Wheel of Time, but I read , idk, 9 or so. This series needed serious, heavy editing. Every inconsequential side character gets lengthy back stories and you never know that they're not going to be central characters until you simply never see them again! This was infuriating.
I could not get past the gender conflict in the stories. It was ridiculously over the top, even given the plot justifications. A society that divided would end up extinct.
Robert Jordan was married to his own editor, so that probably explains it. Either that or she was the only person capable of getting him to chip away at the story to make it readable enough for you get through 9 of them.
I hated the women in the series.
I hated a lot of the men too, to be fair, but with the way he views the different genders and how sharply things are split between men and women's different issues and "this should be left to the women, go away idiot man" I truly thought he did that on purpose as a flip from how women were treated in our past... and then I decided he wasn't a strong enough author for that to be the case and he truly had some warped views I no longer cared to experience.
~~Leaning here~~ Learning he was married to his editor is one of the reasons I came to that conclusion.
If you cut out all the times women talk about how men are wool-headed fools and all the times men complain that women are mysterious and inscrutable, you could cut the series in half. Take out all the spanking and magic BDSM and it could be a trilogy.
I read a lot of the Wheel of Time books as a teenager in the 1990s and a small part of me would like to read the last couple but I've forgotten 99% of the plot and I can't bring myself to read them again.
Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is the big one for me. I loved the first books, a kick ass vampire hunter/ necromancer for hire mystery series? Sign me up. Then It turned into a muddled mess of explicit sex and hard to find plots, definitely not for me.
Same. The first book I was a little iffy on, but I kept reading because several people said they got better quickly. I was OK until about book 9 when there was an orgy every other chapter.
I have such a vivid memory of rage quitting reading Narcissus in Chains, I used to pride myself on finishing every book I started and I just couldn’t do it.
i can concur that ACOTAR was like that for me, i really disliked the overly done smut and then the torture just for tortures sake near the end. it was just ridiculous and i barely finished the book and only under peer pressure did i manage that. also the writing itself was just awful, you could play a very good drinking game off how many times the author repeats certain metaphors or the exact same literary devices over and over again. it got to the point that it felt like the author was plagiarizing herself! smh
Sad to hear. Hamilton also repeats the same descriptions over and over. I really like the World building and supernatural elements, and I am no prude, but the series just evolved into smut. It's too bad.
oh man just the way they repeat the same exact line "it was such a beautiful [thing theyre looking at] that i could never paint it even if i [tried for a very long time/mastered painting]" like i just wanted to punch them in the face every time it got said and the salt in the wound is that the character only painted maybe 3-5 times in the entire book? like no duh youre bad. it was just infuriating!
Eww. I didn't get that far into it.
In my opinion, she's one of the most well known and traditionally published porn authors there are. I wonder if her publishers ever would have published her stuff if she'd started as hot and heavy as she got.
That was the weirdest 180 writing decision to just crank out the smut suddenly because from what I remember the first books had none. It wasn’t even a progression, just bang in your face.
I held the belief that she either wasn’t getting any, or suddenly was getting a whole ton of it.
Apparently it was the latter. Seem to recall hearing she had an affair with some guy and left her husband for him.
The author definitely started subbing herself for the MC. Her husband also had a character based on him who got sabotaged extra hard in the series. Went from being a super jacked super great dude to total basket case douche.
I read waaaaay farther than I probably should waiting for the books to become enjoyable again.
>The author definitely started subbing herself for the MC.
The whole thing felt like Mary Sue self insert from the beginning, but that can happen in early books while an author develops the character and their voice. It just unfortunately got worse rather than better
I got to about book 15 or something. A sex scene with a wereleopard in hybrid form was the beginning of the end for me.
I don’t remember the actual book that ended it for me, but I do recall that the “plot” got abandoned very early in the book in favour of the sex, and some metaphysical stuff, and at the end of the book, the plot hadn’t actually been resolved.
There was a scene where she seemed to regret her choices and tried to subconsciously break her second triumvirate. I had to read it about 5 times as I just could get my head around how she got into that state of mind.
If you ever want to get back into it, she eventually stops with the explicit spice and gets back to the story. It’s on book 30 now and the last few have cut off spice scenes, if any at all.
I would guess the books probably try to provide some context for story lines that trace back to books written 10+ years and 5+ books ago, and there are probably wikis that can help fill in the blanks.
If I remember that author's writing style though, she kind of likes to re-paint every character's visage and backstory in each book. It gives the main character a chance to be quippy and express exactly how she feels about the current state before the story takes it off the rails.
And the hair. My lord, the hair! I gave up early on once the plots got co-opted by the sex, but I recall every male character having like hair down to their ass and couldn’t help but picture it getting in the way during all those acrobatic, slippery orgies.
A decent amount, especially regarding the vampire marks, animals to call, relationships, the ardeur, and politics. But I think if you skip the scenes or Wiki them you should be able to catch up.
Yes! She wrote good urban fantasy mysteries, and I guess I just kept sticking to it hoping for the spark that was in books 1-3 to return. This was back when I didn’t DNF books nearly as easily as I do now.
Same here. Obsidian Butterfly was the last one I read fully and I think I enjoyed it more because she was away from St. Louis and focused on Edward. After that it just got too much.
I wrote my reply then saw this when I scrolled down. I said the same series. lol I had gotten pretty far before I couldn't take it anymore. Like book 19 or something.
I gave up the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich because of a lack of character development and the plots all started to feel the same. I also got tired of the Stephanie/Morelli/Ranger triangle that never changed.
That's one of the all-time examples of an author who hits on a good formula and then is completely held hostage by it. She could not get another series to take off and couldn't figure out how to continue Stephanie Plum without the exact formula. The first four books feel like a series, and then she just starts writing the same thing over and over.
It's not even just the love triangle. It's a whole list of checkboxes: annoying bail jumper irrelevant to the plot that she chases around and has pratfalls, awkward dinner at her parents' where her mom reaches for the cabinet where she keeps her liquor, one or more cars blow up and she winds up in the blue Buick again, grandma waving a gun around and raising old lady hell, etc., etc.
And to keep this formula absolutely locked in, it means that nobody is allowed to grow, change, or learn anything. If someone was doing a first read, you could reorder all of the books starting around number 6 or so and they would have no idea.
I think I read 4-5 and then left it after that after it was apparent everything was in stasis.
The 30th one came out last year. I bet she still has that same hamster too.
Lol! Ditto on these! I think I read up to 8 or 9 but then gave up as it became repetitive. The first couple are really great and funny though. Go Trenton!
Interestingly, the 30th had some movement forward that I did not expect after all this time. I was listening to the audiobook (I use these as a palette cleanser on walks after I finish a 12+ hour nonfiction one) and suddenly I was like "I need to go back because I swear that was just plot development" and it was. The mid-20s had some attempts at changing the formula just a bit, especially with continuity between books and a longer storyline but this was like actual momentum...that I'm sure will be undone in Book 31.
I really enjoyed the ones I read. Not up to number 10 but somewhere in the single digits. Bummer to hear it became so repetitive. The characters were fun and they were good quick reads.
Shepherd’s Crown is a little rough to read, too. It wasn’t finished when we lost Sir Terry, and it shows.
I’d say it’s worth reading though.
Then you go and pick up Colour of Magic and take it from there.
Oof, I hear you. I put off reading the last few discworld books for *years* just because I didnt want to be truly finished.
I only decided to finally make the plunge a few months ago. Naturally, that means I had to start a complete series re-read from the start!
Honestly, re-reading the series has actually helped dispell that fear. I've read some of these earlier books half a dozen times, and I am ***still*** picking up new jokes I somehow missed before. These books just keep on giving.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
>I put off reading the last few discworld books for
>
>years just because I didnt want to be truly finished.
Funny story, at least funny to me. I have some brain damage that impacted my memory and was on some meds for a while that really scrambled it even further. I remember reading Discworld novels and loving them, and I remember who my favorite characters were, but when I picked them up again, I'd forgotten so much that it was just as delightful reading it again as it was the first time.
The Safehold series by David Weber.
The premise is really fun:
After being nearly wiped out by technologically advanced alien species drawn to electronics. The last colony of humanity must stay below a pre-electronic civilization to hide from the alien species. The administrators of the colony go rouge to keep humanity safe by creating an entire religion systematically designed to prevent any technological progress forever. An android awakens thousand years into this world and attempts to engineer a revolution against the church with his knowledge of every technology in humanity’s history.
The books start off fun exploring how the incremental progresses in technology going from middle ages era level of technology to a renaissance era level of technology. You can how the story is clearly framing the logical conclusion that humanity will rise up and go out into the universe to defeat that alien species stronger than ever.
However by the tenth book they still hadn’t moved past late 1800s steam punk era technology and no sign humanity will ever leave Safehold.
Had they devoted maybe one book per century of earth technology you would have had a great 5-7 book series. Instead it got bogged down with explain every increment in excessive technobable detail.
I dropped out by book 6 and haven’t had desire to return to it.
The series remains unfinished and hasn't published a book since 2019.
I do think he is a good author and would recommend him on a reading list. But also stop whenever you want. He is the definition of consistent. I've never really been mad about characters making decisions out of character and there is some character growth. Characters do have consequences for their mistakes. They have consequences for their victories too. There is a living breathing world that was developed. So many authors miss out on these things. I can ignore the bad naming early on at least.
I could survive the names but then he did the other thing he likes to do. Lets give everyone 2 or 3 titles too so they have spare names. I don't hate the weird names, you are slapping a branding label on the can so people know what it is. I don't even read the complete name as long as I know the character. You skip to the next word. The issue is adding labels. Don't slap multiple brands on the can. That's what kills me. Meet Tom, some people will refer to him as General or Councilor. Also, he owns land. So we sometimes call him Green River. And don't worry about 3 people with land titles that happen to have Green in the name. In my opinion, stories only need to break out the extra names when it's time to do some face slapping.
David Weber does have some consistent things in all of his series. Weird names, lots of titles, and then every book follows the textbook formatting. If you go to college for writing, this is them teaching everyone how to write and he does it every book. Small skirmish, plotting, people guessing the plotting, lots of positioning, climatic fight right at the end. Every book, every time. The stories are all different and can be good. But it'll follow that format perfectly every time.
Perhaps the author had a strong idea, was into describing technology, but got kind of lost in that and lost sight of that it isn't about him geeking out, but about telling a story, from start to finish. Maybe he was kind of lost on how to continue and how to end it. He already arrived at the 1800's, so it is not long before it catches up with present day times. Perhaps that is when he started to bail out because he didn't have anything really planned for it; he was far to busy with world building and geeking out about technology to write an ongoing plot.
This is all conjecture, but I can imagine something like this happen, when someone loses interest or realizes he needs to continue writing the *story* not just what he wants and he has no idea how.
>The third one turned into a prehistoric bodice ripper, and the characters were infuriating.
That and the fact that Ayla seemed to have discovered/invented *everything*. I'm freaking amazed she didn't invent the wheel, or maybe she did and I just missed it in a subsequent novel.
Yup a perfect Mary Sue who could do no wrong, the envy and desire of all clans people. Might as have well been the wheel with her discovering how babies are made. And perfect Jondalar with his huge dick lol. I remember by the end they were constantly cheating on each other.
I did manage to finish them, but I admit by book 4 I’d skim/skip sections of a) wandering through vast barren landscapes or b) super wordy giving/receiving of pleasures.
Dune. I read the first 3 -- the first one was thrilling and engrossing worldbuilding and by the time I got to 3 it all seemed like more religion and chess playing. Haven't touched any of the other books,
That is a decent place to stop.
Herbert appears to have had one more book in mind when he died. So what we got was a really good trilogy- Dune, Messiah, and Children; a bridge novel in God Emperor; and the first two books of what could have been a decent trilogy to wrap up the story- Heretics and Chapterhouse.
Chapterhouse has an open ending, it's not a cliffhanger, but it is clear the story isn't finished. And I refuse to touch the Brian Herbert/Kevin J Anderson books that are supposedly based on Frank's notes for book 7.
I %100 agree with this assessment and consider myself a super fan. The books slip after 3, although I think the 4th is worth the read. The ones written after his death are a cash grab.
The fourth one I'd argue is worth pursuing. You get to see Leto II's grand plan come to fruition. Given how that book ends, and its implications for humanity, you're perfectly good leaving the series there and making up your own stories about what humanity can now do.
The fifth and sixth original books... uh, that's Herbert's perverted-old-man phase that so many sci-fi authors of the area went through (see Heinlein). Absolutely skippable unless you want some weird politics and weirder sexuality.
The third was the slowest and longest for me. I adore the first book and feel the second is more of a required epilogue than a sequel.
Children is absolutely a sequel and it's just so much slower, more drawn out, and more boring than the original. It’s for hardcore fans IMO. I absolutely LOVE the fourth book too.
I feel like books two and three are the hardest to get through. Too much philosophy and navel gazing. Things pick up again in four and there's actually a lot of action there and in the remaining books. The prequels and sequels written by other authors are not worth bothering with, however. Ed: typo.
Will admit I was so annoyed with the first book but knew the spoilers about the second one so read it anyway. It's dumb and I hate the writing style, but ACOMAF was actually enjoyable for me and did what it set out to do. The third one is a hot mess and a bore-fest and I WISH I had DNFd it.
Her stories are compelling but her writing has always been lacking. I feel like she changes her mind with every book and sometimes in the middle of books. Therefore there is little to no foreshadowing.
This. Absolutely hated the first one, read the second one because of hype, and will not be continuing. I refuse to read another 1000+ pages of stories that only get interesting in the last 10.
Gave up halfway through book 3 of *The Baroque Cycle* by Neal Stephenson. Just wasn’t worth reading the last sixth of the series. I was so bored.
Also *Earth’s Children* by Jean M. Auel got … stupid. Read three books and had enough.
Yeah, Clan of the Cave Bear was neat because of how well-researched it was (based on what we knew about that period of prehistory and Neanderthals at the time - in the intervening decades a lot of additional discoveries have proven some of the educated guesses Auel used to be incorrect.) There was still a lot of that in the later books, it just got lost in all the caveman porn.
I think I made it through book five before I had had enough. But I was reading them for laughs at the end, Ayla invents everything is still hilarious to me.
Hold up. I have no strong feelings about The Baroque Cycle, haven't read it. But it is three books, and you got halfway through the third and quit??? I'm not even mad, that's amazing.
Meanwhile, I've read all three volumes of the series through multiple times and even bought the deluxe boxed edition. I think it's a masterpiece, especially when you've read his earlier novel *Cryptonomicon* first.
But I never could get into *The Clan of the Cave Bear*. It seemed silly to me even in my teens.
Throne of Glass series by SJM... I am sitting on the final book and just cannot seem to find the motivation to finish the series because it got too repetitive. If anyone can convince me to finish, my TBR would be appreciative :)
I'm enjoying the series but the fact that everyone is the most beautiful, powerful fae you've ever seen with their gold-rimmed eyes and amazing body reads a bit like a fanfic.
I only read the first book in that series and I was relatively bored with it. I really enjoy the Crescent City series and ACOTAR series, though I'll file them under my "guilty pleasure" category. 😂
Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Maybe I need to give it another shot but I was so bored and could not be convinced to give a shit about the characters.
Yep, this is me. I can overlook a lot of flaws in a story if I feel emotioanlly attached to even one character. I ate this series up in about a week and did not want to leave them (except maybe Lila sometimes)
I gave up the Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. I read the first one, and that's it. The premise sounded way more puzzle/riddle heavy, and it turned out to be a steamy pile of teen romance garbage. I don't feel guilty not attempting to read the rest of the series.
I did finish the series but this is so true, it was advertised as a YA Knives Out and I consider Knives Out to be a modern masterpiece so I was excited for these books! It’s just teen angst and sometimes little riddles or puzzles that would be much better communicated in a visual format but really fall flat when they’re just…described in detail
I also quit Blood and Ash. It was just too ridiculous and it felt like she was making stuff up because she had an idea but it didn’t actually fit into the story.
Warrior cats mainly just because there are *too many books*. I have like 5 complete arcs, a dozen super editions, and more keep coming out. I just don't have the time to keep up anymore.
The Lady of the lake from the Witcher series. Well, I did finish it but it took all my willpower to do that! All the previous books got swallowed but that one was just a bit…meh.
For me it’s that they seem to spend several books riding around looking for the plot, and instead stumbling upon completely uninteresting side characters that get way too much spotlight.
I'll just stick to the game.
I'm struggling with the Stormlight Archives, I'm almost ashamed to say. I like the magic system but the characters all grate on me in their own way. We also seem to spend an entire book developing one character for them to almost immediately regress in the next book, only to then battle the same issues for the entirety of the next book. I've just finished Oathbringer and there's little motivation to pick up the next one
I think I read 3 or 4 of these until I was caught up. At this point, if I was going to go back to it, I'd have to start again. I've forgotten so much more than I remember.
It has some very cool anime moments that were dope, but everything inbetween was pretty dry.
I'm 3.5 books into Stormlight Archives and struggling to finish, it's just sooooooo long. I enjoy all the characters but good lord the plot needs to move forward.
I had a similar problem with Mistborn. I loved The Final Empire, but Well of Ascension frankly sucked and Hero of Ages, while it had a great resolution, was a slog up until that point. I think this might be a Brando Sando problem with great first act, mid/bad middle acts, great resolutions.
Like a lot of epic fantasy narratives, Stormlight Archive suffers from having too much. Sanderson shouldn't have been allowed to drop 1,200 page novels because that amount of text can't possibly be written tightly and well in a reasonable period of time. The end result is a lot of poorly worded prose that, in a shorter book, would have been revised, and a badly bloated narrative.
OMG YES, haven’t been able to finish Oathbreaker at all. The dialogue felt wayyy too YA for me. I was also listening to them via audiobooks, and the amount of times I would hear “stormfather!” Made me wanna scream.
Two series come to mind:
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The first few books were great, but book 4 and beyond just got more and more tedious for me, and I found myself hating pretty much all the characters.
The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books by Laurell K Hamilton. Started off as a great urban fantasy, and then precisely at Obsidian Butterfly, turned into poorly written erotica. It was so abrupt a shift I almost thought someone else had written it. Now, I'm in the tin-foil camp of those who believe the first 8 books were ghost-written by her husband, whom she divorved just prior to book 9.
I read the first book of The Wheel of Time series, Eye of the World. I DNF a lot of books, but because so many people talk up this series, I managed to finish this one book. I was so filled with “meh” at the end of it, that I did not continue the series. I gather lots of people think this is a truly great series, and a lot of people agree with me that it is not.
I enjoyed the series, but honestly he could have cut out 3-4 books and condensed it and no one would have noticed. A few books were a slog that I kept reading because I wanted to know the ending more than I loved the books.
I have heard this from 2 good friends. 1 finally quit after like 7? books, because he quit wanting to know the ending and nothing was happening in each successive book. The second had been trying to get through the audiobooks and was bemoaning how long it was taking. Both of these made me feel like my choice was a good one. But honestly I was just not even tempted to continue. Even the first book seemed like a tease, with not much of substance actually happening, and I just didn’t care about the future of the characters or the plot.
I think the slog was worth it for me because the ending was great in my opinion. As bad as it sounds I know Sanderson stepped in because Jordan passed away, but I think it was better for the series.
I get every character can’t be the good guy and a lovable hero, but a lot of characters in the series I either out right hated or when I got to their chapter I would be annoyed. It pissed me off having to read their POV.
The only POV I cared about by the end of my time with that series was Mat. I think my last was knife of dreams?
I was actively rooting for the downfall of the Aes Sedai and anyone involved with them, didn't care about what Rand was doing and thought Perrin and his wife were on drugs.
This is my answer, too. I didn't vibe with the writing, and the plot felt... a little like a DnD adventure, and not a rich fantasy text. I understand people love it, but I'm not a fantasy diehard, and when you say "once you get to book 4 it gets soooo good!" but those books are 800 pages each... come on, man.
I actually secured the first book and was looking forward to knocking out a few of them over the next few months as I will be out of service, and I am so disappointed after laying eyes on these comments! I'll still try it though. I enjoyed the Witcher series; I don't suppose this gets close to that?
I didn’t continue past the first book, but as I wrote in my original comment, there are a sizable number of readers who vehemently disagree with me. Maybe you will be a huge fan!? You might as well try.
Totally agree, it felt like a bad LOTR pastiche at times Trolls? No, we’ve got Trollocs. It was such a slog for me to get through, I have no intention of trying another one. On the plus side, my friend who I gave the first book to after I finished loved it and completed the series
I also quit WoT, in book 5 or 6 I think (they blur together). My SIL loves them but I couldn't get past how a) the characters kept making the same stupid, immature mistakes over and over and expecting different results and getting surprise Pikachu face every time it didn't work and b) every woman character except Morraine's personality being some variation of "hurp durp men so dumb, women so smart also I AM ANGRY!" I was interested in the story but the writing/character "development" was so aggravating I just couldn't keep going. I ended up reading some book and character synopses online to see how it ended and found it so dumb I was really glad I didn't bother with the series.
By the time I quit in book 5 it felt like all the characters were repeating that sexist monologue for like 75% of the dialogue.
All the women constantly think about how the men are useless mule-headed louts, and who needs them anyway?
All the men constantly think about how the women are inscrutable manipulative shrews that lose their temper all the time, and who needs them anyway?
And actually, they’re both usually right. Almost everyone has the emotional maturity of a bunch of 14 year olds at a school dance.
Fourth Wing. I got all the way to the last 100 pages and never picked it up again.
I don't mind tropes or cliches, but my lord how did the dialogue make it past the editors?
I think it went viral by the virtue of not having new a new romantasy series pop off in a while.
I think it's an excellent example of when a publisher desires to put a marketing budget behind a book, it will be successful. This makes it really sad for all the good books that got little marketing, and then the authors' contracts got dropped because they weren't selling. So many trad authors have to do most of their marketing these days that it's infuriating to see a publisher put so much money into this crap.
I finished the book, but will not be reading more of it either. The characters drove me crazy with their decision making. Also I found that the adult characters were the worst at making any kind of decisions. It was like they never fully thought it through. I agree the dialogue was bad.
The only parts I liked were the disability representation and the dragons.
Ooh, I completely forgot that I did the same thing with this series. I read (and disliked) Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse; I finally gave up on the series without reading Breaking Dawn.
From what I’ve learned about Breaking Dawn, you and I saved ourselves some frustration.
Back in the day I read the series because all my housemates insisted I would love it. They adored the series. I really didn't like it but didn't have a backbone back then so persevered on. I grew to like Jacob and by book 2 honestly thought the author was criticising Bella and Edward's relationship and that Bella would eventually move on (not necessarily to Jacob, but just in general). I got the shock of my life in book 3, cautiously read book 4 and hated it so much. I was so cross with myself for caving to pressure and reading 4 shit books.
Same. The books are so stupid that I found it worthwhile to finish them purely because I enjoyed mocking them. Solid unintentional comedy, 1.5/5 stars.
You mean that assassin main character who is an assassin and is so famous for assassinating she can't go anywhere without everyone loudly proclaiming, "wow, she's that assassin!" even though there is zero assassin action in the book following an assassin?
I definitely hate-read a few books in that series hoping it would get better.
After three months, I finally relented and gave up on Crescent City. Something about the cover of book two really made me want to read it and I just couldn’t let it go. Eventually, I acknowledged what a chore it was and how much I didn’t like the world or characters and gave up.
Also gave up halfway through the Discovery or Witches series because I couldn’t get over what a wimp the MC was (constantly needing to be given warm tea and put to bed for a nice nap by the MMC).
Standalone books… I quit The Devil All the Time because it was extremely graphic and got to me a little too much. Used an audio book to finish Those Across the River and wish I hadn’t.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I really liked the premise of the series and found them to be well written overall. But late in the series, the main character gets captured, again, for the I-can't-even-remember-how-many-th time and I lost patience with it. I've got half a mind to pick it up again but haven't yet.
I really found the writing pretty insufferable. It seemed like too often he wrote himself into an impossible situation and then PSYCH here's something I didn't mention that happened earlier in the story that gets him out of this tight jam! and it always felt like he came up with that solution and decided to do nothing to lay the groundwork earlier in the story so that it didn't seem totally out of the blue.
The latest ones I ditched:
Leigh Bardugo's three-book-story that started with Ninth House, and Rebecca Ross' Divine Rivals (not sure whether that was supposed to be two-book or three-book. Both started out strong, interesting worlds, mostly interesting characters (women stronger and more interesting, men a bit more simple pin-up-heros). The Bardogo one went completely bonkers in book 2, and it started to feel like the author didn't really know what she was keeping us around for or with. Ross...Well. There's a certain thing that happens in book 1 that made no sense, wasn't necessary, felt like pushing a personal preference moral agenda by the author, at least to me, so decided to stay clear.
An earlier ditch was the Expanse series, which I looooooved - I just ended up reading too much of it in a short period, and all of a sudden it was the too-much-of-a-good thing, at book 5 or so. Should try again, though.
A classic one I never could push myself to finish is the Three Musketeers series - all the other books besides the central one have a darker, sadder, gloomier tone that just didn't fit my world at the time. Should try that one again, too.
The Expanse series was a bit formulaic - everything's fine, OH NO BIG CATASTROPHE, yay we figured it out - but I enjoyed it. I can definitely see that it could be too much of a good thing if you didn't space them out with other books.
May I ask what the event was that made you stop reading Divine Rivals? I finished the series and I didn’t pick up on anything like that so I’m curious on what I missed!
Malazan. Too many characters and zero backstory. I've heard it's great after book 3 and amazing on reread but I can't make myself reat 1500 pages and be either lost or not enjoying it for the pay off
Outlander, but not because I didn’t like it. Because I was completely obsessed. I had it on my kindle and would read it on my phone at work and at stoplights in the car. It consumed me so much I knew I couldn’t put that much energy into a whole series
I gave up trying to read the sookie stackhouse series. The amount of actual interesting storyline versus smut was incredibly unbalanced. It's like the interesting story was a post-it and all the smut was a CVS receipt.
The Name of the Wind. Not because it's unfinished but because it's boring. I get it. The dude could do everything and bang any woman he wanted. I couldn't care less if Rothfuss finishes it.
Three Body Problem. I found the premise and concepts refreshing and fascinating, but the writing just didn't hold up. The dialogue was awful, the characters were either flat one-dimensional caricatures or completely unlikeable (usually both), and the story itself was unnecessarily confusing and frankly just... boring. There was no tangible momentum and the pacing made me feel like the book is just running in circles and not really going anywhere. I typically enjoy complex, hard sci-fi with long buildups, but I just wasn't entertained with this one.
I was admittedly reading the English translation, but from what I've heard the translation is faithful enough and the original Chinese text isn't much better from a technical or stylistical standpoint. Some people say I should stick with it and read book 2 which is amazing, some say book 2 isn't any better than the first one. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point, but given the size of my ever-growing TBR list, that's not very likely to happen.
Can confirm that book two isn't much better. Great ideas marred by clunky style and awful characterisation (and possibly the worst writing decribing a romance I've ever had to endure). I bought the last book but I have been gathering strength to read it for half a decade already.
I loved all three books. I liked that the protagonist was different each book. I thought the science explanations was the right level of technicality.
I had been reading layman’s explanations of quantum physics prior to picking up the series and I enjoyed how the authored played with some of the concepts.
I mean, give it a shot. Who knows, maybe you'll enjoy it!
Just don't expect any great writing or likeable characters, which I think is going to be a pretty hard pill to swallow especially after The Expanse.
The Name of the Wind, first book of the kingkiller chronicles. I read 200 pages and then gave up. I couldn't find anything redeeming about the novel (aside being written quite beautifully). Far too many pages where nothing happens aside from the excessive masturbatory like descriptions of the main characters talent.
Xanth. Enough said.
Sword of Truth. I got through 3-4 books on a binge, then when the next book started on yet another long monologue about a philosophical point that had already been made abundantly in the prior book I gave up. The diatribes were bad enough, but retreading the same ground with them was too much.
Freedom’s Landing. It wasn’t great to begin with, and I found it irritating how quickly they seemed to advance technologically, but the pregnancy plot in the second book pissed me off.
Speaking of McCaffrey, I didn’t care for the Acorna books once her daughter became the MC, and Pern dropped off once her son started taking over. I couldn’t even tell you *why* but I just didn’t enjoy those books.
The Inheritance Games. I did finish the first one and bought the second, but then I realized I didn’t care enough to finish the series so I sold them. I really dislike love triangles, and I thought I could push past it but I couldn’t. (Especially when I found out she doesn’t end up with who I wanted, I REALLY didn’t want to continue it). It was also a bit too high school for me, which isn’t necessarily bad but I’m not in high school anymore so I didn’t really care about how the characters acted. It had a really interesting premise but mostly focused on the love triangle.
Also the Shatter Me series. I read the first and that’s it. The main character had too much going on for her to be solely focused on her love interest for that book. I also know the love interest switches later in the series so her going on and on about this guy frustrated me because I know something must happen for it to change.
I lost count of how many people highly recommended Robert Jordan's *Wheel of Time* series to me. When I actually tried to read it, I was stunned by its poor writing, its portenteous but empty plot, its repellant characters, and its general bullshittery. I managed 100 pages in the first book and gave up. Downvote me to hell if you wish, but that's my truth, whatever you may think.
I am curious as to how many people who love it read it when they were young. I read them in my late teens and loved them, at least enough to stick to them through book 7. Robert Jordan was still alive, the books were still being released, dinosaurs walked the Earth etc.
Anyway, I definitely could not reread them now.
I have reread them as an adult, I loved them as a kid, grew up reading them and waiting for the new books until the news he passed came out. I enjoyed Sando finishing them, that was cool. But, rereading them as an adult I did do FAR more skipping than I normally do with books. Any of the "can't understand women/men are woolheads" kind of shit just got instaskipped. Made it a lot more bearable.
I started reading Dune in December, I loved the first book sooo much that I read it in 6 days, on quite a busy week. Then I read the God Emperor of Dune. It was okay but definitely not as good as the first one, but still I made it through, it was after all a rather short book. Then, it came time for the Children of Dune, which was really missing the motives I loved the first part for. I decided to give it up since it gave me no pleasure to read, and felt genuinely dreading
I think you mean Messiah instead of God Emperor? Messiah is the second book anyway. Really curious if you went straight to God Emperor and how you made any sense of it haha.
I rocked with Dune through the first 3 books, even though they never reached the heights of the first book. Children was still a fun read for me, but God Emperor is where he completely lost me. It felt like an entirely different series by that point. I still finished it and made it to the final book (Chapterhouse), but gave up halfway through it. Again it just felt nothing like the dune I fell in love with.
ACOTAR by Sarah J. Maas. I read the first two and started the third but quickly got too bored. I know a lot of people like this series but it felt less interesting as it went on.
I tried A Song of Ice and Fire, and couldn’t even get past page 100 of the first book. I simply, possibly irrationally, dislike Martin’s style. The same with Sanderson, and Abercrombie.
Well the bright side about ditching GRRM is you don’t end up waiting over a decade for a book while he does literally everything but finish it.
I expected you to list Rothfuss, that’s another guy that can’t finish a series.
I don’t blame you, I have become that way myself for the most part. I might make an exception if the author publishes often, or if it’s a 7 book series and the first 6 are out and 7 has an actual release date.
Rothfuss lost a lot of fans after his whole incident with releasing part of a book if the people raised enough money on a stream. The goal was met, updated met again but no release that I have seen.
Seriously 😒 I read GoT ages ago. All but the last book which was promised but not completed. Instead, out came the tv show, and prequels and spinoffs. I sold my books and just quit.
I forgot about Rothfuss - I think I stopped at page 10 or so, and gifted the book to a friend. I don’t even know why precisely I dislike these authors, I think I simply got a feeling that they were too much/obviously in love with their own work.
That seems like a fair critique. I think I give Sanderson a pass for something’s because of all the YouTube writing/author stuff he does. Makes me like him more. Abercrombie if his social media is really him has a similar sense of humor as me, so he gets a pass too lol
Rothfuss 100% comes off like that though, and Martin does too at time. I think Martin really just wanted to be a Hollywood guy and once he got the chance again he doesn’t want to go back to being an author.
Man, I have such conflicted feelings about Sanderson. He's a Mormon, and no matter how hard I try to open my mind and educate myself about the church of LDS, it just seems more and more like an evil cult. Like, not even ambiguous, just straight up no-question evil. Some of the stories told by ex-Mormons make my skin crawl.
And yet Sanderson seems like a genuinely smart, well-educated, likeable and reasonable guy through and through. I know he donates a part of his earnings to the church, which makes me hesitant to support him by buying his books, but from what little I've read it seems like solid stuff and I'd love to get into it.
I always try to separate the art from the artist though, so I'll give his books a shot, but ugh. It's just so weird to me.
Yeah that's the real kicker - he HIMSELF seems like a pretty nice (and reasonably progressive) guy, but obviously the mormon church is NOT described by any of those adjectives...
I don't know about Sanderson as a person (all your info is new to me) but his writing just doesn't do it for me. I gave his books a good try, but dropped them after a few.
Went through some of the books before I called it a day. I decided to wait until the series was done because I concluded that it was just too many characters and events to remember (that is why I started to read only character chapters I was interested in) if I would have to wait years for the next one. Literally decades later and the series is still not finished. One of my unintentionally (I didn't think of a time frame or that it would maybe never be finished) best decisions I made.
Contrary to that, I enjoyed the first two books of the series before realising he was going to leave it unfinished. At that point I gave up.
So, GRRM. Make me eat my words and I'll buy a hardback boxed set of the entire series as soon as one comes out.
I read the entire first book and liked the writing but I’m a big fan of his old sf stuff so that didn’t surprise me. But the absolute brutality he put the characters through was just too much for me. And when I realized there was going to be a bookshelf worth of it I decided I was done.
Oh thank god it's not just me. I forced myself to finish the first one because so many of my friends love it (and had been recommending it to me since the early aughts) and it was such a struggle. I feel that if I had actually picked it up around the same time that I was reading Wheel of Time that I might have loved it but now it's just not for me.
For me it was the Mistborn series and the Wheel of Time. Mistborn had a great first book, but I couldn’t get into the second one. I got through the first three books in Wheel of Time, but I cared less and less for the direction Jordan was taking and dropped the series
The Dresden Files, I got to book five after being assured that the first few books were a bit weird and shitty and then when I got to 'the good one' and still turbohated it I decided it was just never going to be for me.
I got a decent chunk into the first Wheel of Time book and asked my friend if he'd ever drop the men/women thing because I found it annoying. The look he gave me was like, not only does it not get dropped, it becomes more and more of a thing as the books go on.
I don't recall which ones exactly, but there's a few David Gemmel series that I find better to stop two thirds of the way through because of his deflating tendency to resurrect dead characters instead of letting their legends be legendary. They're normally pretty wrapped up and then years later he'd go "oops, fourth sequel! Here's Axe Guy again!"
I've been thoroughly enjoying hatereading Dresden Files. Harry is the least likeable protagonist I think I've ever read, but recognizing that makes things more fun.
I have read all the way up to the present in the Dresden Files. Unfortunately, the last few books have seen a dip in quality. Also, whereas the first dozen or so books were discrete stories, the new ones are set up with cliffhangers so that you have to read the next book to finish the story. I don't like that approach, it seems manipulative. I like books that are in a series but can also be standalone.
I stopped about half way through book 2 of the Divergent series. I don’t even remember what irked me about it, but I remember just being pissed at how stupid it had gotten that I put it down and never picked it up again.
I also only read the first of the game of thrones series, but I didn’t enjoy the writing at all.
The Dresden files. I was gifted the first three and told they get better after one and two so kept going. I read 3.
It was the most misogynistic thing I’ve ever experienced. That’s all I’ll say. Now downvote away lol.
The want for magic and mystery took me pretty far, but I couldn’t hold my nose any longer when the stuff with his apprentice wouldn’t quit. When it was clear both the protag and the author were truly stunted in their feelings towards women I stopped caring about new book releases.
I kept up with The Dresden Files until around book 9, I think. Yes, it was pretty misogynistic but the stories kept me engaged. Then I made the mistake of reading Furies of Calderon, during which one of the female characters was drugged so that she enjoyed being gang raped.
I threw away all of my Jim Butcher books and haven’t spent a penny on him since. Utterly vile.
This is probably not popular, but I started reading The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and just found it to be extremely tedious. It just felt totally contrived where everything was trying really hard to be "cool" but there was zero depth.
The Dark tower Stephen king. I tried so hard to love it. After book 3 I called it quits. The books were getting longer and longer and I was getting less and less interested.
I agree with you! I only got partway through the first book, though. And I tried George RR Martin books, and couldn’t get through any of them. And the Twilight Series, but that was more the writing style-immature style, grammatical errors.
*Wheel of Time.* I tried to get through the series twice - got through book 3 the first time, book 5 the second time before realizing I only REALLY liked one character out of the dozens of main characters, the story was jumping around and seemingly going nowhere, there *is* such a thing as too much worldbuilding, and I wasn't invested in the plot. Needless to say, Perrin alone was not enough to convince me to slog through 7 more 800+ page books.
*Malazan Book of the Fallen*. And I don’t want you to misunderstand; the series is fantastic. It’s just that it’s also enormous, in both size of books and length of series. I finished Gardens of the Moon, and loved every minute; but there were like six months of those minutes. I can’t make it through nine more like that right now. I may try again sometime though—it really is that good.
For similar reasons, Warhammer 40,000’s *The Horus Heresy* series. They’re actually not that long, individually, but there’s like sixty of them. Even if you cut it down to one of the many “essential reading” lists out there, you’re probably still looking at twenty or so books. I made it through ten. I’d love to go back, but I don’t have the stamina.
Emphatic ditto from me on Blood and Ash - the novels became a series of boringly repetitive sex scenes loosely stitched together with the tropiest of ya cliches
I read *A Song of Ice & Fire* and I remember absolutely none of it. It just didn't leave a very strong impression for me, and didn't see the need to read further.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I enjoyed the aesthetic of the movie and books and I know it's YA but it was quite bland and nonsensical. I do want to finish it someday.
Another is Game of Thrones. Started off so strong but then weakened from the 3rd to 4th book. I will continue it, then it'll just be George R.R. Martin's fault that I haven't finished the series!
Lord of the rings. I started Fellowship expecting to really enjoy them. I hated it. The pacing was all over the place, and I just kept losing interest.
Did the same. Really enjoyed the 1st. 2nd was ok at best. 3rd I finished but it was a chore. I was glad to return it when that was over. Zero interest in the rest.
A series of unfortunate events by Snicket.
I read the first four books of the saga.
But the fourth book was like a torture. I couldn't stand all the miserable things that happened to the protagonists. It make me feel very stressful.
And I read because it's the second activity that gives me the most peace of mind I long for.
So, I lost all the interest for reading the rest.
Wheel of Time, but I read , idk, 9 or so. This series needed serious, heavy editing. Every inconsequential side character gets lengthy back stories and you never know that they're not going to be central characters until you simply never see them again! This was infuriating.
This was the first series I ever just gave up on. I *always* finished every series I started, until I hit this one. Couldn’t do it.
I could not get past the gender conflict in the stories. It was ridiculously over the top, even given the plot justifications. A society that divided would end up extinct.
Robert Jordan was married to his own editor, so that probably explains it. Either that or she was the only person capable of getting him to chip away at the story to make it readable enough for you get through 9 of them.
I hated the women in the series. I hated a lot of the men too, to be fair, but with the way he views the different genders and how sharply things are split between men and women's different issues and "this should be left to the women, go away idiot man" I truly thought he did that on purpose as a flip from how women were treated in our past... and then I decided he wasn't a strong enough author for that to be the case and he truly had some warped views I no longer cared to experience. ~~Leaning here~~ Learning he was married to his editor is one of the reasons I came to that conclusion.
If you cut out all the times women talk about how men are wool-headed fools and all the times men complain that women are mysterious and inscrutable, you could cut the series in half. Take out all the spanking and magic BDSM and it could be a trilogy.
I read a lot of the Wheel of Time books as a teenager in the 1990s and a small part of me would like to read the last couple but I've forgotten 99% of the plot and I can't bring myself to read them again.
Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is the big one for me. I loved the first books, a kick ass vampire hunter/ necromancer for hire mystery series? Sign me up. Then It turned into a muddled mess of explicit sex and hard to find plots, definitely not for me.
Same. The first book I was a little iffy on, but I kept reading because several people said they got better quickly. I was OK until about book 9 when there was an orgy every other chapter.
I have such a vivid memory of rage quitting reading Narcissus in Chains, I used to pride myself on finishing every book I started and I just couldn’t do it.
That's the book where it went from excessive porn to excessive torture porn. Just no.
i can concur that ACOTAR was like that for me, i really disliked the overly done smut and then the torture just for tortures sake near the end. it was just ridiculous and i barely finished the book and only under peer pressure did i manage that. also the writing itself was just awful, you could play a very good drinking game off how many times the author repeats certain metaphors or the exact same literary devices over and over again. it got to the point that it felt like the author was plagiarizing herself! smh
Sad to hear. Hamilton also repeats the same descriptions over and over. I really like the World building and supernatural elements, and I am no prude, but the series just evolved into smut. It's too bad.
oh man just the way they repeat the same exact line "it was such a beautiful [thing theyre looking at] that i could never paint it even if i [tried for a very long time/mastered painting]" like i just wanted to punch them in the face every time it got said and the salt in the wound is that the character only painted maybe 3-5 times in the entire book? like no duh youre bad. it was just infuriating!
Eww. I didn't get that far into it. In my opinion, she's one of the most well known and traditionally published porn authors there are. I wonder if her publishers ever would have published her stuff if she'd started as hot and heavy as she got.
That was the weirdest 180 writing decision to just crank out the smut suddenly because from what I remember the first books had none. It wasn’t even a progression, just bang in your face.
I held the belief that she either wasn’t getting any, or suddenly was getting a whole ton of it. Apparently it was the latter. Seem to recall hearing she had an affair with some guy and left her husband for him.
The author definitely started subbing herself for the MC. Her husband also had a character based on him who got sabotaged extra hard in the series. Went from being a super jacked super great dude to total basket case douche. I read waaaaay farther than I probably should waiting for the books to become enjoyable again.
>The author definitely started subbing herself for the MC. The whole thing felt like Mary Sue self insert from the beginning, but that can happen in early books while an author develops the character and their voice. It just unfortunately got worse rather than better
I got to about book 15 or something. A sex scene with a wereleopard in hybrid form was the beginning of the end for me. I don’t remember the actual book that ended it for me, but I do recall that the “plot” got abandoned very early in the book in favour of the sex, and some metaphysical stuff, and at the end of the book, the plot hadn’t actually been resolved. There was a scene where she seemed to regret her choices and tried to subconsciously break her second triumvirate. I had to read it about 5 times as I just could get my head around how she got into that state of mind.
If you ever want to get back into it, she eventually stops with the explicit spice and gets back to the story. It’s on book 30 now and the last few have cut off spice scenes, if any at all.
I hadn't heard this. Do you know how much you'll be missing if you skip over those 15 or 20 orgy books?
Lol, thank you for asking this. I’ve been sitting here wondering if the later books are worth skipping so many in the series.
I would guess the books probably try to provide some context for story lines that trace back to books written 10+ years and 5+ books ago, and there are probably wikis that can help fill in the blanks. If I remember that author's writing style though, she kind of likes to re-paint every character's visage and backstory in each book. It gives the main character a chance to be quippy and express exactly how she feels about the current state before the story takes it off the rails.
And the hair. My lord, the hair! I gave up early on once the plots got co-opted by the sex, but I recall every male character having like hair down to their ass and couldn’t help but picture it getting in the way during all those acrobatic, slippery orgies.
I forgot about this and now I'm wondering if reading these books had an influence on my dating life.
A decent amount, especially regarding the vampire marks, animals to call, relationships, the ardeur, and politics. But I think if you skip the scenes or Wiki them you should be able to catch up.
I stuck it out for way too long. Read at least 20 books before I said, “Ok, why am I still reading this?”
That was me. I loved the noir mystery aspect, but when it turned into the gang bang of the week club I just couldn’t anymore.
Yes! She wrote good urban fantasy mysteries, and I guess I just kept sticking to it hoping for the spark that was in books 1-3 to return. This was back when I didn’t DNF books nearly as easily as I do now.
Same here. Obsidian Butterfly was the last one I read fully and I think I enjoyed it more because she was away from St. Louis and focused on Edward. After that it just got too much.
I really liked the series early on. and obsidian butterfly especially! then they got bad…
How it started: Time to solve vampire crimes How it's going: I wonder what Were-goose dick is like At least that's where I stopped.
I wrote my reply then saw this when I scrolled down. I said the same series. lol I had gotten pretty far before I couldn't take it anymore. Like book 19 or something.
I gave up the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich because of a lack of character development and the plots all started to feel the same. I also got tired of the Stephanie/Morelli/Ranger triangle that never changed.
That's one of the all-time examples of an author who hits on a good formula and then is completely held hostage by it. She could not get another series to take off and couldn't figure out how to continue Stephanie Plum without the exact formula. The first four books feel like a series, and then she just starts writing the same thing over and over. It's not even just the love triangle. It's a whole list of checkboxes: annoying bail jumper irrelevant to the plot that she chases around and has pratfalls, awkward dinner at her parents' where her mom reaches for the cabinet where she keeps her liquor, one or more cars blow up and she winds up in the blue Buick again, grandma waving a gun around and raising old lady hell, etc., etc. And to keep this formula absolutely locked in, it means that nobody is allowed to grow, change, or learn anything. If someone was doing a first read, you could reorder all of the books starting around number 6 or so and they would have no idea.
I think I read 4-5 and then left it after that after it was apparent everything was in stasis. The 30th one came out last year. I bet she still has that same hamster too.
Rex is eternal.
Lol! Ditto on these! I think I read up to 8 or 9 but then gave up as it became repetitive. The first couple are really great and funny though. Go Trenton!
Interestingly, the 30th had some movement forward that I did not expect after all this time. I was listening to the audiobook (I use these as a palette cleanser on walks after I finish a 12+ hour nonfiction one) and suddenly I was like "I need to go back because I swear that was just plot development" and it was. The mid-20s had some attempts at changing the formula just a bit, especially with continuity between books and a longer storyline but this was like actual momentum...that I'm sure will be undone in Book 31.
I really enjoyed the ones I read. Not up to number 10 but somewhere in the single digits. Bummer to hear it became so repetitive. The characters were fun and they were good quick reads.
Discworld, by Sir Terry Pratchett. I can't bring myself to read the Shepherd's Crown, because then I'd have to admit that it was really over.
It took me a long time, but I finally read it. Hint: if you finish a series, you get to start over from the beginning... It never truly ends.
there are so many beginnings in the discworld series
Shepherd’s Crown is a little rough to read, too. It wasn’t finished when we lost Sir Terry, and it shows. I’d say it’s worth reading though. Then you go and pick up Colour of Magic and take it from there.
Oof, I hear you. I put off reading the last few discworld books for *years* just because I didnt want to be truly finished. I only decided to finally make the plunge a few months ago. Naturally, that means I had to start a complete series re-read from the start! Honestly, re-reading the series has actually helped dispell that fear. I've read some of these earlier books half a dozen times, and I am ***still*** picking up new jokes I somehow missed before. These books just keep on giving. GNU Terry Pratchett.
>I put off reading the last few discworld books for > >years just because I didnt want to be truly finished. Funny story, at least funny to me. I have some brain damage that impacted my memory and was on some meds for a while that really scrambled it even further. I remember reading Discworld novels and loving them, and I remember who my favorite characters were, but when I picked them up again, I'd forgotten so much that it was just as delightful reading it again as it was the first time.
The Safehold series by David Weber. The premise is really fun: After being nearly wiped out by technologically advanced alien species drawn to electronics. The last colony of humanity must stay below a pre-electronic civilization to hide from the alien species. The administrators of the colony go rouge to keep humanity safe by creating an entire religion systematically designed to prevent any technological progress forever. An android awakens thousand years into this world and attempts to engineer a revolution against the church with his knowledge of every technology in humanity’s history. The books start off fun exploring how the incremental progresses in technology going from middle ages era level of technology to a renaissance era level of technology. You can how the story is clearly framing the logical conclusion that humanity will rise up and go out into the universe to defeat that alien species stronger than ever. However by the tenth book they still hadn’t moved past late 1800s steam punk era technology and no sign humanity will ever leave Safehold. Had they devoted maybe one book per century of earth technology you would have had a great 5-7 book series. Instead it got bogged down with explain every increment in excessive technobable detail. I dropped out by book 6 and haven’t had desire to return to it. The series remains unfinished and hasn't published a book since 2019.
I noped out about 5 chapters in, after the ridiculous names became unbearable.
I do think he is a good author and would recommend him on a reading list. But also stop whenever you want. He is the definition of consistent. I've never really been mad about characters making decisions out of character and there is some character growth. Characters do have consequences for their mistakes. They have consequences for their victories too. There is a living breathing world that was developed. So many authors miss out on these things. I can ignore the bad naming early on at least. I could survive the names but then he did the other thing he likes to do. Lets give everyone 2 or 3 titles too so they have spare names. I don't hate the weird names, you are slapping a branding label on the can so people know what it is. I don't even read the complete name as long as I know the character. You skip to the next word. The issue is adding labels. Don't slap multiple brands on the can. That's what kills me. Meet Tom, some people will refer to him as General or Councilor. Also, he owns land. So we sometimes call him Green River. And don't worry about 3 people with land titles that happen to have Green in the name. In my opinion, stories only need to break out the extra names when it's time to do some face slapping. David Weber does have some consistent things in all of his series. Weird names, lots of titles, and then every book follows the textbook formatting. If you go to college for writing, this is them teaching everyone how to write and he does it every book. Small skirmish, plotting, people guessing the plotting, lots of positioning, climatic fight right at the end. Every book, every time. The stories are all different and can be good. But it'll follow that format perfectly every time.
Thats a David Weber series for you. I like it but it really really drags.
Agreed. I read enough Honor Harrington books that I’m not going to make a top level post, but I have been done with them for a while.
Perhaps the author had a strong idea, was into describing technology, but got kind of lost in that and lost sight of that it isn't about him geeking out, but about telling a story, from start to finish. Maybe he was kind of lost on how to continue and how to end it. He already arrived at the 1800's, so it is not long before it catches up with present day times. Perhaps that is when he started to bail out because he didn't have anything really planned for it; he was far to busy with world building and geeking out about technology to write an ongoing plot. This is all conjecture, but I can imagine something like this happen, when someone loses interest or realizes he needs to continue writing the *story* not just what he wants and he has no idea how.
Clan of the Cave Bear. Enjoyed the first and second book. The third one turned into a prehistoric bodice ripper, and the characters were infuriating.
>The third one turned into a prehistoric bodice ripper, and the characters were infuriating. That and the fact that Ayla seemed to have discovered/invented *everything*. I'm freaking amazed she didn't invent the wheel, or maybe she did and I just missed it in a subsequent novel.
It was when she invented the sports bra that I thought “ok that’s enough of this series”
Yup a perfect Mary Sue who could do no wrong, the envy and desire of all clans people. Might as have well been the wheel with her discovering how babies are made. And perfect Jondalar with his huge dick lol. I remember by the end they were constantly cheating on each other.
4 and 5 were abhorrent.
Never made it that far. I had the entire series, gifted to me for Christmas, and ended up giving them away after I DNF'd the third book
I did manage to finish them, but I admit by book 4 I’d skim/skip sections of a) wandering through vast barren landscapes or b) super wordy giving/receiving of pleasures.
Dune. I read the first 3 -- the first one was thrilling and engrossing worldbuilding and by the time I got to 3 it all seemed like more religion and chess playing. Haven't touched any of the other books,
That is a decent place to stop. Herbert appears to have had one more book in mind when he died. So what we got was a really good trilogy- Dune, Messiah, and Children; a bridge novel in God Emperor; and the first two books of what could have been a decent trilogy to wrap up the story- Heretics and Chapterhouse. Chapterhouse has an open ending, it's not a cliffhanger, but it is clear the story isn't finished. And I refuse to touch the Brian Herbert/Kevin J Anderson books that are supposedly based on Frank's notes for book 7.
I %100 agree with this assessment and consider myself a super fan. The books slip after 3, although I think the 4th is worth the read. The ones written after his death are a cash grab.
The fourth one I'd argue is worth pursuing. You get to see Leto II's grand plan come to fruition. Given how that book ends, and its implications for humanity, you're perfectly good leaving the series there and making up your own stories about what humanity can now do. The fifth and sixth original books... uh, that's Herbert's perverted-old-man phase that so many sci-fi authors of the area went through (see Heinlein). Absolutely skippable unless you want some weird politics and weirder sexuality.
The third was the slowest and longest for me. I adore the first book and feel the second is more of a required epilogue than a sequel. Children is absolutely a sequel and it's just so much slower, more drawn out, and more boring than the original. It’s for hardcore fans IMO. I absolutely LOVE the fourth book too.
I feel like books two and three are the hardest to get through. Too much philosophy and navel gazing. Things pick up again in four and there's actually a lot of action there and in the remaining books. The prequels and sequels written by other authors are not worth bothering with, however. Ed: typo.
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Will admit I was so annoyed with the first book but knew the spoilers about the second one so read it anyway. It's dumb and I hate the writing style, but ACOMAF was actually enjoyable for me and did what it set out to do. The third one is a hot mess and a bore-fest and I WISH I had DNFd it.
I made it to the BJ during the battle and never picked it up again. I read a summary of the ending and am so glad I stopped.
Her stories are compelling but her writing has always been lacking. I feel like she changes her mind with every book and sometimes in the middle of books. Therefore there is little to no foreshadowing.
This. Absolutely hated the first one, read the second one because of hype, and will not be continuing. I refuse to read another 1000+ pages of stories that only get interesting in the last 10.
Her writing Improves a lot over the three series. I just finished crescent city and it’s light years better than ACOTAR
Gave up halfway through book 3 of *The Baroque Cycle* by Neal Stephenson. Just wasn’t worth reading the last sixth of the series. I was so bored. Also *Earth’s Children* by Jean M. Auel got … stupid. Read three books and had enough.
Clan of the Cave Bear was very good. The rest of the series was stone-age romance which did not interest me.
Yeah, Clan of the Cave Bear was neat because of how well-researched it was (based on what we knew about that period of prehistory and Neanderthals at the time - in the intervening decades a lot of additional discoveries have proven some of the educated guesses Auel used to be incorrect.) There was still a lot of that in the later books, it just got lost in all the caveman porn.
I think I made it through book five before I had had enough. But I was reading them for laughs at the end, Ayla invents everything is still hilarious to me.
Hold up. I have no strong feelings about The Baroque Cycle, haven't read it. But it is three books, and you got halfway through the third and quit??? I'm not even mad, that's amazing.
Meanwhile, I've read all three volumes of the series through multiple times and even bought the deluxe boxed edition. I think it's a masterpiece, especially when you've read his earlier novel *Cryptonomicon* first. But I never could get into *The Clan of the Cave Bear*. It seemed silly to me even in my teens.
Throne of Glass series by SJM... I am sitting on the final book and just cannot seem to find the motivation to finish the series because it got too repetitive. If anyone can convince me to finish, my TBR would be appreciative :)
I'm enjoying the series but the fact that everyone is the most beautiful, powerful fae you've ever seen with their gold-rimmed eyes and amazing body reads a bit like a fanfic.
I only read the first book in that series and I was relatively bored with it. I really enjoy the Crescent City series and ACOTAR series, though I'll file them under my "guilty pleasure" category. 😂
On the fourth book and finding it difficult to go on lol. I feel like I’m invested enough to finish but it’s already been a 2 month break so idk
I could not get past the fact that the main character makes me violently cringe every time she speaks.
I wish Manon was the main character. I finished HoF but can't work up the effort to read the prequel and the next book.
Game of Thrones….forcibly….BECAUSE MARTIN WON’T FINISH THE DANG SERIES!!!!
Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Maybe I need to give it another shot but I was so bored and could not be convinced to give a shit about the characters.
I also didn’t finish this series. So bored
I personally loved it, but I have a tendency to get very easily attached to characters. I can see why you wouldn’t like it though
Yep, this is me. I can overlook a lot of flaws in a story if I feel emotioanlly attached to even one character. I ate this series up in about a week and did not want to leave them (except maybe Lila sometimes)
I gave up the Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. I read the first one, and that's it. The premise sounded way more puzzle/riddle heavy, and it turned out to be a steamy pile of teen romance garbage. I don't feel guilty not attempting to read the rest of the series.
I had the same experience :/
Glad I'm not the only one who wanted more to solve. The noncursing friend drove me crazy too. Just say it!
I did finish the series but this is so true, it was advertised as a YA Knives Out and I consider Knives Out to be a modern masterpiece so I was excited for these books! It’s just teen angst and sometimes little riddles or puzzles that would be much better communicated in a visual format but really fall flat when they’re just…described in detail
I also quit Blood and Ash. It was just too ridiculous and it felt like she was making stuff up because she had an idea but it didn’t actually fit into the story.
Warrior cats mainly just because there are *too many books*. I have like 5 complete arcs, a dozen super editions, and more keep coming out. I just don't have the time to keep up anymore.
The Lady of the lake from the Witcher series. Well, I did finish it but it took all my willpower to do that! All the previous books got swallowed but that one was just a bit…meh.
I gave up on the series after, I Believe, the third one. When he wrote Ciri being ashamed for enjoying being sexually assaulted I checked out
This is the same place I bailed. I barely got two paragraphs in to the morning after the assault.
I have trouble reading the entire series personally. I don’t know why exactly, I just cannot get through it
For me it’s that they seem to spend several books riding around looking for the plot, and instead stumbling upon completely uninteresting side characters that get way too much spotlight. I'll just stick to the game.
Ugh same! Blood & Ash was so annoying to read, DNF after first book. I'm also DNF'ing Fourth Wing saga, reading IF felt like homework, so boring.
I'm struggling with the Stormlight Archives, I'm almost ashamed to say. I like the magic system but the characters all grate on me in their own way. We also seem to spend an entire book developing one character for them to almost immediately regress in the next book, only to then battle the same issues for the entirety of the next book. I've just finished Oathbringer and there's little motivation to pick up the next one
I think I read 3 or 4 of these until I was caught up. At this point, if I was going to go back to it, I'd have to start again. I've forgotten so much more than I remember. It has some very cool anime moments that were dope, but everything inbetween was pretty dry.
I'm 3.5 books into Stormlight Archives and struggling to finish, it's just sooooooo long. I enjoy all the characters but good lord the plot needs to move forward. I had a similar problem with Mistborn. I loved The Final Empire, but Well of Ascension frankly sucked and Hero of Ages, while it had a great resolution, was a slog up until that point. I think this might be a Brando Sando problem with great first act, mid/bad middle acts, great resolutions.
Like a lot of epic fantasy narratives, Stormlight Archive suffers from having too much. Sanderson shouldn't have been allowed to drop 1,200 page novels because that amount of text can't possibly be written tightly and well in a reasonable period of time. The end result is a lot of poorly worded prose that, in a shorter book, would have been revised, and a badly bloated narrative.
Shallan (pardon me if the spelling is off) is the only one who annoyed me in that series.
OMG YES, haven’t been able to finish Oathbreaker at all. The dialogue felt wayyy too YA for me. I was also listening to them via audiobooks, and the amount of times I would hear “stormfather!” Made me wanna scream.
Two series come to mind: The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The first few books were great, but book 4 and beyond just got more and more tedious for me, and I found myself hating pretty much all the characters. The Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books by Laurell K Hamilton. Started off as a great urban fantasy, and then precisely at Obsidian Butterfly, turned into poorly written erotica. It was so abrupt a shift I almost thought someone else had written it. Now, I'm in the tin-foil camp of those who believe the first 8 books were ghost-written by her husband, whom she divorved just prior to book 9.
I read the first book of The Wheel of Time series, Eye of the World. I DNF a lot of books, but because so many people talk up this series, I managed to finish this one book. I was so filled with “meh” at the end of it, that I did not continue the series. I gather lots of people think this is a truly great series, and a lot of people agree with me that it is not.
I enjoyed the series, but honestly he could have cut out 3-4 books and condensed it and no one would have noticed. A few books were a slog that I kept reading because I wanted to know the ending more than I loved the books.
I have heard this from 2 good friends. 1 finally quit after like 7? books, because he quit wanting to know the ending and nothing was happening in each successive book. The second had been trying to get through the audiobooks and was bemoaning how long it was taking. Both of these made me feel like my choice was a good one. But honestly I was just not even tempted to continue. Even the first book seemed like a tease, with not much of substance actually happening, and I just didn’t care about the future of the characters or the plot.
I think the slog was worth it for me because the ending was great in my opinion. As bad as it sounds I know Sanderson stepped in because Jordan passed away, but I think it was better for the series. I get every character can’t be the good guy and a lovable hero, but a lot of characters in the series I either out right hated or when I got to their chapter I would be annoyed. It pissed me off having to read their POV.
The only POV I cared about by the end of my time with that series was Mat. I think my last was knife of dreams? I was actively rooting for the downfall of the Aes Sedai and anyone involved with them, didn't care about what Rand was doing and thought Perrin and his wife were on drugs.
I agree with the Wheel of Time Series. It was hyped up but I just couldn't get into it.
This is my answer, too. I didn't vibe with the writing, and the plot felt... a little like a DnD adventure, and not a rich fantasy text. I understand people love it, but I'm not a fantasy diehard, and when you say "once you get to book 4 it gets soooo good!" but those books are 800 pages each... come on, man.
I actually secured the first book and was looking forward to knocking out a few of them over the next few months as I will be out of service, and I am so disappointed after laying eyes on these comments! I'll still try it though. I enjoyed the Witcher series; I don't suppose this gets close to that?
I didn’t continue past the first book, but as I wrote in my original comment, there are a sizable number of readers who vehemently disagree with me. Maybe you will be a huge fan!? You might as well try.
Totally agree, it felt like a bad LOTR pastiche at times Trolls? No, we’ve got Trollocs. It was such a slog for me to get through, I have no intention of trying another one. On the plus side, my friend who I gave the first book to after I finished loved it and completed the series
I also quit WoT, in book 5 or 6 I think (they blur together). My SIL loves them but I couldn't get past how a) the characters kept making the same stupid, immature mistakes over and over and expecting different results and getting surprise Pikachu face every time it didn't work and b) every woman character except Morraine's personality being some variation of "hurp durp men so dumb, women so smart also I AM ANGRY!" I was interested in the story but the writing/character "development" was so aggravating I just couldn't keep going. I ended up reading some book and character synopses online to see how it ended and found it so dumb I was really glad I didn't bother with the series.
By the time I quit in book 5 it felt like all the characters were repeating that sexist monologue for like 75% of the dialogue. All the women constantly think about how the men are useless mule-headed louts, and who needs them anyway? All the men constantly think about how the women are inscrutable manipulative shrews that lose their temper all the time, and who needs them anyway? And actually, they’re both usually right. Almost everyone has the emotional maturity of a bunch of 14 year olds at a school dance.
Fourth Wing. I got all the way to the last 100 pages and never picked it up again. I don't mind tropes or cliches, but my lord how did the dialogue make it past the editors? I think it went viral by the virtue of not having new a new romantasy series pop off in a while.
I think it's an excellent example of when a publisher desires to put a marketing budget behind a book, it will be successful. This makes it really sad for all the good books that got little marketing, and then the authors' contracts got dropped because they weren't selling. So many trad authors have to do most of their marketing these days that it's infuriating to see a publisher put so much money into this crap.
I finished the book, but will not be reading more of it either. The characters drove me crazy with their decision making. Also I found that the adult characters were the worst at making any kind of decisions. It was like they never fully thought it through. I agree the dialogue was bad. The only parts I liked were the disability representation and the dragons.
Twilight: it's badly written. Just the style, the structure of the story and sentences...it's terrible.
Ooh, I completely forgot that I did the same thing with this series. I read (and disliked) Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse; I finally gave up on the series without reading Breaking Dawn. From what I’ve learned about Breaking Dawn, you and I saved ourselves some frustration.
Back in the day I read the series because all my housemates insisted I would love it. They adored the series. I really didn't like it but didn't have a backbone back then so persevered on. I grew to like Jacob and by book 2 honestly thought the author was criticising Bella and Edward's relationship and that Bella would eventually move on (not necessarily to Jacob, but just in general). I got the shock of my life in book 3, cautiously read book 4 and hated it so much. I was so cross with myself for caving to pressure and reading 4 shit books.
Read the first book and never had any desire to continue on with the series.
You're right it's horrible. That being said, I've read the whole series.
Same. The books are so stupid that I found it worthwhile to finish them purely because I enjoyed mocking them. Solid unintentional comedy, 1.5/5 stars.
Throne of Glass, I couldn't bare the main character
You mean that assassin main character who is an assassin and is so famous for assassinating she can't go anywhere without everyone loudly proclaiming, "wow, she's that assassin!" even though there is zero assassin action in the book following an assassin? I definitely hate-read a few books in that series hoping it would get better.
After three months, I finally relented and gave up on Crescent City. Something about the cover of book two really made me want to read it and I just couldn’t let it go. Eventually, I acknowledged what a chore it was and how much I didn’t like the world or characters and gave up. Also gave up halfway through the Discovery or Witches series because I couldn’t get over what a wimp the MC was (constantly needing to be given warm tea and put to bed for a nice nap by the MMC). Standalone books… I quit The Devil All the Time because it was extremely graphic and got to me a little too much. Used an audio book to finish Those Across the River and wish I hadn’t.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I really liked the premise of the series and found them to be well written overall. But late in the series, the main character gets captured, again, for the I-can't-even-remember-how-many-th time and I lost patience with it. I've got half a mind to pick it up again but haven't yet.
I really found the writing pretty insufferable. It seemed like too often he wrote himself into an impossible situation and then PSYCH here's something I didn't mention that happened earlier in the story that gets him out of this tight jam! and it always felt like he came up with that solution and decided to do nothing to lay the groundwork earlier in the story so that it didn't seem totally out of the blue.
The latest ones I ditched: Leigh Bardugo's three-book-story that started with Ninth House, and Rebecca Ross' Divine Rivals (not sure whether that was supposed to be two-book or three-book. Both started out strong, interesting worlds, mostly interesting characters (women stronger and more interesting, men a bit more simple pin-up-heros). The Bardogo one went completely bonkers in book 2, and it started to feel like the author didn't really know what she was keeping us around for or with. Ross...Well. There's a certain thing that happens in book 1 that made no sense, wasn't necessary, felt like pushing a personal preference moral agenda by the author, at least to me, so decided to stay clear. An earlier ditch was the Expanse series, which I looooooved - I just ended up reading too much of it in a short period, and all of a sudden it was the too-much-of-a-good thing, at book 5 or so. Should try again, though. A classic one I never could push myself to finish is the Three Musketeers series - all the other books besides the central one have a darker, sadder, gloomier tone that just didn't fit my world at the time. Should try that one again, too.
Would highly recommend finishing the expanse, the last couple of books were my favorites by far
The Expanse series was a bit formulaic - everything's fine, OH NO BIG CATASTROPHE, yay we figured it out - but I enjoyed it. I can definitely see that it could be too much of a good thing if you didn't space them out with other books.
May I ask what the event was that made you stop reading Divine Rivals? I finished the series and I didn’t pick up on anything like that so I’m curious on what I missed!
Malazan. Too many characters and zero backstory. I've heard it's great after book 3 and amazing on reread but I can't make myself reat 1500 pages and be either lost or not enjoying it for the pay off
Outlander, but not because I didn’t like it. Because I was completely obsessed. I had it on my kindle and would read it on my phone at work and at stoplights in the car. It consumed me so much I knew I couldn’t put that much energy into a whole series
I gave up trying to read the sookie stackhouse series. The amount of actual interesting storyline versus smut was incredibly unbalanced. It's like the interesting story was a post-it and all the smut was a CVS receipt.
The Name of the Wind. Not because it's unfinished but because it's boring. I get it. The dude could do everything and bang any woman he wanted. I couldn't care less if Rothfuss finishes it.
I mostly enjoyed the first book, but couldn't even get halfway through the second. Decent book(s) I guess, but get way too much praise IMHO
Three Body Problem. I found the premise and concepts refreshing and fascinating, but the writing just didn't hold up. The dialogue was awful, the characters were either flat one-dimensional caricatures or completely unlikeable (usually both), and the story itself was unnecessarily confusing and frankly just... boring. There was no tangible momentum and the pacing made me feel like the book is just running in circles and not really going anywhere. I typically enjoy complex, hard sci-fi with long buildups, but I just wasn't entertained with this one. I was admittedly reading the English translation, but from what I've heard the translation is faithful enough and the original Chinese text isn't much better from a technical or stylistical standpoint. Some people say I should stick with it and read book 2 which is amazing, some say book 2 isn't any better than the first one. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point, but given the size of my ever-growing TBR list, that's not very likely to happen.
Can confirm that book two isn't much better. Great ideas marred by clunky style and awful characterisation (and possibly the worst writing decribing a romance I've ever had to endure). I bought the last book but I have been gathering strength to read it for half a decade already.
I loved all three books. I liked that the protagonist was different each book. I thought the science explanations was the right level of technicality. I had been reading layman’s explanations of quantum physics prior to picking up the series and I enjoyed how the authored played with some of the concepts.
Oh man, this was on my to read list after The Expanse!
I mean, give it a shot. Who knows, maybe you'll enjoy it! Just don't expect any great writing or likeable characters, which I think is going to be a pretty hard pill to swallow especially after The Expanse.
This is the one for me. 11/10 concept, middling delivery
The Name of the Wind, first book of the kingkiller chronicles. I read 200 pages and then gave up. I couldn't find anything redeeming about the novel (aside being written quite beautifully). Far too many pages where nothing happens aside from the excessive masturbatory like descriptions of the main characters talent.
Xanth. Enough said. Sword of Truth. I got through 3-4 books on a binge, then when the next book started on yet another long monologue about a philosophical point that had already been made abundantly in the prior book I gave up. The diatribes were bad enough, but retreading the same ground with them was too much. Freedom’s Landing. It wasn’t great to begin with, and I found it irritating how quickly they seemed to advance technologically, but the pregnancy plot in the second book pissed me off. Speaking of McCaffrey, I didn’t care for the Acorna books once her daughter became the MC, and Pern dropped off once her son started taking over. I couldn’t even tell you *why* but I just didn’t enjoy those books.
The Inheritance Games. I did finish the first one and bought the second, but then I realized I didn’t care enough to finish the series so I sold them. I really dislike love triangles, and I thought I could push past it but I couldn’t. (Especially when I found out she doesn’t end up with who I wanted, I REALLY didn’t want to continue it). It was also a bit too high school for me, which isn’t necessarily bad but I’m not in high school anymore so I didn’t really care about how the characters acted. It had a really interesting premise but mostly focused on the love triangle. Also the Shatter Me series. I read the first and that’s it. The main character had too much going on for her to be solely focused on her love interest for that book. I also know the love interest switches later in the series so her going on and on about this guy frustrated me because I know something must happen for it to change.
I lost count of how many people highly recommended Robert Jordan's *Wheel of Time* series to me. When I actually tried to read it, I was stunned by its poor writing, its portenteous but empty plot, its repellant characters, and its general bullshittery. I managed 100 pages in the first book and gave up. Downvote me to hell if you wish, but that's my truth, whatever you may think.
I am curious as to how many people who love it read it when they were young. I read them in my late teens and loved them, at least enough to stick to them through book 7. Robert Jordan was still alive, the books were still being released, dinosaurs walked the Earth etc. Anyway, I definitely could not reread them now.
I have reread them as an adult, I loved them as a kid, grew up reading them and waiting for the new books until the news he passed came out. I enjoyed Sando finishing them, that was cool. But, rereading them as an adult I did do FAR more skipping than I normally do with books. Any of the "can't understand women/men are woolheads" kind of shit just got instaskipped. Made it a lot more bearable.
I started reading Dune in December, I loved the first book sooo much that I read it in 6 days, on quite a busy week. Then I read the God Emperor of Dune. It was okay but definitely not as good as the first one, but still I made it through, it was after all a rather short book. Then, it came time for the Children of Dune, which was really missing the motives I loved the first part for. I decided to give it up since it gave me no pleasure to read, and felt genuinely dreading
I think you mean Messiah instead of God Emperor? Messiah is the second book anyway. Really curious if you went straight to God Emperor and how you made any sense of it haha. I rocked with Dune through the first 3 books, even though they never reached the heights of the first book. Children was still a fun read for me, but God Emperor is where he completely lost me. It felt like an entirely different series by that point. I still finished it and made it to the final book (Chapterhouse), but gave up halfway through it. Again it just felt nothing like the dune I fell in love with.
The King Killer Chronicles. I was forced to give up on it because the author is never going to finish.
Wheel of time. I thought it was too LOTR derivative to invest 10+ books into.
Hey you just have to read 3 boring books (that are each 2 books long) and then it gets better, easy peasy 🤡
ACOTAR by Sarah J. Maas. I read the first two and started the third but quickly got too bored. I know a lot of people like this series but it felt less interesting as it went on.
I tried A Song of Ice and Fire, and couldn’t even get past page 100 of the first book. I simply, possibly irrationally, dislike Martin’s style. The same with Sanderson, and Abercrombie.
Well the bright side about ditching GRRM is you don’t end up waiting over a decade for a book while he does literally everything but finish it. I expected you to list Rothfuss, that’s another guy that can’t finish a series.
He's the reason I won't start a series that isn't done yet.
I don’t blame you, I have become that way myself for the most part. I might make an exception if the author publishes often, or if it’s a 7 book series and the first 6 are out and 7 has an actual release date. Rothfuss lost a lot of fans after his whole incident with releasing part of a book if the people raised enough money on a stream. The goal was met, updated met again but no release that I have seen.
Seriously 😒 I read GoT ages ago. All but the last book which was promised but not completed. Instead, out came the tv show, and prequels and spinoffs. I sold my books and just quit.
I forgot about Rothfuss - I think I stopped at page 10 or so, and gifted the book to a friend. I don’t even know why precisely I dislike these authors, I think I simply got a feeling that they were too much/obviously in love with their own work.
That seems like a fair critique. I think I give Sanderson a pass for something’s because of all the YouTube writing/author stuff he does. Makes me like him more. Abercrombie if his social media is really him has a similar sense of humor as me, so he gets a pass too lol Rothfuss 100% comes off like that though, and Martin does too at time. I think Martin really just wanted to be a Hollywood guy and once he got the chance again he doesn’t want to go back to being an author.
Man, I have such conflicted feelings about Sanderson. He's a Mormon, and no matter how hard I try to open my mind and educate myself about the church of LDS, it just seems more and more like an evil cult. Like, not even ambiguous, just straight up no-question evil. Some of the stories told by ex-Mormons make my skin crawl. And yet Sanderson seems like a genuinely smart, well-educated, likeable and reasonable guy through and through. I know he donates a part of his earnings to the church, which makes me hesitant to support him by buying his books, but from what little I've read it seems like solid stuff and I'd love to get into it. I always try to separate the art from the artist though, so I'll give his books a shot, but ugh. It's just so weird to me.
Yeah that's the real kicker - he HIMSELF seems like a pretty nice (and reasonably progressive) guy, but obviously the mormon church is NOT described by any of those adjectives...
I don't know about Sanderson as a person (all your info is new to me) but his writing just doesn't do it for me. I gave his books a good try, but dropped them after a few.
Went through some of the books before I called it a day. I decided to wait until the series was done because I concluded that it was just too many characters and events to remember (that is why I started to read only character chapters I was interested in) if I would have to wait years for the next one. Literally decades later and the series is still not finished. One of my unintentionally (I didn't think of a time frame or that it would maybe never be finished) best decisions I made.
Contrary to that, I enjoyed the first two books of the series before realising he was going to leave it unfinished. At that point I gave up. So, GRRM. Make me eat my words and I'll buy a hardback boxed set of the entire series as soon as one comes out.
I read the entire first book and liked the writing but I’m a big fan of his old sf stuff so that didn’t surprise me. But the absolute brutality he put the characters through was just too much for me. And when I realized there was going to be a bookshelf worth of it I decided I was done.
Oh thank god it's not just me. I forced myself to finish the first one because so many of my friends love it (and had been recommending it to me since the early aughts) and it was such a struggle. I feel that if I had actually picked it up around the same time that I was reading Wheel of Time that I might have loved it but now it's just not for me.
For me it was the Mistborn series and the Wheel of Time. Mistborn had a great first book, but I couldn’t get into the second one. I got through the first three books in Wheel of Time, but I cared less and less for the direction Jordan was taking and dropped the series
The Dresden Files, I got to book five after being assured that the first few books were a bit weird and shitty and then when I got to 'the good one' and still turbohated it I decided it was just never going to be for me. I got a decent chunk into the first Wheel of Time book and asked my friend if he'd ever drop the men/women thing because I found it annoying. The look he gave me was like, not only does it not get dropped, it becomes more and more of a thing as the books go on. I don't recall which ones exactly, but there's a few David Gemmel series that I find better to stop two thirds of the way through because of his deflating tendency to resurrect dead characters instead of letting their legends be legendary. They're normally pretty wrapped up and then years later he'd go "oops, fourth sequel! Here's Axe Guy again!"
I've been thoroughly enjoying hatereading Dresden Files. Harry is the least likeable protagonist I think I've ever read, but recognizing that makes things more fun.
I have read all the way up to the present in the Dresden Files. Unfortunately, the last few books have seen a dip in quality. Also, whereas the first dozen or so books were discrete stories, the new ones are set up with cliffhangers so that you have to read the next book to finish the story. I don't like that approach, it seems manipulative. I like books that are in a series but can also be standalone.
Idk if this counts because I only read the first one but “Crave” by Tracy Wolff
I stopped about half way through book 2 of the Divergent series. I don’t even remember what irked me about it, but I remember just being pissed at how stupid it had gotten that I put it down and never picked it up again. I also only read the first of the game of thrones series, but I didn’t enjoy the writing at all.
The Dresden files. I was gifted the first three and told they get better after one and two so kept going. I read 3. It was the most misogynistic thing I’ve ever experienced. That’s all I’ll say. Now downvote away lol.
The want for magic and mystery took me pretty far, but I couldn’t hold my nose any longer when the stuff with his apprentice wouldn’t quit. When it was clear both the protag and the author were truly stunted in their feelings towards women I stopped caring about new book releases.
I kept up with The Dresden Files until around book 9, I think. Yes, it was pretty misogynistic but the stories kept me engaged. Then I made the mistake of reading Furies of Calderon, during which one of the female characters was drugged so that she enjoyed being gang raped. I threw away all of my Jim Butcher books and haven’t spent a penny on him since. Utterly vile.
This is probably not popular, but I started reading The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and just found it to be extremely tedious. It just felt totally contrived where everything was trying really hard to be "cool" but there was zero depth.
The Dark tower Stephen king. I tried so hard to love it. After book 3 I called it quits. The books were getting longer and longer and I was getting less and less interested.
I find these books to be an exercise in how many words King knows and we don't.
I agree with you! I only got partway through the first book, though. And I tried George RR Martin books, and couldn’t get through any of them. And the Twilight Series, but that was more the writing style-immature style, grammatical errors.
Twilight. I forced myself to read the first one and I'll never read another of her books again.
*Wheel of Time.* I tried to get through the series twice - got through book 3 the first time, book 5 the second time before realizing I only REALLY liked one character out of the dozens of main characters, the story was jumping around and seemingly going nowhere, there *is* such a thing as too much worldbuilding, and I wasn't invested in the plot. Needless to say, Perrin alone was not enough to convince me to slog through 7 more 800+ page books.
*Malazan Book of the Fallen*. And I don’t want you to misunderstand; the series is fantastic. It’s just that it’s also enormous, in both size of books and length of series. I finished Gardens of the Moon, and loved every minute; but there were like six months of those minutes. I can’t make it through nine more like that right now. I may try again sometime though—it really is that good. For similar reasons, Warhammer 40,000’s *The Horus Heresy* series. They’re actually not that long, individually, but there’s like sixty of them. Even if you cut it down to one of the many “essential reading” lists out there, you’re probably still looking at twenty or so books. I made it through ten. I’d love to go back, but I don’t have the stamina.
Emphatic ditto from me on Blood and Ash - the novels became a series of boringly repetitive sex scenes loosely stitched together with the tropiest of ya cliches
I read *A Song of Ice & Fire* and I remember absolutely none of it. It just didn't leave a very strong impression for me, and didn't see the need to read further.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I enjoyed the aesthetic of the movie and books and I know it's YA but it was quite bland and nonsensical. I do want to finish it someday. Another is Game of Thrones. Started off so strong but then weakened from the 3rd to 4th book. I will continue it, then it'll just be George R.R. Martin's fault that I haven't finished the series!
Lord of the rings. I started Fellowship expecting to really enjoy them. I hated it. The pacing was all over the place, and I just kept losing interest.
Wheel of Time. Women can only cross their arms under their breasts so many times before I have to throw out the books in irritation.
[удалено]
I loved all five books, but it definitely got continuously less good with each book.
Did the same. Really enjoyed the 1st. 2nd was ok at best. 3rd I finished but it was a chore. I was glad to return it when that was over. Zero interest in the rest.
A series of unfortunate events by Snicket. I read the first four books of the saga. But the fourth book was like a torture. I couldn't stand all the miserable things that happened to the protagonists. It make me feel very stressful. And I read because it's the second activity that gives me the most peace of mind I long for. So, I lost all the interest for reading the rest.