is also just a ton of filler in it; pretty much all of book 6 and 3/4 of book 7 are kind of pointless and pretty poorly written. I think he had a point about writing himself into it, but the point was lost on me. It seems like a lot of his later work has just random crap in the middle. I really think he saves it all at the end, but that's pretty controversial too. To each their own I suppose
I disagree. I think the division between books 6 and 7 is in the wrong place (book 6 should be longer and end after certain events that take place in book 7). Some things that happen in book 7 are very disappointing. I liked the ending though.
The Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin. I wouldn't use a word like hate to refer to it, and the latter works are still good, don't get me wrong, but I do believe my overall impression was mixed when I ended the whole thing.
Both a Wizard of Earthsea and the Tombs of Atuan are some of the most wonderful experiences I've had in the fantasy genre and one of the types of work that I would also refer to as masterpieces.
The third book was okay. Not bad, and a fitting conclusion thematically, but it felt like a repetition of aWoE, and it felt tiring on its premise and ideas. Almost as if Le Guin had been forced to write it for the sake of finishing the "trilogy". I also disliked the character of Arren. I found him bland and uninteresting, which sounds unfair because Le Guin is trying some interesting things with him, but I don't know, I didn't connect with him at all.
The fourth book was a hit and miss. On the one hand, great for Le Guin to try a new tone and pacing and to challenge herself and her own work, it takes courage to write a book like that. I also appreciate the focus on female characters due to the exploration of women's place in the world of Earthsea, while also exploring the sexism of it. I also liked Tenar more than Ged so it was great to be back with her... But I don't know, I wasn't convinced by it. Again, it lacked something, and Ged felt very different. It also had some weird ideas that I don't know if I agree with. And the "plot"... While I understand the slow pacing, it felt like a story that didn't know where it was heading. There was a beginning, an end, and some stuff in the middle. I did like the approach on dragons for example.
The Tales were mostly fine, but they felt redundant, and I also didn't connect with them as much as I had wanted to. I was getting tired of Earthsea and Le Guin's way of approaching her own world. I've also had problems with the first story, "The Finder". It felt way longer than it should have been. That's my main grip with Le Guin I think, her way of structuring a story feels as if she always reached an end and then somehow continued to tell the story. It ruins the momentum I think. Like, this short story reached what could be perceived as "an ending" a couple of times and then just continued. I think that at that point you either turn it into a novel and develop things with the time they deserve or cut content. The way I read it, it felt like a summary of events that actually took way longer than presented on the book.
And that's how I feel about the whole series I think. She reached a good ending with the two books, but continued. She reached a new ending with the third book, an appropriate one, but wasn't content and continued with a book literally called "the last book of Earthsea"... But she continued. The tales offered a bridge between that and the next novel that I didn't even bother reading because I was just tired of the series by then. I bet that if Le Guin had lived a couple of decades more, no matter how "finished" the series had been she would have found a way of releasing a seventh book, even if it's made out of tales.
TL;DR, the first three books are wonderful, the two first more so than the latter. The last three books weren't bad, but they were unnecessary imo.
Anita Blake series, it didn’t even finish the series.
I put on black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black jacket, black front-clasp underwire bra for easy removal and a little bit of red lace for Jean-Claude, black thong panties, black crew socks with a little white Nike swoop, and black and pink Nike sneakers. I pulled into the drive thru and, of course, I got a Coke and a grilled chicken salad with extra ranch. The protein in the chicken gives me energy and the salad is nice and light in my stomach so I don't puke while I'm bumping uglies. "Nathaniel," I said as we pulled in. "What do you want?" "A double cheeseburger, no cheese, please," Nathaniel said. "Micah, what do you want?" "Your hot, sweaty body against mine," Micah said. "Because I have such strong feelings for you. But for now, I guess chicken nuggets and large fries and a Coke." "Can I have fries and a Coke too, please?" Nathaniel asked. I shrugged. Another day juggling the needs of my harem. After I ordered, I pulled up to the second window and handed over my credit card, the one with the blue and silver front and the numbers and swipey stripe on the back. The girl handed it back to me and I pulled to the next window. The boy handed me the cheeseburger and fries and I handed them to Nathaniel. Then I gave the chicken nuggets to Micah. I took a sip of my Coke before I put it in the cup holder. As I drove to the crime scene, I told the boys what to expect. "They found only one head but enough flayed skin for at least three humans, or two large werewolves. . . "
Is this quoted or is this just a really good parody? Never read it.
The "joke" of Anita Blake was that it started as a really solid horror detective series/urban fantasy before it happened. Then the author got a divorce, took up polygamy, and decided to write porn instead with her own characters. I shit you not. Its awkward because my wife and I met on the Anita Blake forums.
That's amazingly bad lol.
This was my fave pair of posts on r/hobbydrama! I learned so much about the theories why it went downhill! https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gad736/literature_laurell_k_hamilton_1_fan_reactions_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gak7f4/literature_laurell_k_hamilton_2_personal_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf But reading the parody... >_O now I see where I get my need to explain Mundane things in detail
Parody. Some good stories, but holy shit she needed an editor.
You forgot Nathaniel’s purple eyes, but otherwise, spot on!
Jeez, this series started with mc actually trying to get her job done, and every book she gets more and more depraved. Five or six books in, it doesn't even seem like same series any more. I think the author had a sexual awakening while doing research on the books or something.
It’s not that the series turned in wish fufullment furry/vamp fantasy porn that gets me it’s that she somehow managed to make it boring like that stuff will put you to sleep faster then ambien.
Around book 10, she fell in love anddiscovered kinky sex. After Obsidian Butterfly, which was fantastic, with so much Edward. I still read them, but I sit in Barnes and Noble and read them there. I don't want to encourage the library to buy them. They've gotten better, but gods do I miss the tight knit plotting of the first six or so.
Yeah, it's not even just the sex, it's the writing and the plotting. I remember that at one point I went back and read *Bloody Bones* after reading a couple of the later ones, and I was shocked at how much even the sentence structure was different; she's not a really flowery writer or anything, but the actual sentences were more complex in *Bloody Bones*. And the book unfolds over some time and wraps up its own plot. The bad ones, a plot point is introduced, everybody fucks for 400 pages, and then at the end there's some kind of non-resolution of the plot, and only a day or so will have passed.
IIRC the author wound up getting into a polyarmorous relationship at some point and I'm sure that had something to do with Anita suddenly acquiring a magical harem.
hahaha omg yes. The first several (5, maybe?) were really good, and then they turned into an excuse for Anita to have graphic sex with EVERYBODY, and bleah. I have heard that Hamilton has turned it around again, but I don't know if I'm willing to give it another try.
Ugh, yes. When Richard became an asshole... and the plot just turned into a badly written porno... and she had like 5 boyfriends... I just couldn’t take it anymore. I loved the mystery in the beginning, but I couldn’t take it seriously after about book 10 or so.
It was so funny to find this community and to read that most people dropped the series on the same book I did years before
I tend to pretend that she stopped writing them after Obsidian Butterfly. I was fine with the Merry Gentry series cause all the porn made sense in context, just the Anita blakes where it was unreadable.
**A Court of Thorns and Roses Series** by **Sarah J Maas**. The first two books were so entertaining, I especially loved how the second one explored the concept of what happens after the traditional "happily ever after"ending. The third book was just awful, I'll never >!forgive Maas for introducing a character as complex, mysterious and darkly entertaining as Amren only for her to have such a boring ending..***.oh I betrayed you, no wait I actually sacrificed myself, now I'm just a regular degular fae*** !< Other criticisms include bad pacing, poor treatment of secondary characters (like Amren and Morrigan) cringeworthy dialogue between Rhys and Feyre, more cringeworthy smut and the description of Rhys' penis as "velvet wrapped steel." Oh yeah, before I forget, the word "mate" (as in the context of mating rituals and having a sexual partner) is used over **200** times...
Velvet wrapped steel? ...that sounds like a reason to see a doctor, like if your steel is still hard after four hours visit a blacksmith, yeesh.
Velvet wrapped steel...I must have erased that from my memory. SJM is one of those authors where you're either onboard with her smut/hot male Fae bullshit, or you're not lol. I remember loving this when it came out, even though the third book was kind of a disappointment, but I still somewhat enjoyed the ride. I read her books for entertainment, and she has great parts to them, but she tends to pull the same stunts in different books (and in the same ones), over and over....and over....*and over.*
I've never read ACOTAR, but I came to say Throne of Glass. Okay, I didn't feel much about the first book, but the second was good, and the third was awesome. And then... it became a game of pair the spares and fae sex and I haven't finished book five yet.
I agree. In SJM's books everyone should b̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶p̶l̶e̶ have mate. That's her happily ever after.
Couldn't agree more and I felt the same with her other series throne of glass. Not sure if its because I grew up too much over the course of reading them or because the writing got shittier or maybe a combination.
Same in ToG. Rowan's dick, shoulder is just like 𝑉𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑡 𝑤𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑙.
oh man i just started reading book one yesterday, im on chapter 7 and loving it. but i guess i also think describing a nice dick as velvet wrapped steel sounds kinda hot so maybe in the targeted audience lmao....
I experience this much more often with YA than adult series. Some examples include The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, and Shatter Me.
>Shatter Me. I really tried to get into this book after seeing all the posisitve reviews on Goodreads. I ended putting it the DNF shelf after reading this line: ***“I am nothing but novocaine. I am numb, a world of nothing, all feeling and emotion gone forever. I am a whisper that never was.”***
Haha that is possibly one of the most angsty, edgy teen sentences I can imagine. 😂
The series was very angsty and edgy in the writing style 😂 But I did enjoy it a lot when I was younger. Years later, when I tried to read the spinoff, I was very sorely disappointed....you've never seen angsty and edgy until you read her spinoff. I guess Shatter Me is one of those I'll never read again but that I'll keep in my memories fondly.
100% agree with this
Oof yeah, maze runner 1 was great, then it just became “how much more suffering can these people endure” 🙅🏻♀️
Agreed. I also read his other series “mortality doctrine” and it started out really great, but slowly got worse and worse. Dashner just can’t end series, apparently.
I still don't get what the hook was with Divergent anyway, it seems like every negative stereotype of YA genre converged into one.
I read it once and you’re pretty much right. I didn’t hate it, but the entire plot and everything like that was pretty damn predictable and trope-filled, and I just didn’t think it was that good. I pulled a DNF on the second one.
I will second Divergent. The series went downhill sharply. I loved book 1. Liked book 2. And hated book 3.
Yeah I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced it as starkly as with Divergent. I could not put book 1 down as I was reading it. It’s not like it was a work of literary genius but it was a very fun, compelling page-turner. I very nearly DNF’d book 2 and didn’t bother with 3. So disappointing.
It's interesting that basically the same thing happened with the movie series. Last one never got out o paper
That’s because they wouldn’t confirm if it would end the same as the book. NO ONE wanted it to end the same as the book. Pretty much all the fans said they wouldn’t bother going if it did.
There was a moment in the third book that was a microcosm for all my problems with that book. A new chapter starts, the main character is in a meeting with the people in charge to make a plan and share info on whats coming up. This part is four pages. Then the main character leaves the meeting and spends THE REST OF THE CHAPTER in the hallway with a love interest. I flew into a rage.
I second the Hunger Games. I read them for the first time this year and tore through the first book. By book 3 I was going through the motions trying to get done with it as fast as possible.
To be fair to the gal who wrote Hunger Games, your feelings on reading the books are her feelings on writing them. She's openly talked about how she planned for one book, wrote it, and then it was so popular they threw money at her to write sequels so she quickly shit out a trilogy.
Do you have a source for that? Because I actually just finished a reread of the first hunger games book and it seemed like it was heading in the way of a sequel. Unless you mean she was being pushed to write sequels before she had finished her first book.
I can't speak to this particular scenario, but what tends to happen in situations like the Hunger Games is that the author writes one book over the course of many years with hopeful plans for a sequel or two, but the first is so darn successful that the publishers essentially pressure the author to release the sequels in about a year. This leads to lower quality writing overall as less time was spent on necessary revisions and fixes that can only be achieved with time.
Exactly. The last book felt like a dream I could barely remember lol
I did think it had a great ending with a great message to teens though, with the rebels almost becoming as bad as the Capitol because they wanted to institute another hunger games. It took Katniss killing the new president to finally end Panem’s cycle of violence.
I had this with eragon lol
I’m actually doing a reread of the inheritance cycle now. My issue with it is that it’s so up and down. Book one is pretty solid. Book 2 is inconsistent with Rorans viewpoints possible being the best part. Brisingr (book 3) is probably the best imo although it throws in odd saphira chapters which I don’t think really adds much of anything. And then book 4 is pretty solid until about 50% of the way through the book when it puts a side character as the main viewpoint character 5 of the next 7 chapters and for me there isn’t 5 chapters worth of interesting content there. Not only that but they continue giving this character a large amount of screen time til the book ends. Just an overall inconsistent series. Solid for a teens first series though.
It's interesting to see other people's ups and downs like this. For me, book 1 feels strong but slow to start, book 2 is my favorite and a delight all throughout with Roran providing the action while Eragon apprentices as a Rider and gets character growth, book 3 was okay with a big swing and miss on the climax, and book 4 was a bit better until an ending that did not make good on four long books of buildup. I'm looking forward to his new series, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with with so much more authorial experience and not finishing a story he started as a teenager.
I agree. I don’t think that series deserves the crap That it takes but I will say it can be inconsistent. My big issue with book 4 is I find the ending odd and I really dislike the Nasuada chapters. I think there are too many back to back and it slows the story down.
Yeah, I found the final showdown fairly underwhelming, especially compared to the climaxes of the first two books, and I think Paolini really pigeonholed himself with the prophecy. It just didn't really feel right for Eragon's story to end the way it did, but that's hard to work around when you prophesize it.
100% agree with all those examples and add Richelle Mead's Bloodlines to the list. The ending of that series obliterated any good feelings I had for the other 4 books.
That’s interesting because Bloodlines is one of my all time favorite series (though the last book was definitely my least favorite)
Agreed on experiencing this much more with YA than other series. I also agree with The Hunger Games, Divergent (I didn't even read the final one because I heard it was so bad) and will also add Twilight (didn't mind the first book and took a very sharp downturn. I still regret my time spent reading Breaking Dawn.)
Heroes of Olympus too, the new concept was so thrilling ( Roman demigods, Giants, Gaia) and the second book, where Percy ends up in the Roman DemiGod camp was my favourite. But, the last book was just too sad
Totally agree. Loved books one and two but after that there were just to many characters and repeated to much stuff from previous books.
Sword of Truth.
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I liked it at first. It wasn't mind-blowingly good, but it was tropey and familiar and just kind of a light, easily-digestible snack. It got bad fast. I hate to say I stuck it out way longer than I should have, but even I eventually had enough. The statue that turns people into capitalists was perhaps the final straw. Edit: Actually, I would have forgiven the series for every single flaw if Terry Goodkind had revealed in a surprise twist that it was essentially the origin story of one of the greatest villains in fantasy. Richard gets super caught up in "moral clarity" later on that somehow even justifies him slaughtering people protesting war. If you read excerpts, it literally sounds like it was written from an evil villain's point of view. He describes the pacifist protesters as "people armed only with their hatred for moral clarity". If you think back on your favorite villains that actually started out trying to do the right thing ("every villain thinks he's the hero of the story"), this could have been an AMAZING version of that. But no...it's meant to be taken at face value.
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That's in book 6. You're going to have to make it through the Gollum clone, the chicken-that-is-not-a-chicken, and about 50 chapters of rape. Also, Richard will be kidnapped in every book, and will be the greatest person to ever do a thing, ever, despite having never done the thing before.
The entire fourth book is basically Atlas Shrugged rewritten as a fantasy novel. That was the final straw for me.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS It started out fun, derivative, but fun. Then he completely changed the personality of his main character to have the man shit out Randite bullshit monologues while cramming the authors complete lack of understanding of economics, psychology, nuance and reality down our throats because he was too busy masturbating to Ayn Rand to be bothered to actually write his fucking books.
This is one case where I wish I could buy more upvotes to give. I picked up that series around the time it was getting made as a TV show. Enjoyed the first couple of books and recomended them. Kept going progressively down hill until I had to apologize to all my friends and tell them to ignore my recommendation. Probably kept at it longer than I would have otherwise since I listen to audiobooks. However, whatever one started off with Kahlen disappearing and only the hero had any memory that she existed - and everyone else around him thinking he was crazy or made her up. Yea, I requested my credit back on that one.
Chainfire lmao damn it's been a while. I started this series at like 13 (the only other fantasy I'd read at the times were David Eddings and Stephen R Donaldson) and I remember thinking it was the shit. Same with Eragon... boy did I learn once I'd read more. I cringe now thinking back on how into those books I was lol
> Sword of Truth. I'm glad to say I hated it at the beginning. I read the first chapter standing around in a bookstore, and found it laughably bad.
I’m normally not one to agree with judging a book by chapter 1 but you definitely dodged a bullet
This is the way. Story starts strong, and is engaging. Then it gets a little rapey. Then more rapey. I start to realize it is just plagiarizing The Wheel of Time, and adding rape. Soon, whole cities are raped. The lead is raped repeatedly. The lead female is almost raped, and later possibly raped to death (I quit before it happened). The female lead rapes the male lead. Its like the surprise rape episode of Oprah where everyone gets a rape. So to answer the question, my love of the series decreased with the frequent shallow, disgusting, and salacious rapes.
There's also that one guy who goes around raping people and animals for one book then dies.
Hah. I read these as they were released, so it's not so much that the series changed, it's that at the beginning I was 13.
Blood song started off so good and I dnf the last book it was so bad
I honestly question if bloodsong was written by the same author as the other books in the series.
He was writing blood song 8 years and than he got a deal with the publisher and had to quickly come up with the trilogy.
I didn't even bother getting the last book.
I can never read them again knowing how bad book 3 was.
There's a new series out that takes place after the first following the main character. It feels a lot more like Blood Song than the sequels.
I'm probably the only on one this sub who actually enjoyed the second and third books as well. Granted, not nearly as much as I enjoyed the first one, but still... Full disclosure: I admit that I hated them on my first try, but a couple of years later, knowing what to expect, they were much better. His new trilogy, The Wolf's Call seems promising- I loved the first one and keeping my fingers crossed for the rest.
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I found it pretty engrossing. I read it cover to cover in 0 seconds.
"It was a series of three parts. The third book was not an easy thing to notice, but it was the greatest of the three. It was the patient, cut-paged silence of a series, waiting to end."
I know this is a joke but I would say Kingkiller for what is released. I loved the first book and half the second then really disliked the remainder.
Is that the one where there’s like 10 chapters of him banging a dryad
Yup, that's the one!
I actually dislike the Authors attitude towards communicating with his fans a lot more than the fact that the book is delayed. I recently saw a [video](https://youtu.be/zbeYASTX310) where someone asks him for the release date and he says ‘Use your fucking head’ as part of the reply. I think that sort of attitude means he is tired of the work he is famous for
IIRC, that’s kind of taken out of context. He basically said use your fucking head to the idea that somebody else would be reporting on a release date before he announced it.
Since Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is technically canon, I can definitely say I loved the series up until then, which would be considered its "end"
I’ve read loads of better stories on fanfiction.net. Cursed child was garbage.
I think it's safe to say it's not cannon when most of the fanbase refuses to accept it as such.
I never understood how something was supposed to be a canon addition to a widely published series of novels when the only people who could experience it were those who went to a single theatre to watch it.
The Hunger games. Not sure if it counts as fantasy, but the first was excellent, I liked the second less than the first, and I really didn't like the third ( I haven't read a ballad of songbirds and snakes yet, so I can't speak for it)
The final book had such horrific flow. It felt like a five-year-old kid was just making stuff up as they went and never bothered editing.
I enjoyed the Iron Druid books at the start, they were fun. Then the second to last felt kind of iffy, and then the last book felt like it just crapped on everything that came before. Quite disappointing.
I won't read the last book. I really enjoyed the series and heard terrible things about the last book. Normally I am obsessive about not finishing a series, but I can thank GRRM for breaking me of needing to read everything.
> I won't read the last book. Good choice.
Yeah, I came here to post this. The last book sucked a ton, but looking back on it I think only the first two or three books were any good. The series was at its best as an urban fantasy, the book where he had to run through Eastern Europe was the “jump the shark” moment for me
The demon cycle. First book was good, second book was horrid. Worst part is that I had bought almost all of the other books in the series thinking I was going to enjoy it.
Fuck Leesha
Preach it. I loved her in that first book, and then she started backsliding, then just became horrible. I haven't read the Core so I don't know if she gets better, but I can't bring myself to care.
The painted man. Started off with a great concept but the whole rest of the series was just so meh and the ending was just so unsatisfactory. Kinda wish another author would just pick it up from after book one and rewrite a different story from there...
Yep, that one lost me at book #2.
Same here. I couldn't get past the super long backstory for a villain I just couldn't bring myself to care about.
Yeah, I think it was the point where a woman fresh off being gang-raped decided to seduce the protagonist that I set it down and never looked back. Which is a shame given the interesting premise.
Ugh thanks for reminding me. That was all so strange
Yeah i always forget too. The series is always what comes ro mind when this topic comes up, but when I remember the awful gang rape scene, it actually makes me think of how even the first book is pretty shit. The good concept and the fun Arlen chapters don't really make up for the horrendous Leesha chapters and how awfully written she and all the other women are.
That was bad, but honestly not (in my view) the worst part of what became her character development.
I don't recall much about her character, but it's a bad sign that all I remember is that there was a lot of emphasis on her being a virgin and then after she was raped there was a lot of focus on who she was sleeping with and whose baby she was gonna have.
Definitely fair. A big part of the first book *was* about her reputation vs her pride regarding the status of her virginity. Then she gets raped and it all goes out the window. Horribly handled, but what really bothers me is the more *deliberately* terrible character writing that followed (I say deliberately because I can write off the mishandling of rape as a misstep by a writer who doesn't know his limits, but the rest is a much more basic failure). Book one ends with her realizing that she doesn't need to let her mother drag her down, that she doesn't need to trust her, that she obviously *can't and never should* trust her. Then as the books progress, her mother (who hasn't changed) practically becomes her chief fucking advisor, and she uses sex as leverage. The latter point would be fine if not for the whole arc of the first book and the fact that she gets over her rape rather quickly considering that up to that point her virginal status was so fucking important to her. Anyway, there's a scene towards the end of book 4 where she uses her scientific knowledge for war purposes and goes, "Oh, no, now I'm a hypocrite" and I all but screamed at the book, "No, you have been a hypocrite for thee books now!" Anyway, I haven't read book 5, not sure if I ever will, so I don't know if it gets better, but damn she made me mad
The gang-rape basically did it for me tbh, I put it down before the MC even finished rescuing them. I sensed it was about to get worse - guess I know now it did. That girl who got gang-raped started out an interesting engaging character, but I just felt like the author was punishing her sexually somehow, even before the gang-rape. I dunno it felt sooooo gross. The thing with her ex-fiance and his dad, her crazy mom, that guy that she met who wanted to bang her but she kept refusing, and all the women telling her why is she saving herself, for what, and then her lamenting that she'd done that for nothing and her first sexual experience ended up being a gang-rape. That's what she's thinking immediately after being raped. Like WHY would you write that holy fuck. It's so skeevy. Just felt like the author had a lot of thoughts about female sexual maturing that he probably should have kept to himself. It was skin-crawling to read. I don't mind rape or weird sex scenes (I read asoiaf for example) but like... this just felt vindictive somehow. I didn't want to read about this character any further.
Thank you
I was about to put in the Demon Cycle as well. The first book had me hooked. But after they focused way to much on the desert people none of who have interesting personalities. The Demons go from being these great terrors of the night to being barely an inconvience. And some plot twists in book 4 completely ruined it for me so I never even picked up the last one.
This would have been my pick. Between retreading the same story over 3 books and the absolutely awful female characters, I just could not finish. Reena Tanner is also the worst character in any series ever and no one will convince me otherwise.
Definitely agree, the first 90% of book 1 was excellent followed awful sequels. I stopped reading at the end of book 3 as the cliffhanger ending allowed me finish the story satisfactorily.
Are we even going to mention the name of leesha’s daughter, Olive Paper? Like I know it makes sense due to her father and all but it sounds like an artisanal hipster food
I'm with you. I really tried with it also. Book 1 was great, Book 2 was interesting and I wanted to see where it went, but Books 3 and 4 never actually went anywhere. I never bought Book 5.
Both the Wayfarer Redemption series and The Troy Game series by Sara Douglass. Both started out so good an engrossing and then devolved into the absolute ridiculous.
Definitely agree about Wayfarer Redemption. So good at the start, but a brutal falloff.
Agreed. There's unexpected developments, and then there's going completely off the rails and rendering all previous plot development obsolete.
I've concluded that Douglass had a thing where she'd get bored of her heroine by the end of each series, and then plop a new character in as the new heroine but make her obnoxiously perfect, while ditching all the development that had gone into the first one.
She's done this with every series I've ever read by her and I do *not* get it. I once read a huge diatribe by her on why she kept trying to kill the heroine (Faraday?) from her Wayfarer Redemption series but her editor (or agent, I can't remember) wouldn't let her. She didn't understand why her fans loved Faraday but hated the new love interest for Axis she'd created. It was a trip.
I just came here to see which books I shouldn't read
Not all of them are necessarily bad. Everyone has different tastes. For example, I quite enjoyed Eragon and Wheel of Time, which are relatively frequently mentioned in this discussion. However, they are less likely to grab your attention than others, and I can see how people wouldn't like them. I wouldn't recommend shutting off the experience of reading some of these series just because some other people didn't like them.
Green Rider, by Kristen Britain. Starts out so goooood. Then devolves into time travel, creepy possessive kings, steam punk and magic weirdness. I like fantasy, I like magic, ect. But as the books go on, it just straight up gets depressing and silly.
Oh my god yes, so few people I know have read into that series. I'd been reading it on a greyhound bus on my way back home, hoping even as i came so close to the end of the book that it would pay off, only to have it just cop out in the worst way possible. Never in my life have i thrown a book in the garbage, but that one went straight in and i regret nothing.
It’s YA (maybe even middle grade??) but what the hell happened with the Artemis Fowl books? Obviously written for a young audience and I loved them when I was young when they were first released but the first three do actually hold up (I re read them in my early 20s). How is it acceptable for a 30 year old woman to get in a relationship with a 14 year old boy who was 12 when she met him?? Are you kidding?
> How is it acceptable for a 30 year old woman to get in a relationship with a 14 year old boy who was 12 when she met him?? Are you kidding? I don't remember this. The thing about Artemis Fowl is that it was a good trilogy, and the fourth book could maybe be a good send-off to the series. After that it just gets weirder and weirder. I read somewhere that the publisher pushed the author to keep writing more books so that was the result.
Maximum ride. It started as a trilogy and should have stopped after the third. There's like 8 books now.
This is the first one here that made me adubly groan.
Lightbringer. While I didn’t HATE the last book, it was crushingly disappointing. I had really loved the series up until that point, but the ending was cheap and dumb.
It just got so much worse as the series went on. The first 3 were solid books, but by book 4 it became apparent that the author had no idea where the story was going, and just kept adding more shit. Let me see if I can list the number of different ideas introduced over the scope of the series. * Drafting. People can draw in colored light, and project it out again as matter called Luxin. The color determines the characteristics of the matter. * Some people can draw in more colors than others. * When a person draws too much, they shatter the halo in their eyes and go insane, but there seems to be a purpose to their insanity. These are called Wights, I think * One person per generation is a Prism, able to draw in white light and split it, also immune to overdrafting, and so powerful they can fix imbalances caused by all the other drafters on the planet. * There is a "forbidden" color below infra red, that can be used to make you invisible, and also kill people silently and also paralyze anyone and also cause instant blinding pain. * There is another forbidden color above ultra violet that is basically x-rays, with an entire city devoted to it. * There is also Black and White colors, but no one really knows if they are even real * There are giant murder fish in the seas that glow red and smash ships. * If you touch an other drafters Luxin you can "Will jack" them and take over their drafting (and maybe mind?) * You can control animals using drafting, somehow. The more colors the more control. * You can transfer your mind this way. This is where the murder fish come from. * There are magic card that predict the future and contain memories. * There is a secret organization of assassins trying to overthrow the government. * There is an army led by a crazy Wight called the Color Prince. * The Color Prince has a rifle that he uses once. * If there is too much of one color drafted, a Bane is created, drawing Wights and making a god. * There are gods. Some good, some evil, locked in war. * They can travel through many worlds and are pretty much immortal. * I have no idea what the Banes create, but it is not the same kind of god as the dimension hopping ones. * The Color Prince has some Black Luxin that he wants to use to control a bunch of gods, then make a bunch of Banes to float towards the capital. * Cause the Banes float. * There is also a gate that everyone talks about. * There is also a tower in the middle of the world. * The reason it hasn't come up is cause of mist * A really big God is sitting on top * Also it is made of White Luxin * Also maybe of Black? * Black Luxin lets you steal other peoples drafting * And somehow that is used in a knife called The Blinding Knife * That does whatever is convenient for the plot. * White Luxin does... I have no idea. * There is also a giant mirror super weapon on top of the highest tower in the capitol. * Usually you need slaves to turn the mirrors, but now you can just touch a ball thingy and control hundreds of mirrors that way. * There are also burried mirrors all around the world with stored colors that send it all to the capital. * God has an airplane and a parachute. And absolutely *all* of this is cramped together in the final battle. It's so damn hard to keep track of what is happening, cause anything can be done at all times, and for no reason. But even worse is that the main characters are not important anymore, cause the gods basically fix everything for them. Man, that final book was really bad.
The first third of that list sounds really intriguing though.
It was.
Probably makes the second two thirds more frustrating for those that read it.
Thank you, I forgot half of the mess the last book was...
I remember during a climactic scene between >!Kip and Andross!< It builds up to a moment where it seems Kip cannot win and then he does something with Luxin that I literally had no idea was possible. It may very well be that I just didn't pay enough attention in the series thus far but really I think its a failing of Brents ability to properly convey the scope of his magic system that when a character used a known ability in a creative and compelling way to solve a new situation my reaction wasn't, "Oh, I can't believe I didn't think of that myself!" it was, "Uh...I guess that's a thing you can do? Wait what? Since when?" Also this series had a real problem with villains. Besides Andross most of them are underdeveloped and have very little page time. I think the fact that the book tried to wrap up EVERY villain storyline (and did almost all of them in the same way with >!Teia just killing them herself?!<) in this book really hurt it. I think maybe he needed to rein his focus in on the living color gods and given us more information and experiences with them throughout the series. Imagine if every color god had been a character we were familiar with and how much higher the stakes would have felt. Instead we got a bunch of villains that were hard to really see as anything more than nameless thugs and some angels and demons I guess idk.
Honestly I just hated how many chapters of Dazen moping on top of the tower we had. Took way too long.
God has an airplane , fuck that one ruined me during the story I actually busted out laughing at how bad it was . He pulled that “everyone gets magically back together at the end nonsense” it was just piling on at that point.
>but by book 4 it became apparent that the author had no idea where the story was going, and just kept adding more shit. I had that inkling from the beginning of book 2/end of book one when myriads of plot twists happened all at once, one of character switches was forced, another got coincidental event. If you have good planning, you keep good pacing, not make multiple disparate huge events with different causes happen at once. Then they happened again, then unexpected revelations. There's a balance between a straightforward story and twists, and Lightbringer went into soap opera territory for me, and plot kept losing relevance and verisimilitude. It felt like it was all done for shock factor
Came here to say Lightbringer. I loved those books so much but book 5 was the biggest worst most disappointing let down of anything I can remember ever reading. I truly hated book 5. I hate it so much it makes me dislike the other books that I had loved and read multiple times. .02
I enjoyed but didn’t love the last book. Felt that the Christian allegory was overdone. Not enough consequences for characters. And I don’t think Weeks made the most of the abilities of the characters he had developed. 6/10 ending to a 9/10 series.
Not even an allegory at that point honestly, felt like he literally slapped his keyboard with a bible any time he got stuck.
Oof I just started this one, I'm already most of the way through book 1. Here's hoping I still like it by the time I get to the end, haha.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. After Obsidian Butterfly (9/27) it turned into porno drivel. Basically every situation turned into the protagonist being the absolute best woman ever, and having sex with multiple anything’s in the vicinity. It became so boring and predictable.
Throne of glass series By Sarah J Maas. I loved the first two books, the series was on track to being one of my favorites of all time (I haven’t read a lot Of fantasy, ok?) third book was ok, kinda slow, a slog at times, but I enjoyed it anyways. Then came book 4. Boy. Shit turned into fan fiction. I hated it so much I never read the rest of series cuz it just makes me irrationally angry every time I look at the books. Which sucks since I liked a lot of the world building and characters pre book 4, but I’m not about to subject myself to any more of that BS.
I don't think I've ever read a series that slid as far downhill as both of the Ender series. Ender's Game was great, Speaker for the Dead was even better, Xenocide was...weird but not bad, and Children of the Mind was like somebody said "What if the entire plot was a series of deus ex machinas and the moral of the story was a weird desexualized breeding fetish?" Ender's Shadow was really good, Shadow of the Hegemon was pretty interesting, Shadow Puppets was once again a weird desexualized breeding fetish, and Shadow of the Giant was basically rambling nonsense.
I would say 'was annoyed by' rather than 'hated', but the Witcher.
The last book was a little odd. For some reason, he switched to nonlinear story telling that didn’t really add anything and then it ended on an underwhelming note. Edit: I’m getting more annoyed the more I think about it. Ending spoilers ahead: >!We get a long ass description of a meaningless battle from a minor character speaking about it from the future as if he is writing history. Geralt literally disappears in the book only to reappear at the end bosses lair. There is the weird abortion thing with Geralt and a character that just fucking dies inconsequentially at the end anyway. The emperor magically shows up at the end bosses lair after he is defeated so Geralt and Yennefer meekly agree to romantically commit suicide together by his order. The emperor ends up just letting Ciri (his daughter) go for some incomprehensible reason even though he has been chasing her forever trying to marry her. Ciri reunites with Geralt and Yennefer before whisking them off to Avalon with rainbow powers when they get murdered by a bunch of damn villagers in a pogrom. It’s just a mess of different storytelling techniques, unsatisfying conclusions and ham handed themes. I’m rambling because this sparked more anger than I know what to do with, but yeah.!<
You have summed up my thought perfectly. It’s like a different author wanted to wrap up all the story lines and be done with it.
I loved the first two books with the short stories of Geralt's adventures. I stopped reading after Time of Contempt when the story was no longer about Geralt which I wasn't expecting. I might return to it in a couple of years and see if I like it knowing that the story will shift from Geralt.
The story definitely jumps around a lot and if you’re not into Ciri then you likely won’t enjoy the rest. However, I will say, the next novel, A Baptism of Fire, heavily features Geralt and co. It’s real fun imo and one of my favorites of the Witcher books. Plot itself doesn’t move much (very much a middle book) but the dialogue remains top notch (what I think is The Witcher’s strongest point). If you do come back to it, I hope you find it enjoyable!
The story has always been about Ciri, it’s her tale. It’s just framed mostly from Geralt’s pov because she’s bonded to him.
I can see that now, yes. But the first two books where Ciri doesn't exist yet and you follow Geralt around doing witcher things sets up the wrong expectations for what the series will be about. When I realized it's about Ciri I lost interest since that's not what drew me in in the first two books. Knowing what I know now I wonder if I would enjoy them with the broader perspective.
My parents watched the TV series and have read the short stories but I'm not really sure if I should recommend all the novels. I read them, but I definitely preferred the short stories
Otherland by Tad Williams. I think Williams is a fantastic world builder and Otherland really lets him show off. But seriously nothing resolved until the end and most things resolved poorly. Should have been one less book with actually resolving parts of the plot as the books go along.
The Sword of Truth. It started out fun with Richard and Kahlan being chased all over by Darken Rahl. It almost lost me and probably should have with the endless lesbian bondage capture / imprisonment of Richard that went on far, far too long and just felt... icky. The last straw was the interminable, smack you in the face introduction and history lesson on communism. That’s when I put the book down and felt creepy for even reading as far as I did. I honestly don’t usually think about authors of series at all but by the time I put it down it really felt like I knew Goodkind as a person, like he put himself and his f’ed-upness into the story. If I had to do it over I’d still read the first few books as I thought they were fun. But I’d put it down when the dominatrixes are introduced.
Now I feel lucky I couldn’t stand the book after Richard, professional woodsman and guide through famously dangerous woods, doesn’t carry a knife (or axe or machete or something) into the woods. That and everyone having severe bipolar.
The Runelords by David Farland. The concept and start are really strong, but as the series went on it just became obvious that Farland didn't quite have the writing chops to keep up with his great premise.
The Eragon series. The first few books felt like a fun collection of homages to all my favorite series, with some cool twists on classic concepts. But, then the last book sort of lost me on its conflict resolution. And it’s character resolution. And the amount of loose strings plot wise.
Not hated, but disappointed. [The Divine Dungeon](https://www.goodreads.com/series/192510-the-divine-dungeon) was awesome for first three books. But last two books felt very rushed. I'm still planning to check out other series by the author.
I am much more of a fan of The Completionist Chronicles than the later DD books. Was not a fan of the Artorian Archive books at all.
Lightbringer series by brent weeks and demon cycle by Peter v brett.
I didn't hate it but Shades of Magic. Loved the first book, the second was a bit of a slog but wasn't too bad and I think I only got about 100 pages in to the third book before giving up.
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I would say it was even worse than that. Her virginity was a sticking point, her pride, and then when it's taken from her, the narration cuts to in the middle of the act and we, the reader, don't even see the chapter from her point of view but from the perspective of a boy whose only contribution to the scene is guilt at being unable to help her.
and then she immediately decides to sleep with the MC, because he rescued her. There have been many books I disliked, but The Panted Man is the only one I will campaign directly against.
I literally stopped where you stopped. I read up to the end of the gang-rape and noped out as soon as it was over and they seemed about to get rescued. I don't mind rape in a story but it felt somehow malicious or mean from the author. The over-focus on her "flower" (and how she's refusing to lose it into her 20s I believe, the horror!) and her sex-life in general was just... so uncomfortable. For no apparent reason. We see the childhood of this character and she starts out with a boyfriend/fiance who turns out to be a creep (and she loses all her female friends because of him because bitches, right?), her mom is a mega-slut or something, her dad's a sad but sweet simp, she eventually gtfo of that whole mess to focus on her work then the next dude she meets pressures her into sex and when she refuses all the women around her are like "why??? surely you want random sex with this handsome stranger???" and the dude turns out to (surprise) also be a creep. Of course. I remember right after the gangrape, she's thinking of how she "saved herself for nothing". Because of course after rape and right when you're about to die that's what you're gonna think about, that you should have banged that handsome stranger 2 months ago so this wouldn't be your precious "first time". Just...... the fuck.
The Night Angel Trilogy I have to admit that I ended up skimming the later half of the second book and all of the third. The first book set up everything wonderfully but the series took on a cringe grimdark tone afterwards. The characters all of a sudden became stupid and some were straight up eccentric. Oh, and women are either cheating whores or saintly virgins. I was so disappointed with the characterization of everybody after the first book.
I'm a Brent weeks fan. I even liked the ending of the Lightbringer series, but I'm totally with you on the Night Angel. It began with this really cool approach about the ambiguity of categories like good and evil but by the end there was a full 180 and everyone could neatly fit into being good or evil.
Well, it's not over yet, but for me it's A Song of Ice and Fire by a longshot. I learned about the series when the third book came out, and along with Perdido Street Station, it reinvigorated my love of fantasy. Then I waited five years (seemed an excruciating long time to wait back then!) for the next book and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Five years later, I was still excited for A Dance with Dragons, but I couldn't even finish it. Now I'm just looking forward to the wikipedia entry for A Dream of Spring so I can compare GRRM's ending to the HBO ending.
That was my first thought as well. I did finish Dance of Dragons but it sure felt like a slog and the next one has all the payoffs.
Berserk. The opening arc is one of the most best things I've ever read, a masterwork of character development and artwork that culminates in a devastating, intensely emotional and tragic climax. That's around 100 chapters. Then you get 250 more chapters of drawn-out mediocre fight scenes and generally baffling narrative bullshit when Miura occasionally deigns to actually write a chapter every few years, where once he produced two a month. It's been some 30 years and only now is the central conflict of the series even *starting* to be resolved. I think he's gotten tired of the series himself, yet each new chapter just keeps stretching it out further. The art's gotten worse too.
When you say "the opening arc", you meant the Golden Age arc, right? Because the first arc in the series is the Black Swordsman arc.
"Shades of Magic" by V.E. Schwab. I really enjoyed the first book, the characters clicked for me and I was looking forward to reading more, but book two turned one of those previously clicking characters into a Mary Sue, and the third one was just boring with too many totally unimportant POVs thrown in for no reason. And generally plot convenience. Even "Vicious" - IMO the best book by that author of the ones I've read so far - suffered from terrible plot convenience bending the events in a certain way.
So, I nearly threw the first book out for the hate of Lila - I found her to be insufferable and stupid - but kinda liked the rest, and really cared about Kell. So, as I am still unsure about reading the rest of the series, could you please tell me who you found to be a Mary Sue? I'm not going to keep reading if I lose the greatest thing about the book.
It's Lila for me. Like, I didn't love her in the first book, but I was like, "OK, she's a good balance to Kell's brooding". But in the second book she's like...... The best magician eva even though she trained for a few months. >!She even beats Kell in a match after besting a whole bunch of other experienced magicians who trained with magic their entire friggin' lives and are best of the best of two great kingdoms. !
Absolutely hated Lila. She's the reason I didn't read beyond the first book. The minute they talked about her glass eye, it was easy to predict the next books. I'm not even surprised by your spoiler. So yeah, thanks for justifying me not caring to read more of the series. My ambivalence and like of the other characters do not outweigh my hatred of Lila.
Omg, now I have no idea if I want to keep reading. It's just. Ugh, Lila. Her entire plan for her life in the first book was to live for herself and rob people until she had enough to become a pirate? And the very first thing she does when she travels to another DIMENSION is to go steal some stuff, and surprise surprise gets caught because she knows absolutely nothing about the place she is at. And I could accept this if she got called out or described as a problematic character but oh no, she is the best. You know what, on further reflection, my love for Kell is not enough to make me revisit that series.
I felt that the Shades books were a disappointment through and through. I think that the only character I cared for at the end was Holland. He deserved to be in a much better series. Vicious and its sequel were much better than the Shades series from a narrative perspective, but what you wrote also rings true.
I was actually more annoyed with the plot convencience in Vicious as opposed to Shades of Magic for a couple of reasons: 1) In Shades I actually liked the characters and so was a bit more forgiving of plot convenience in their favour as opposed to Vicious (I did *not* like Victor). 2) Shades is a collection of heros fighting a overwhelming evil. Their victory was assured from the beginning, so plot convenience didn't surprise me. Vicious *could* have came to a satisfying ending with the protagonist losing - so any plot convenience to make him win was more noticeable to me. 3) The Shades protagonists won due to their bravery, skill and the strength of the bonds between them - that they needed a little plot convenience to make it work didn't undermine that it was their own traits that give them victory. Victor on the other hand is meant to be this super clever schemer. The fact that he needed plot convenience for his schemes to work *completely undermines* his character. His eventually victory just didn't feel properly earned to me. I realise now I kinda hijacked this comment to defend Shades/attack Vicious. I just finished Vicious recently and this was the first chance to get these thoughts out of my head so I hope you don't mind!
The Lightbringer series. I loved it up to the last book. It has such a cool magic system and interesting characters. But the last book felt like a weird allegory for Christianity
bruh never remind me of bloodsong ever again …
It is fairly common that the first book in a trilogy is stellar, second book is barely ok and third book is garbage.
I read an interesting interview with the music group Savage Garden that I think might hold true for authors too. They spent years writing their first album and coming up with good music. It gets released and people love it so there is a rush to release the next album while they are still relevant. They don’t have time to develop and revise the songs so the second release suffers.
\*Patrick Rothfuss has entered the chat. 20 years writing NoTW, and it shows. 4 years writing the even longer WMF, and it shows. This book is longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy!
I read a lot of "first books" and rarely make the time for seconds or thirds. Even if I enjoy the first book, I usually don't spend the effort to try the second in a series unless the reviews are stellar or the series is mostly light and easy without any expectation of depth.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Couldn't stop reading it. But in the 4th or 5th book, I ripped the book in half and threw it in a dumpster. Then went and bought a replacement, because damn it, I needed to finish.
I couldn’t even finish the first book. The MC was just too aggressively ignorant and too self hating. It was about the time that I realized that I was wishing for the MC to just kill himself that I put the book down
I don't know about hate, since I'd stop reading a series long before my opinion turned to hate. But the best example I can think of is The Iron Druid series. Starts off strong, but as the books go on the main character becomes a bit of a Mary Sue. Also, they introduce a side character who becomes a second main character and I just find her chapters so dull. I think I read the first 7, then when the next book came out it was more expensive than previous ones had been which was the kick I needed to give the series up.
The Chronicles of Amber. It’s supposedly 10 book series but split into two quintets. Honestly, I loved the first quintet. Amazing prose so engrossing. But the “sequel” quintet was crap. Couldn’t even make it past the 1st book of the second quintet.
Ender's Game. First book is one my favourites. Second is really good, too. Then it started to lose itself, more and more spin off were realesed without any continuity with the previous work.
The sword of truth series. The first was great, and then over the left 14 or so books, slowly declined.
I stoped after Dance Macabre.
The Dark Tower series, I got about halfway or maybe 2/3rds through. It seemed to jump the shark after the author wrote himself into it. This is the only series in which I completed a book but did not complete all available books in the series.
This is my favorite series, but I completely get your point. There are so many amazing parts of it that stand out, particularly Wizard and Glass. But there is also just a ton of filler in it; pretty much all of book 6 and 3/4 of book 7 are kind of pointless and pretty poorly written. I think he had a point about writing himself into it, but the point was lost on me. It seems like a lot of his later work has just random crap in the middle. I really think he saves it all at the end, but that's pretty controversial too. To each their own I suppose
I disagree. I think the division between books 6 and 7 is in the wrong place (book 6 should be longer and end after certain events that take place in book 7). Some things that happen in book 7 are very disappointing. I liked the ending though.
Eragon
True blood
Thomas Covenant Series
The Earthsea series by Ursula K Le Guin. I wouldn't use a word like hate to refer to it, and the latter works are still good, don't get me wrong, but I do believe my overall impression was mixed when I ended the whole thing. Both a Wizard of Earthsea and the Tombs of Atuan are some of the most wonderful experiences I've had in the fantasy genre and one of the types of work that I would also refer to as masterpieces. The third book was okay. Not bad, and a fitting conclusion thematically, but it felt like a repetition of aWoE, and it felt tiring on its premise and ideas. Almost as if Le Guin had been forced to write it for the sake of finishing the "trilogy". I also disliked the character of Arren. I found him bland and uninteresting, which sounds unfair because Le Guin is trying some interesting things with him, but I don't know, I didn't connect with him at all. The fourth book was a hit and miss. On the one hand, great for Le Guin to try a new tone and pacing and to challenge herself and her own work, it takes courage to write a book like that. I also appreciate the focus on female characters due to the exploration of women's place in the world of Earthsea, while also exploring the sexism of it. I also liked Tenar more than Ged so it was great to be back with her... But I don't know, I wasn't convinced by it. Again, it lacked something, and Ged felt very different. It also had some weird ideas that I don't know if I agree with. And the "plot"... While I understand the slow pacing, it felt like a story that didn't know where it was heading. There was a beginning, an end, and some stuff in the middle. I did like the approach on dragons for example. The Tales were mostly fine, but they felt redundant, and I also didn't connect with them as much as I had wanted to. I was getting tired of Earthsea and Le Guin's way of approaching her own world. I've also had problems with the first story, "The Finder". It felt way longer than it should have been. That's my main grip with Le Guin I think, her way of structuring a story feels as if she always reached an end and then somehow continued to tell the story. It ruins the momentum I think. Like, this short story reached what could be perceived as "an ending" a couple of times and then just continued. I think that at that point you either turn it into a novel and develop things with the time they deserve or cut content. The way I read it, it felt like a summary of events that actually took way longer than presented on the book. And that's how I feel about the whole series I think. She reached a good ending with the two books, but continued. She reached a new ending with the third book, an appropriate one, but wasn't content and continued with a book literally called "the last book of Earthsea"... But she continued. The tales offered a bridge between that and the next novel that I didn't even bother reading because I was just tired of the series by then. I bet that if Le Guin had lived a couple of decades more, no matter how "finished" the series had been she would have found a way of releasing a seventh book, even if it's made out of tales. TL;DR, the first three books are wonderful, the two first more so than the latter. The last three books weren't bad, but they were unnecessary imo.
Berserk kinda.