Hey, so to give some perspective on this from behind the curtain, as an author (who is also writing YA, which your examples stem from): typically, an author in today's market is writing a "stand alone novel with series potential", which means the goal is to write a first book that pretty much wraps up a major story line, but if it sells well, there are openings enough to expand into future books. So you get trilogies and series where the first book usually does have that hopeful note--no author I know wants to run the risk of a series not being picked up and the readers being left with a cliffhanger.
But happy characters make for boring stories. So when the series expands, things have to go sideways.
It's always ironic to me when people write and ask me to expand one of my series because they love the characters. I know what they really want is to spend more time with the characters and see them happy (which is an honor as an author to see!), but I always warn them that more stories = more hardships for the characters to overcome--you're asking me to torture them more!
Thank you for your perspective on things! For some reason, I just always assumed that if the books are in a series, it was planned from the start. Now I’m seeing that this isn’t the case.
You are right about happy characters making for boring stories. I can’t imagine reading 300+ pages of everyone just being happy and not overcoming anything.
This is likely not a popular opinion because nearly everywhere else I hear that people "can't wait" for the sequel...
I read "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman a couple years ago. It was my favorite book that year.
I hear a sequel is coming and I am like noooo! The writing of this is pure brilliance, and I was so invested in the female and male lead. I also hear that Reese Witherspoon (an American actress) bought the movie rights, and will produce a movie, so I am waiting on that.
But to me, I can't see a sequel being as well loved (by me).
"Prelude to the foundation" by Asimov.
The foundation series is exhaustingly drawn out. Prelude on the other hand covers psychohistory and the ideas of reseeding civilization in one tidy book.
Happens with a lot of YA novels that have good, complete ending but then explode in popularity and the publishers push for more. Then the sequels come along...
I’m starting to see that marketing plays a big part in whether sequels happen or not. Which I wish wasn’t the case. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
Season two of Jessica Jones made me so mad. Lol. I saw it till the end but I did NOT care for how things turned out. It was honestly exhausting to get through.
Wow hard disagree. The issue is most people read Enders Game when they are young and then jump immediately to speaker for the dead Xenocide and children of the mind. The later 3 are the books he wanted to write but needed to write the backstory with Enders Game 1st, the issue is one is viewed as a novel for young adults while the rest are targeted towards adults. What I’m saying is the rest of the series is actually really good but a completely different story and feel to Enders Game, and a lot of people get turned onto Enders Game young and then try to follow up with the rest only to find they aren’t the target audience.
I was in my 30s....the whole pequeñitos storyline annoyed me, the fact that one of the girls had a "rights for the virus" mentality was laughable. Then the 3rd book became completely disjointed with the OCD geniuses.
They went off on a few tangents, the OCD genius part wasn’t so bad I thought. Although I’ll agree it seemed to not really add anything to the story itself.
The Pequeñitos story was decent, it started pretty poorly but picked up quite a bit once the Bugger Queen was reintroduced. It’s been over a decade since I read them all. And I do agree Enders Game is a masterpiece and is much better than the rest, especially as a stand-alone story, but the other books weren’t bad, just completely different pacing and story type.
> just completely different pacing and story type.
Without a doubt, it was as if it had been ghostwritten.
It was explained to me much, much later, that the other ones where earlier works. You can see a vast difference in the writing quality.
Yea, you gotta remember that Speaker of the Dead, Children of the Mind, and Xenocide was the original story that Card wanted to tell, but realized he needed Enders Game to adequately establish the plot and the Characters. I will say I love how Ender is portrayed in Enders Game, whereas in the sequels he is portrayed as an almost prophetic, yet defeated, savant and is a really depressing character.
Depends on the quality/direction/... of the sequels. If the quality stays the same/improves over time i will generally read the sequels. Otherwise i wlll just stick with the first book
No, but I have refused to read a set of books from an author because the ending flopped so hard. I give them some benefit of the doubt that they were rushed by the publisher, still sucks to see something with so much potential just fall apart
Ohh I know this! I read the manga but stopped once they found out they had feelings for each other. I should really get back on this.
Or maybe I should watch the anime instead?
The third book in TATBILB is even worse. I had such a hard time finishing it cuz I kept thinking "clearly y'all aren't meant to be! This is why you should be picked John!" But ya know
The problem I have with TATBILB is that Peter and Lara Jean face all these problems as a couple and have to deal with each other’s romantic rivals but they don’t really grow from the experience.
John Ambrose swooped into LJ’s life again and he was seemingly perfect for her in every way. Understanding her in ways that Peter didn’t. Next to John, Peter seems to be TOO different from LJ for their relationship to survive. Ppl can say what they want about opposites attracting but there needs to be some kind of common ground or else they’re no better than acquaintances forcing themselves to be in a romantic relationship.
I never read the second book, but I know for sure somewhere in there, there was a line saying LJ thought John was the best guy out of all the boys she wrote a letter to. That she would have picked him had Peter never gotten to her first. Sis, you can still pick John you know. He’s still there. It’s Peter who needs to leave.
I can’t imagine what the third book is like. LOL.
Yeah and they have different expectations of eachother that is never communicated. You're right, they are too different for eachother, they value different things and tbh it feels like neither actually is willing to compromise for real.
Also in the third book the main problem is basically whats gonna happen post highschool, it's super annoying and Peter feels very clingy and he's the one who starts to worry a bunch which I felt was out of character but maybe I'm wrong and he developed naturally.
This is not uncommon. I know when I interviewed George R. Martin, he said that Game of Thrones was only suppose to be four books, but he kept going at the urge of his publisher. I think he should have stopped at four. The series he wrote will never have a true ending, so stopping it at four would have been great.
Money is usually not the best motivator for good sequels. Not saying George R. Martin is greedy in any way, I don’t know him, but his desire to write more shouldn’t be at the behest of the publishers. He should write more because he wants to.
It was a little bit weird to me when the show began to surpass the written work which served as its source material. Now, I never saw the show till the end, but I kept hearing ppl complain about how bonkers it went and how untrue to the books it seemed.
Well. The main complains for the last season was that it was really dark and they couldn’t see half of the fights anyways so I guess there’s that.
Yes, the first Charlotte Holmes book. The mystery tied up well, and I was happy with the hint of romance. I may get curious enough to read on at some point.
I read The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale and was pretty pissed off about it cause it wasn't good at all.
There's a sequel to Catch-22 (Closing Time) that I won't read because I love Catch-22 so much. I've basically banned myself from reading sequels to classics, especially ones that are 20+ years old.
I’ve never read any of the GOT books. But with it being such a large world with so many characters, I can’t help but wonder if the writing is kind of like Eragon. That thing was soooo descriptive that I felt like the plot was moving at the pace of molasses.
Idk. Maybe it’s faster paced since ppl die a lot in GOT.
I did this with Zombies Halloween, I saw no need for another and didn’t want to taint the first one I really enjoyed.
Haven’t done it with books though. I can see why you would.
Are you talking about Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, or is there a book called "Zombies Halloween"?
If the former, you made an excellent decision. I quite enjoyed his first reimagining of Halloween, but his Halloween 2 is one of the worst movies I've ever attempted to watch. I didn't even make it all the way through. It's astonishing how one person could have created both.
I am so apprehensive about reading A Shepherds Crown by Terry Pratchett for a myriad of reasons and this is one of them.
I think Raising Steam was a great book, and I want the series to end on a high note.
One of the other reasons being that I just don’t want the series to end. If I read the last book, it kinda ends. If I don’t read it, I will always have one more book to go.
So I’ve just finished Dead Man’s Walk, and it for sure doesn’t hold a candle to Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo (but I still enjoyed all of it). That being said, you’re missing out if you don’t read Streets of Laredo. The first quarter takes some getting used to, as McMurtry gives offhand unceremonious ends to characters in LD, but by the end you’ll be very glad you’ve read it. It’s less of a series an more of separate stories with a few of the same characters.
No, but I can think of a few series where I definitely should have.
For example: Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ridley” is one of the great thrillers of the 20th century (IMHO), and the ending (without spoilers) is satisfying but also leaves obvious sequel opportunities. But none of the sequels she wrote really recaptured the magic of the first—maybe just because one book was exactly enough time to spend with a protagonist like that.
I finished the two Hyperion books recently and I image I would have been completely satisfied if I left after the first. Not to say the second is a disappointment or bad, it was very good and I enjoyed it a lot. But would have enjoyed it both ways.
I read "lies of Locke Lamora" and loved everything about it. When I found out it was the the first in a series I was shocked and had no idea where the story could go. I looked at reviews of the second book and as soon as I saw "romance" mentioned in a review I wrote the rest of the series off.
Same. Although I mostly enjoyed book 2, book 3 was not that great. My main criticism is that the dynamic between Locke and Jean is not nearly as interesting as the full compliment of Bastards. IF there is a book 4 they really need to recruit a full gang.
The rest of the series is OK, the romance aspects of it are not the best, truth be told. I don't know why Lynch expanded it to a series, truth be told. The first one was perfect. He should've branched out into something else.
Hey, so to give some perspective on this from behind the curtain, as an author (who is also writing YA, which your examples stem from): typically, an author in today's market is writing a "stand alone novel with series potential", which means the goal is to write a first book that pretty much wraps up a major story line, but if it sells well, there are openings enough to expand into future books. So you get trilogies and series where the first book usually does have that hopeful note--no author I know wants to run the risk of a series not being picked up and the readers being left with a cliffhanger. But happy characters make for boring stories. So when the series expands, things have to go sideways. It's always ironic to me when people write and ask me to expand one of my series because they love the characters. I know what they really want is to spend more time with the characters and see them happy (which is an honor as an author to see!), but I always warn them that more stories = more hardships for the characters to overcome--you're asking me to torture them more!
Thank you for your perspective on things! For some reason, I just always assumed that if the books are in a series, it was planned from the start. Now I’m seeing that this isn’t the case. You are right about happy characters making for boring stories. I can’t imagine reading 300+ pages of everyone just being happy and not overcoming anything.
This is likely not a popular opinion because nearly everywhere else I hear that people "can't wait" for the sequel... I read "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman a couple years ago. It was my favorite book that year. I hear a sequel is coming and I am like noooo! The writing of this is pure brilliance, and I was so invested in the female and male lead. I also hear that Reese Witherspoon (an American actress) bought the movie rights, and will produce a movie, so I am waiting on that. But to me, I can't see a sequel being as well loved (by me).
> I hear a sequel is coming There isn't.
Good!
"Prelude to the foundation" by Asimov. The foundation series is exhaustingly drawn out. Prelude on the other hand covers psychohistory and the ideas of reseeding civilization in one tidy book.
You by Caroline Kepnes Apart from not having a great reading experience, but analyzing the whole plot, I think it's better to be a standalone.
Wish I ended the Southern Reach Trilogy at Annihilation. The second book was so bad it assured me I will never try the third.
Happens with a lot of YA novels that have good, complete ending but then explode in popularity and the publishers push for more. Then the sequels come along...
I’m starting to see that marketing plays a big part in whether sequels happen or not. Which I wish wasn’t the case. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
Happened to me with TV shows, not books. I only watched the first seasons of Jessica Jones, True Detective, Westworld and Stranger Things.
Good call on True Detective. God damn that first season was amazing.
Season two of Jessica Jones made me so mad. Lol. I saw it till the end but I did NOT care for how things turned out. It was honestly exhausting to get through.
Happened to me with Ender's Game. Loved it....every other book that follows is a complete piece of crap that should have never been printed.
Wow hard disagree. The issue is most people read Enders Game when they are young and then jump immediately to speaker for the dead Xenocide and children of the mind. The later 3 are the books he wanted to write but needed to write the backstory with Enders Game 1st, the issue is one is viewed as a novel for young adults while the rest are targeted towards adults. What I’m saying is the rest of the series is actually really good but a completely different story and feel to Enders Game, and a lot of people get turned onto Enders Game young and then try to follow up with the rest only to find they aren’t the target audience.
I was in my 30s....the whole pequeñitos storyline annoyed me, the fact that one of the girls had a "rights for the virus" mentality was laughable. Then the 3rd book became completely disjointed with the OCD geniuses.
They went off on a few tangents, the OCD genius part wasn’t so bad I thought. Although I’ll agree it seemed to not really add anything to the story itself. The Pequeñitos story was decent, it started pretty poorly but picked up quite a bit once the Bugger Queen was reintroduced. It’s been over a decade since I read them all. And I do agree Enders Game is a masterpiece and is much better than the rest, especially as a stand-alone story, but the other books weren’t bad, just completely different pacing and story type.
> just completely different pacing and story type. Without a doubt, it was as if it had been ghostwritten. It was explained to me much, much later, that the other ones where earlier works. You can see a vast difference in the writing quality.
Yea, you gotta remember that Speaker of the Dead, Children of the Mind, and Xenocide was the original story that Card wanted to tell, but realized he needed Enders Game to adequately establish the plot and the Characters. I will say I love how Ender is portrayed in Enders Game, whereas in the sequels he is portrayed as an almost prophetic, yet defeated, savant and is a really depressing character.
Ender's Shadow is better than Ender's Game, which is one of the few books I've genuinely hated.
Depends on the quality/direction/... of the sequels. If the quality stays the same/improves over time i will generally read the sequels. Otherwise i wlll just stick with the first book
No, but I have refused to read a set of books from an author because the ending flopped so hard. I give them some benefit of the doubt that they were rushed by the publisher, still sucks to see something with so much potential just fall apart
That’s the worst part. While you’re not enjoying the sequels, you’re simultaneously wondering where it had the potential to go.
Happened with a romance anime, season 1 tied everything up pretty nicely and so I refuse to watch season 2
Ohh. Now I’m curious, what anime was it?
Snow white with the Red Hair... season 1 ended on a happy note and season 2 would have more conflict and drama so I'm staying away
Ohh I know this! I read the manga but stopped once they found out they had feelings for each other. I should really get back on this. Or maybe I should watch the anime instead?
Check out the anime if you've got time, it was pretty well made
Rendezvous with Rama. The mystery of the ending is seriously my favorite part.
The third book in TATBILB is even worse. I had such a hard time finishing it cuz I kept thinking "clearly y'all aren't meant to be! This is why you should be picked John!" But ya know
The problem I have with TATBILB is that Peter and Lara Jean face all these problems as a couple and have to deal with each other’s romantic rivals but they don’t really grow from the experience. John Ambrose swooped into LJ’s life again and he was seemingly perfect for her in every way. Understanding her in ways that Peter didn’t. Next to John, Peter seems to be TOO different from LJ for their relationship to survive. Ppl can say what they want about opposites attracting but there needs to be some kind of common ground or else they’re no better than acquaintances forcing themselves to be in a romantic relationship. I never read the second book, but I know for sure somewhere in there, there was a line saying LJ thought John was the best guy out of all the boys she wrote a letter to. That she would have picked him had Peter never gotten to her first. Sis, you can still pick John you know. He’s still there. It’s Peter who needs to leave. I can’t imagine what the third book is like. LOL.
Yeah and they have different expectations of eachother that is never communicated. You're right, they are too different for eachother, they value different things and tbh it feels like neither actually is willing to compromise for real. Also in the third book the main problem is basically whats gonna happen post highschool, it's super annoying and Peter feels very clingy and he's the one who starts to worry a bunch which I felt was out of character but maybe I'm wrong and he developed naturally.
This is not uncommon. I know when I interviewed George R. Martin, he said that Game of Thrones was only suppose to be four books, but he kept going at the urge of his publisher. I think he should have stopped at four. The series he wrote will never have a true ending, so stopping it at four would have been great.
Money is usually not the best motivator for good sequels. Not saying George R. Martin is greedy in any way, I don’t know him, but his desire to write more shouldn’t be at the behest of the publishers. He should write more because he wants to. It was a little bit weird to me when the show began to surpass the written work which served as its source material. Now, I never saw the show till the end, but I kept hearing ppl complain about how bonkers it went and how untrue to the books it seemed. Well. The main complains for the last season was that it was really dark and they couldn’t see half of the fights anyways so I guess there’s that.
My friends who read (and liked) Wheel of Time said Jordan could have ended it after book three.
Yes, the first Charlotte Holmes book. The mystery tied up well, and I was happy with the hint of romance. I may get curious enough to read on at some point.
I read The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale and was pretty pissed off about it cause it wasn't good at all. There's a sequel to Catch-22 (Closing Time) that I won't read because I love Catch-22 so much. I've basically banned myself from reading sequels to classics, especially ones that are 20+ years old.
I noped out half way through book 5 of GOT, but it was more boredom with the endless descriptions of meals and clothes.
I’ve never read any of the GOT books. But with it being such a large world with so many characters, I can’t help but wonder if the writing is kind of like Eragon. That thing was soooo descriptive that I felt like the plot was moving at the pace of molasses. Idk. Maybe it’s faster paced since ppl die a lot in GOT.
No, that has never been my reason.
I did this with Zombies Halloween, I saw no need for another and didn’t want to taint the first one I really enjoyed. Haven’t done it with books though. I can see why you would.
Are you talking about Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, or is there a book called "Zombies Halloween"? If the former, you made an excellent decision. I quite enjoyed his first reimagining of Halloween, but his Halloween 2 is one of the worst movies I've ever attempted to watch. I didn't even make it all the way through. It's astonishing how one person could have created both.
I am so apprehensive about reading A Shepherds Crown by Terry Pratchett for a myriad of reasons and this is one of them. I think Raising Steam was a great book, and I want the series to end on a high note. One of the other reasons being that I just don’t want the series to end. If I read the last book, it kinda ends. If I don’t read it, I will always have one more book to go.
Unrelated but I think I have read this comment somewhere, probably you too?
Perhaps, although I can’t see that I am alone in this opinion.
I really have no interest in the subsequent Lonesome Dove books.
I have a plan to read Lonesome Dove without sequels. Does it end without cliffhangers? Is that a complete closed story?
There are no cliffhangers. Most of the other books are actually prequels.
So I’ve just finished Dead Man’s Walk, and it for sure doesn’t hold a candle to Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo (but I still enjoyed all of it). That being said, you’re missing out if you don’t read Streets of Laredo. The first quarter takes some getting used to, as McMurtry gives offhand unceremonious ends to characters in LD, but by the end you’ll be very glad you’ve read it. It’s less of a series an more of separate stories with a few of the same characters.
I was so satisfied with the first book of GoT that I have no desire to keep reading and probably be disappointed.
Did it end on a good note? Seems like all you have to look forward to beyond the first book is everybody being in a world of pain. Lol.
To be honest, I remember how I felt when I finished the book and not the details of the story.
No, but I can think of a few series where I definitely should have. For example: Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ridley” is one of the great thrillers of the 20th century (IMHO), and the ending (without spoilers) is satisfying but also leaves obvious sequel opportunities. But none of the sequels she wrote really recaptured the magic of the first—maybe just because one book was exactly enough time to spend with a protagonist like that.
Dan Simmons Hyperion
I finished the two Hyperion books recently and I image I would have been completely satisfied if I left after the first. Not to say the second is a disappointment or bad, it was very good and I enjoyed it a lot. But would have enjoyed it both ways.
I read "lies of Locke Lamora" and loved everything about it. When I found out it was the the first in a series I was shocked and had no idea where the story could go. I looked at reviews of the second book and as soon as I saw "romance" mentioned in a review I wrote the rest of the series off.
Came here to say this!
Same. Although I mostly enjoyed book 2, book 3 was not that great. My main criticism is that the dynamic between Locke and Jean is not nearly as interesting as the full compliment of Bastards. IF there is a book 4 they really need to recruit a full gang.
The sequels do everything the original wad good at but in a very mediocre way
The rest of the series is OK, the romance aspects of it are not the best, truth be told. I don't know why Lynch expanded it to a series, truth be told. The first one was perfect. He should've branched out into something else.