Bookseller Chick made me snort-laugh with this entry about authors you know you should give up, but just can’t.
I have two:
- Stephen King – he started to suck the almighty hairy nut starting around Gerald’s Game, but I can’t stop buying his books. I don’t even read them. I just have them. Sometimes, I cave in and attempt to read one, like that time I tried to read Black House because I love The Talisman so damn much, but when I found out King and Straub had perverted it into yet another goddamn motherfucking Gunslinger-related book, the book dropped from my nerveless fingers and I had to break into my emergency stash of scientific non-fiction just to calm my nerves.
The books, they taunt me. I can hear them. And sometimes, I cry in the cold, unforgiving dark for the love that used to be.
- Robert Jordan – The less said about that habit, the better. No, really. I’ve stopped reading, but my heart stops and I pause dead in the bookstore every time I see a hardcover book with his name embossed on the dustjacket, and I pick it up, hope singing in my heart, and the refrain, it hums is this it, is this it, is this FINALLY it, will you finally find peace? only to find that no, the saga isn’t even close to coming to an end yet.
Deep in my heart, I know this to be true: they hurt me only because they love me. I can leave them any time. No, I swear it.
Good points about Janet Evanovich. I’m not sure what she’s trying to do with the love triangle. Maybe she gave in to fan pressure? I can definitely see why, as I find him a lot more interesting than Joe, myself.
I loved the Sookie Stackhouse books, but she lost me at the end of the one where there was so much going on with Eric and then he just forgot it all and turned into a prick again. That was too much like the infamous, “It was all a dream!” defensed mounted by that really craptastic season of Dallas. I haven’t read her since, but I’m giving her another with the new series with Harper and her step-brother. Ordered Grave Sight off Amazon last week.
Cry to Heaven was beautiful. It’s one of my favorite books. I gave up on her not long after The Vampire Lestat. I really liked that book and the ones after just didn’t really measure up for me.
I’m still into Kurland and Kenyon. The Dark Hunter books. I’m a bit of a sucker for vampires.
I picked up Danse Macabre at the library. I guess I just keep hoping that the old Anita will resurface, you know? She’ll get thi ardeur thing under control and get her stuff together. Kind of like I keep hoping my sister will get her shit together and leave that abusive airhole she’s with. It just never quite seems to happen.
Dang it! I meant to hi the preview button instead of submit!
Sookie’s been kind of hoping from supe to supe lately and that’s a bit annoying, but so far, I’m still hooked. I’m liking that weretiger fellow … he’s hot stuff. I was cheesed about the whole Eric thing, but mostly because I liked him better when he was sans memory.
I’ve given up on Anne Rice and Stephen Kingl. But I can’t give up on Robert Jordan. Not yet. I’m so hooked.
Wow, lessee:
-Robert Jordon: I got hooked on him, too, but I dropped out after book six. Since everyone knows what’s going to happen (it’s been in the freakin’ prophesy since BOOK ONE), and the characters become more repetitive with each volume (Nynaeve + constant braid pulling = baldness), it just wasn’t worth plugging through twelve 600+ page doorstops.
-Laurell K. Hamilton: My mum has just jumped off the bandwagon on those. Before I turned seventeen, she wouldn’t even LET me read the series past the third book. Now, she says, they’re all about the porn. Porn, porn, porn. Animal porn, shapeshifter porn, faerie porn. No more, she says!
-Robin Hobb: Absolutely, hands-down, one of my favourite writers – her three trilogies (Liveship Traders, Farseer, Tawny Man) were all brilliant. But I have to agree that her new Shaman series did not have a very good start. I’ll still get the second volume, but in paperback.
-Tad Williams: Ana! I love him too! But his last book (Shadowmarch) seems like a major rehash of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. We already had a story of how the elves want their land back, and how a redheaded boy with mysterious potential can save the world! Give us something else! (but read his upcoming short story collection Rite, I had to review it and it’s very good).
-Melanie Rawn was another author I had to dump. Her Sunrunner series started out good, but then the main characters started doing genuinely creepy and immoral things (like, um, stealing babies from women they’ve stabbed and set on fire, and raising them as their own) and explaining them away far too easily (yeah, like, the mother we stabbed and set on fire was totally evil, y’all – no matter that she was naked, unarmed, and weakened from childbirth when we killed her).
Man, are there any instances of authors whose books have become increasingly BETTER with time, instead of the opposite?
I had to laugh reading through these comments. Yep, gave up on her, yes, that one too, nope still read that one…
Dara Joy, her earlier works I must admit fall under the guilty pleasures category. I can’t bring myself to read her last self-published work, even though I managed to actually get the copy I paid for. Never again. (can we drop an author that will likely never be published again?)
Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick. Used to love her stuff but more recent works had me skimming through them. The characters/plots just didn’t catch me. As petty as it sounds, in some of the last ones I read, I kept going back over the beginning chapters trying to figure out what the characters looked like. (hair eye color even?)Did I miss it completely somehow?
Still go for the Jayne Castle stuff, just wish it came out more often then every couple of years or so.
Johanna Lindsey, a library read, maybe.
What happened there? Her earlier works still captivate me.
There are others, so long ago, that I can’t remember their names. I believe in buying new when I can to support my favorites, in the hopes that they keep on publishing. For the ones that don’t make the grade anymore, my book buying dollars are sadly limited, and I can only spend on those who don’t let me down.
Lindsay, check. Deveraux, check. Kenyon, check. LKH, check (stopped at Micah, and haven’t touched her since). Evanovich, check. Palmer. Sigh. Oh, the humanity. I’m with E.D’Trix on the Palmer. Although after my most recent adventures in Palmerville (there’s your monogrammed hankie clew, Candy) I think I may finally be onto a saturation cure. You have to read, like, six of them in a row. That works. So far. But heaven knows what’ll happen when I finally get near a bookstore that actively sells romance.
The most recent major fall from grace for me was Kasey Michaels’ most recent “Maggie”. The series started out so well, but I was acutely disappointed by the last one, and it’s left me very wary… I’m a little scared of what will happen next, but I still hope.
Mostly it’s just this nagging feeling that things used to be so much better that eventually wears me down until I give up on a writer. The thrill of seeing a new release, or counting the days until I can get my hands on their book fades to annoyance. I know a lot of people really liked Madeiros’ last vampire book, but I found it really flat and have had the same feeling for the last few of hers, particularly after re-reading books she wrote in the mid-90s. Lately things just seem to have lost their spark. They’re still pretty good reads, but just feel a bit bland and same-y. Same for Brockway, Dodd, McKenna and Robinson. (Although she hasn’t published any romance lately – *wistful sigh* Lady Valiant was so good).
You know, I gave up on her for a long time, and then on a whim, I bought her most recent one, and I really enjoyed it. I went back and read the one before and liked it as well. Maybe she just had a slump?
Authors I’ve given up on:
LKH … which is too bad because the first ones were amazing.
Janet Evanovich—it wasn’t even the love triangle agnst that did it for me… it was the same plot over and over again. There’s a point when a running joke (like the exploding cars) stops being funny.
David Eddings – I loved, loved, loved the Belgariad and the Mallorean. I liked the Starhawk (was that what he was called?). There was a stand-alone fantasy that was ok (but some of it seemed like retread ideas that had gotten cut from the Belgariad). But when it came to the Elder Gods series, I just gave up.
Authors I should have given up on. Kate Elliot. The “Crown of Stars” started out so well, and each book (which promised to be the last one… it was supposed to be a trilogy… but she wrote four books too many) got worse and worse as instead of untangling plot lines, she added more of them. I kept with it to see what happened with one of the characters introduced in book 1, and by the end, she still didn’t explain his origins. Grrr.
All of the authors I have given up on are already listed with the same opinions I have. Although Stephen King did pretty good with Dreamcatcher. The book made so much more sense than the movie.
Dean is still an auto buy. I have a not-so-secret fantasy that Odd Thomas and Chris Snow are brothers and will reunite.
Robin KcKinley has yet to disappoint. Same with Madeleine L’Engle.
I want more from Robert McCammon. Swan Song is still an all time favorite. I liked it better than The Stand.
Melanie Rawn’s Exiles (?) series died after the second book, and that was looking to be awesome.
She has sadi more than once that she’s planning on finishing it. I wonder, is he does, will they republish the first two before it’s released? I still have The Ruins of Ambrai and The Mageborn Traitor in my bookshelf … talk about not giving up.
~I want more from Robert McCammon.~
Oh God, me, too!
Boy’s Life, my favorite. But I pretty much loved everything of his.
Nora
I really hope the whole Jordan series gets finished. I haven’t bought the last few books and have told myself I won’t until the last book has been published. Then I’ll go back and read the whole thing through. I did still like the series when I stopped, but I wanted it to end.
I stopped reading a lot of fantasy and sci-fi when I went to college (and started reading more romance), but I’ve been starting up again. And some of the same series are still going on. Uff da.
I gave up on Crown of Stars about four books in, but I still want her to get back to the Jaran books! I hate it when an author gives me Seriesus Interruptus.
What I’m about to say is off topic a bit but this brought it to mind.
Has anyone else read Tara Janzen’s Crazy series? I’m like 80% sure I’ve read her under another name but I’m sure it’s not the “Glenna McReynolds” she admits to. So does anyone know who it might be???? It’s driving me crazy every time I read another.
Good point, shaunee. It is ultimately up to writers to keep their work fresh. But I suppose that once those greenbacks start rolling in by the truckload, it’s very tempting to keep pushing the REPEAT button. And why not? It’s easier than striking out into new territory. And as long as undiscriminating, Pavlovian readers keep buying “dreck,” pushing that REPEAT button is pretty damned profitable, too.
You have read the 2-volume Speaks the Nightbird, yes? Wonderful, intense story.
What I do when I’m not sure whether I want to stick with an author or not is to put their new book directly in the TBR pile. If it’s still there by the time their next book comes out, chances are I’m over them.
Jacqueline: I’m with you on Angels & Demons being much better than DVC. No question!
I would posit that there is a certain amount of pressure on writers to ‘write what sells’. Seem to remember Piers Anthony saying he wanted to branch out but his editors only wanted Xanth books. On the other hand, I’ve seen some of his later stuff and maybe they were right in making him stick to Xanth! Probably there comes a point where the writer is sick to death of writing what sells and that begins to show in lackluster books.
The solution would be either to take a hiatus (but many writers need the money) or to write something completely different as a palate cleanser, even if she didn’t think she could sell it. I do this from time to time. It helps bring me back rejuvenated, less jaded.
I make no apologies for still loving LKH and JAK/Amanda Quick.
I stopped reading mysteries because I got tired of the psychic cats and cutesy cosies. I also got sick of the on-and-on detailed forensic stuff being crammed down my throat.
That said, I read series for various reasons, but mainly because I like revisiting characters and seeing what the author has in store for them. I still read the Evanovich’s but don’t keep them, (got tired of Steph doing the same dumb things over and over again.) I’m still entranced by all the weird stuff LKH comes up with. Linda Howard, Nora Roberts, Julie Garwood, Mary Jo Putney, Suzanne Brockmann: these are all authors that I have enjoyed before, but that are no longer auto-buyes. I get their books on a book-by-book basis, waiting for reviews and recommendations to make sure that the latest offering is going to be something that I will personally enjoy reading.
Books have gotten too expensive. I only buy the ones that I’m reasonably sure will be satisfying reads. The rest come from the library, if at all.
I do get the “repeat” button thing. Money is a great motivator, after all. Truth be told if I was broke (which I am) and in the midst of contract negotiations (which sadly I’m not) and my mythical editor suggested I write a fantasy/romance series about a fairy (sorry, Faerie. Fae?) cardboard box and a feather duster, I’d likely say no problem and get right to it.
I do like the idea of “cleansing the palate.” Even jotting down ideas for another book helps to get me flowing again.
Am I the only one who disliked LKH from the start? Okay, I liked some scenes that a friend who is a fan had me read. But then she loaned me the first Anita Blake book, and I haven’t touched the stuff since reading it straight through.
And I’m fully aware that I *am* the only one who likes Robin Hobb’s new series.
Thing about ‘cleansing the palate’ writing, Shaunee, is that maybe you’ll be in demand enough to be able to dust that stuff off, polish it up, and sell it, because by that point, it’s your -name- that’s in demand so much, not necessarily your formula. A little bright spot.
Okay, this made me giggle. I would totally read this. An idea came to me spontaneously (and I friggin’ hate paranormals in general).
Advertising copy: Gilly Quirk has been demoted for indiscretions best left unnamed. Before she can return to the fairy court, she has to demonstrate penance for her misdeeds in the most degrading situation imaginable: cleaning up after a human male! As for writer Jack Cameron, Jilly’s new charge, he can’t figure out why his stuff keeps disappearing. Can a messy man and a naughty sprite find true love?
I smell a bestseller!
Or maybe that’s the garbage truck outside…
Elizabeth Peters… love the characters but what something besides egyptology (I know she’s getting old, but I really want another Barbara Michaels).
Totally, J-me! I’ve never been an Amelia fan anyway. If she’s gonna do Peters books, at least give us more Vivki Bliss—but I’d love another Barbara Michaels too.
Jacquline, I think the worst part about WNOAW is that the way I heard it, she wrote that because the A&E movies of the books are so different and the producers wanted her to make them more similar.
– Robin
Well that’s what I meant in a roundabout, unclear way. If I were just coming to the series and it was the first oh…8 books I guess in hardcover I would have no qualms about paying the new price. But when I have to fork out $30+ (the Poor Canadians :() for books in a series that is still good or ok but not quite as consistently fabulous? I’m a poor student after all.
Wow. Its amazing to see so many of the same authors on here repeatedly. most of them are also on my list:
LKH: I loved the series up till Obsidian Butterfly. I still read after that, but I didn’t buy. Now, I have DM on my coffee table, and its been there since release day. I picked it up from the library, but haven’t cracked the cover. I should bring it back…. The Merry Gentry books are even worse because they (in my opinion) didn’t even start off good. I think its just my general disillusionment rather than her writing.
Evanovich: I love Ranger, that’s why I read. The rest of the characters (and the books) can go hang.
Grisham: Yawn. He’s writing a non-fiction this time around so many THAT will be interesting.
Cornwell: I may be the only librarian on planet earth that has never read a Patsy Cornwell book.
Jordan: I didn’t like the first one, haven’t been back since.
Eddings: I also loved the Belgariad and Mallorean. I just couldn’t get into anything after that.
Weis/Hickman: Another painful one. After awhile, you don’t even miss it, though….
From your lips…
Maybe I’ll hit big with my 50-book cardboard box/feather duster series. All that passion… an epic story of love, lust, and lies.
108 comments I’m reading and reading and wondering if anybody was going to have the nerve to raise one particular name. So now I have to.
Am I the only person in the whole wide romance world who has given up on Diana Gabaldon? Because after the third one, it was all downhill. Down down down down down hill. It’s like she forgot everything she ever knew about what makes a romance good. I swear you could have cut six hundred pages of fat from the last one without touching meat at all.
I’ve been looking all over the www but I can’t find anybody or anyplace whos willing to do anything but praise every word Gabaldon has ever wrote. I just don’t get it. Is there some unwritten rule protecting her from getting her feelings hurt or something?
I was with Stephen King since 1976 when I walked into a bookstore in San Diego and saw that copy of Salem’s Lot staring at me. I was hooked. I stuck with him thru the next 10 books I think, then I fell behind and never caught up. I did pick up Pet Semetary years later. Read it and enjoyed it but the magic was gone. Nothing against him, just got bored.
I think the same thing has happened between me and Christine Feehan. Haven’t tried to get her new books lately. Maybe someday…
Sherilyn Kenyon – Her heroes are whiny and wimpy masquerading as alphas. Don’t get the attraction.
Now LKH – Jeezzz! I am so sick of the woman’s books I’m tempted to unsub from my other book lists everytime her name is mentioned. I’m not even that interested in checking out LKH Lashouts. I won’t even check her out from the library anymore. What’s the point? Badly written, badly edited, overly long, nonsensical, creepy crap.
There, I said it all. I feel much better.
No. With a caveat. I read Outlander and I loved it, even though it was long as hell (editing anyone?) and broke a number of rules. Ms. Gabaldon says she does not write romances, so I guess it’s okay to separate h/h for seventeen years or something dumb, right? Whatever. I still liked it.
I read the second book and hated it almost as much as Lasher. Not since Anne Rice’s Witching Hour have I adored a first book so much and loathed the follow-up so fiercely. Therefore, I never read another Gabaldon book. Anne Rice met a similar fate. In general, I give authors one stinker and a probationary period before writing them off (pun!), but sometimes the crime against literature is so heinous that they go immediately to my “never again†list. So I don’t mention Gabaldon; I don’t criticize Gabaldon because in my mind, she has ceased to exist.
Do you people have any idea what this discussion has done to me? Every time someone types “Witching Hour” again, I want to read it a little bit more. But I don’t have a copy anymore. I do however have a copy of Lasher that I kept because it’s hard cover. Do you know what horrid thoughts I’m having?
I am thinking about reading Lasher AGAIN!!!
You women are evil. Eeevil, I tell ya.
PS. I’ve never read a Diana Gabaldon book. Please don’t kick me outta the club.
Coming out of lurkdom in order to post this:
I tried reading LKH with Merry Gentry because honestly the urban fantasy aspect appealed more to me than Anita Blake. After the second book, I’ve decided the woman holds no power over me. As for SK, he’s never really been a favorite.
Some people on Bookseller Chick’s entry mentioned Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey. I have to agree with that statement, and, at least with Lackey, that makes me sad because I loved and adored her Valdemar stuff when I was a teenager. Recently I tried rereading her Last Herald-Mage books and had to stop every fifteen pages to scream at Vanyel to shut up already, please for the love of the havens, shut up!
Hmmm, another author like that for me now is Charles de Lint. I loved his early Newford short stories, and The Little Country is one of my all-time favorite novels eva! But the last few of his books I’ve tried I haven’t been able to finish. Probably because he does this thing where he switches from first to third-person POVs, which sometimes involves him writing in different tenses. It jars me out of the book, as does the fact that his later Newford novels are just too self-referential.
As for romance, I have all of Christine Feehan’s backlist and occasionally pick up
Dark Prince
. I keep thinking that if an author has that many rabid fangirls, there has to be something in there I like, and a friend whose reading tastes I generally trust says there are better Feehan books than that one. i’m beginning to think I don’t believe her. And Kenyon? Well, I started to read one of her books as Kinley MacGregor, met the TSTL heroine and the whiny hero who really needed to get over himself and haven’t picked it back up, even though I did skip ahead to a sex scene which was kinda hot.
I’ve never read Gabaldon either
Yep, he’s on my A-list of fantasy writers, but I think he really shines in short stories. In novels he wanders around a bit, looking lost, considers asking for directions, and then continues to shuffle toward Cleveland, hoping he’s headed for Wisconsin. I also think he’s got too big a boner for Jilly Coppercorn.
Well, I like Jilly, myself. And I have a similar stupid crush on Geordie Riddell. But he’s never going to let those two get together already, which pisses me off. LOL in
Spirits in the Wires
he has Geordie with some faerie chick, and that felt really… random and stupid to me.
I agree about Mercedes Lackey! AGH!
Her first trilogy had so much going for it – lots of strife in the kingdom, lots of bigotry and rivalry and evil plots.
But as the series progressed, it just got tamer and tamer, which usually happens in fantasies that contrive some sort of magical excuse to ALWAYS have a morally perfect King or Queen.
When I was a kid, the first author I used to adore that I dumped after a while was Brian Jacques – y’know, the author of the Redwall books? I got so tired of the fact that all members of certain species were inherently evil (stoats, ferrets, foxes, rats) and all members of certain species were inherently good (mice, moles, squirrels – and OWLS, for some reason) that all the suspense just went away.
I gave up after Taggerung (which had an otter [good animal] be adopted and raised by a stoat [bad animal]), because what looked to be an original premise for once (stoats can have hearts too! Otters can be bad-ass!) ended up another trite nature-over-nurture statement. (Otter, good at heart, refuses one order given by dear ol’ evil daddy, and they immediately hate each other for all time).
Don’t even get me started on that book. Suffice to say I was -only- interested in Suzy and Aaran, and he fubar’d it.
I didn’t like the second book either. I liked the fourth and fifth ones, though (I thought Outlander was okay, but it’s not my favourite of the series). I’ll probably still read whatever she writes next, but then I tend to skip over parts I don’t like, and long, rambling tangents don’t seem to bother me.
LKH – I think I read one or two of the Anita books, after hearing so much about them, and didn’t like them very much, so I haven’t bothered reading any of the others.
Other series I’ve lost interest in: Stephanie Plum (I think around book 7), Scarpetta, Eve Dallas… and that’s all I can come up with right now, but I’m pretty sure there are more.
Me too. Although I’d read anything she writes. I wonder if she’s still writing or working on anything now. Her website hasn’t been updated in a while.
Given up on:
Terry Goodkind after book 5
Robert Jordan book 4, 5 or 6 – so long ago that I can’t remember
Terry Pratchett
James Patterson
Jeffrey Deaver
Amanda Quick
Buy but don’t know why – habit I suppose
Christine Feehan
Sherrilyn Kenyon – but haven’t bought the latest (yet)
Laurell K Hamilton
S.L Viehl and Lynn Viehl
but the one I’m surprised no one else has mentioned is MaryJanice Davidson, I loved the undead series at first and bought her other books as well and even hooked my daughter on the Jennifer Scales young adult series, but have promised myself no more, enough is enough.
I still buy and enjoy Evanovich, Charlaine Harris and Lois McMaster Bujold (anything she wants to write about Miles Vorkosigan – I will read)
I’m whatever the opposite of an addictive personality is. I’ll stop buying authors (or recording artists) I’m perfectly enjoying simply because I want something new. And I always want something new. (Not that I haven’t enjoyed the exact same BLT for the last four days’ lunch. mmmmm….)
I don’t understand the “comfort read,” the desire to digest the same thing over and over again, even if the quality doesn’t decline. For me, each book, CD, TV season, whatever, has to be better than the last, or what’s the point?
Maybe I am addicted, to newness. There’s nothing better than discovering a fantastic new author, and there are so many of them out there right now, sitting in the shadows of the bestsellers. There are some bad ones, too, but in general, I think any kind of artist reaches a peak freshness when they’re writing just for themselves, without the massive weight of fan expectations.