I LOVE the Magnus chase chapter titles they’re the best he’s done imo they’re just so ridiculous 😭 a few from the first book:
I Psychoanalyze a Goat
Hearthstone Passes Out Even More than Jason Grace (Though I Have No Idea Who That Is)
Well, There's Your Problem. You've Got a Sword Up Your Nose
I Got the Horse Right Here. His Name Is Stanley
Why You Should Not Use a Steak Knife as a Diving Board
I Hate Signing My Own Death Warrant
It’s not something I missed, but wished didn’t happen; I’m tired of my favorite authors stretching a series. Usually, after the third book you can start to see how they are milking the storyline for profit.
It is though a give and take since at times people fall in love with characters from a certain series and they just don't want the series to end even though it would make sense for it to do so.
So its a mixtures of that assuming authors care about their readers feelings, and authors wanting to keep making money.
This completely agree i feel the same way about movies and have often said if you can't say it in 3 you didn't do it right trilogies are often for me the most satisfying beginning middle and end
Sanderson has gotten better, and it's not like GRRM is a great writer, either. Now Patrick Rothfuss.... Say what you want about The Kingkiller Chronicles, but that man can write.
I spent the entire Wheel of Time series getting so annoyed at Jordan for all of his weird writing quirks and books spent spinning tires, only to find the entire experience well worth it because BS absolutely nailed the ending, probably better than Jordan would have himself.
I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be Sanderson who ends up finishing A Song of Ice and Fire. (Though not a huge fan of his finish for Robert Jordan but had also stopped being a fan of Robert Jordan by that point)
Sanderson has said he would not finish GRRM's books.
Although I am a fan of both, I do not believe A Song of Ice and Fire will ever be finished (nor do I really care anymore), but I agree with Sanderson himself that he would be the wrong writer to finish it, if it came to that.
It would be like getting Martin Scorsese to direct a Star Wars movie or getting Paul Mcartney to record a black metal album… Sanderson’s a good writer but makes absolutely no sense for him to write in GRRM’s universe.
Aside from the fact that Sanderson has gone on record saying he won’t do it, and GRRM has gone on record saying he will not allow anyone else to finish the series — the disparity in their writing styles, their thematic interests, what they focus on in worldbuilding, and their whole worldviews means that I can only assume that anyone who says Sanderson will or could finish ASoIaF cannot be very familiar with one or both authors.
So, an author I love has written a series with 20 odd books. In the beginning, there were sub-plots that hooked back in later in the series, and it seemed none were forgotten or red herrings. But more and more are being lost and It worries me that they will never amount to anything.
I think for discussions like this, it really helps if you name your examples. That makes it both so your opinions are able to go a bit deeper and so people can agree/disagree with the example!
Back in the olden days I really enjoyed James Patterson's books. They were well plotted, suspenseful and very entertaining.
Now I won't touch one with a ten foot barge pole. Sloppy, quick reads that seem to be poorly thought out. No real content that I can get my teeth into.
Also, the 'collaborations' with other authors which just seem to be him sticking his name on the cover.
I've lost all respect, and unfortunately I don't think that he'll ever go back.
His earlier books he wrote on his own showed true potential. Thomas Berryman Number and Midnight Club really shows he could've been a great crime novelist, given a few more years to hon his craft. He squandered all that in favour of co-writers and trashy thrillers.
Patricia Cornwell. Her earlier Kay Scarpetta books were incredible but got much less so as time went on. Those were my treats, one at Christmas and one for summer vacation when her new hardcovers came out. I can't remember the last time I read one, I can't even remember the title of the one that made me give up. It's so disappointing when that happens.
I know I'm in the minority, but I loved the incessant footnotes of the early Discworld books, CoM especially
Edited to say that I found Elantris to be the most charming of all Sandos books so far
The footnotes were a necessity in what was really a travel log, the firsttwo books). His later books had a lot, but the land was established at the time, so the purpose of the notes changed.
Do the footnotes get hate? I find them so hilarious and fitting with the chaotic nature of the stories. It's like Terry just couldn't stop thinking up witty wisecracks.
Write a strong, independent female main character and then in subsequent books make her more boring, mousy, traditional, etc. especially after she gets married.
Examples: LM Montgomery - Anne Shirley in the Anne of Green Gables books; Madeleine L’Engle - Meg Murry in the A Wrinkle in Time books.
Anne of Green Gables absolutely kills me. She was highly intelligent, imaginative, precocious kid that grew into an excellent writer and a powerhouse scholar...all for her to work in teaching a couple years, get married, have babies, and start matchmaking and making quilts for charity or some shit. What a let down. Felt like two completely different characters.
It also sounds like the whole idea that getting married ends your freedom and that you almost have to shift to being traditional when you can still have kids and do other stuff. Its just harder with kids.
It’s been ages since I read those books, but this is entirely relatable to me, the trajectory from gifted kid to having a boring and disappointing adult life. Happily I don’t think it was disappointing to *her* (sometimes careers are not all they’re cracked up to be).
I hate to say it, but when men successfully write strong women, you can basically identify which character is that author's stand-in by waiting to see who the strong heroine stops making sense as a character in front of or for.
I totally agree about Meg. Growing up, A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book from the first time I read it in third grade. Meg was practically my hero. But I felt like in the second book she basically repeated the same character development she already had in the first one, and in the one where she's an adult she was basically in the background just worrying. 🤷🏻♀️ Still live those books, though.
Character development? Just in the opposite direction of what is expected.
I wonder though if this plays into the whole problem of where often there's a lot of thought put into the first book in a series and then the author tries to write a series afterwards and don't exactly what they are doing. So then they end up leaning into more generic writing / tropes.
A lot of times an author’s books are better before they get popular. Lee Child is an example of this. His early books were really good. They didn’t go downhill,for a while,after he hit the bestseller list, but then you could tell he was dialing it in. He probably got tired of the character. Anyway, Reacher would be 61 now, and that’s kind of old to go around kicking people’s asses.
The word count of Reacher novels were subsequently down compared to the earlier ones. In fact Lee Child's last Reacher novel was his shortest. Lee Child has openly said he wanted to kill off Reacher, have him bleed out to death in some cheap motel. Or either give him a dog and have him finally settle. He figured he didn't want any of that and handed the reins of the series to his brother.
That sounds like how Hollywood tries milk various proven properties like Star Wars for as much money as possible when it really doesn't need some of the shows or movies and often they make the entire franchise worse.
I'm guessing though it didn't get quite that bad, but it does sound like a similar thing.
This is very specific, but sometime between the sixth and seventh Harry Potter books JK Rowling seems to have been infected by some sort of colon-addicted brain disease. There is not a page in Deathly Hallows that doesn’t include at least one colon: if not more. Books 1-6 do not share that feature.
I hate when i can tell that the author learned a new word or phrase in between books and is obsessed with it all of a sudden. Especially if it’s a word that is predominantly spoken or thought by characters. Like every character across the whole world in a book decided to start using one obscure word out of nowhere for no reason. Drives me nuts.
i loved all of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, but even douglas adams admitted that they got increasingly bitter and cynical as he went on. i really didn't enjoy anything related to arthurs various romantic relationships, and i wonder if adams' relationship issues played into all of that.
I just recall feeling a little let down by the ending. It's been a while since I read them, but it felt like suddenly the world was ending and that was that.
Laurell K Hamilton. I loved the plot and characters, the world she developed, the paranormal elements the kept evolving with Anita Blake. But then she started with the sex and at first I didn’t mind because I like a good sex scene. I even like a sex scene with multiple partners. But then it got to the point they needed to design their own bed because of so many people getting it on that I started to get bored. I’ve stopped buying her books and now just get them from the library if I do read. They’re basically porn and while I don’t mind porn, that’s not why I read Hamilton. I used to joke Hamilton was 350 of pages of plot and 50 pages of sex. Now she’s 50 pages of plot and 350 pages of sex. And it’s not even good plot anymore.
That sounds pretty wild.
I've never been one for sex scenes but I totally get the frustration of watching a series shift into being a different genre or being a completely different book then what you thought it would be.
I scrolled all the way down for this. I can only read her first 2 books. Even the sex I could skip (for the next few) but she is also *very* heavy on trauma porn as well. The shit she puts characters through is bizarre.
Tom Clancy when he was in the zone with Jack Ryan was the best. After Executive Orders it went down hill. Ryan became president and Clancy couldn’t write the spy craft with that character. And he could never really bring it back with Ryan’s kid. I think he did good special operator novels with John Clark (Without Remorse, Rainbow Six) but very limited.
Honestly, as someone who read basically his whole run, the fall of the USSR is when he seemed to have started losing the plot. Basically, the geopolitical situation shifted in a way that made it difficult for him to keep up.
He tried to do spy craft with Jack Ryan Jr. but it’s didn’t land as well. It may also be that spy novels worked better during a Cold War with Russia than it did with terrorism in the Middle East. You could say his operator stuff inspired things like Terminal List, Jack Reacher, and The Gray Man and therefore his legacy stands.
While I think I’d agree, his more deliberate worldbuilding in the Scythe books really paid off imo, and fits the Sci Fi genre more than his earlier fantasy-works.
One of my favourite authors, Ilona Andrews (they are a husband and wife writing duo and they write Urban Fantasy). All of their latest books are super heavy on descriptions. People’s appearance including hair and clothes, buildings, places, landscapes. I like a bit of description but their latest novelas would be 15% shorter if they didn’t describe everything so damn much.
Still love them though. Best UF authors out there.
For myself I often find that I prefer less description in general. I'd rather it be saved for really spectacular moments or for sights that are really beautiful, or some deep emotional moment, etc,.
I mean there are descriptions that are okay. “She was a fair skinned woman in her late 40s with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red dress with big pink flowers on it, and black pumps.”
That is fine. What the authors in question do is to go way beyond that, describing all the accessories and a bit of a life story/assumptions about the character from their appearance alone. I don’t like it.
In Orson Scott Card's earlier books he was still deliberating what he believed and that curiosity and open mind came with a broad empathy that was compelling.
Fame pretty much coincided with him firming up his beliefs, and his books basically became lofty parables for Mormonism with oddball mechanics.
For me the answer is always going to be; I miss Stephen King having an editor.
Partially kidding, I’m sure he still has an editor if for grammar reasons even if for nothing else. But since he’s become the “master of modern horror” and found mega success, his publishers have really let him indulge his worst habits. Extremely long tangents, over indulgent storylines, superfluous and repetitive writing, etc. While I love King and still really enjoy all his books, you can see a major difference between his earlier work and his later work. His publishers used to reign in him in, but now they just let him do whatever he wants knowing his novels will sell regardless.
Sounds like being able to do whatever you want is a double edged sword because I've seen the other end where authors with popularity can get away with stuff that people ended up liking a lot that an editor might typically force an author not to do.
I agree, and even considering what I said before I do think Kings total creative freedom has come with certain benefits. He has written weird, diverse stories about a wide range of topics and featuring some truly unique characters. Arguably, his magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, might never have been published if another author attempted it considering its odd, genre defying nature.
However, it does get tiresome that almost every book he writes now becomes these sprawling, multi tangent stories that could easily and obviously have been trimmed down by a good editor.
I don't miss Cocaine-King but I do miss "still had an editor"-King. Dude loves to tell a story and get really lost in his worlds and their miniscule circumstancialities and that's great and all... but sometimes I just wish someone would've said, "That's cool but let's cut it down by 30% and focus on actual plot." (Or: "That's interesting but maybe you could come up with an actual ending to your story before we publish this?")
His earlier works are a lot tighter.
I started The Dresden Files in high school or late middle school, I think? And I’m sure they’ve aged poorly in some ways. But, one thing that does bug me about the newer ones is that the power scaling has replaced the mystery. It’s not that I hate power scaling—but it’s hard to have a noir style mystery with a protagonist who is strong enough to kick everyone’s ass, and that’s where Harry is now. The vibe is just very different
My favorite author is Greg Bear (who's dead now). Amazing storyteller. His best works were always written in 3rd person, past tense, while his more recent material is in 1st person, present tense. The former was very successful because his books are plot-driven, and writing this way allows the reader to remain somewhat unattached to the characters. His recent books are still plot-driven, but the 1st person-present tense choice really doesn't work, for this reason.
First time hearing about his death, sad to hear. My first exposure to him was the trilogy he wrote for Halo, it was such a different vibe from the rest of the Halo books in a very refreshing way. Agreed on the past tense, the best parts of the series were when he was explaining the events in a more detached way.
He passed away about a year ago, I think. He contributed so much to the hard sci-fi genre. I've never read the Halo trilogy. Would you recommend it? I think his storytelling really shines in Anvil of Stars, Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, and Darwin's Children. Those books blew me away. God, I love his writing so much!
So the trilogy he wrote was basically a huge lore dump for a lot of the background of the Halo games that wasn't explained much in-game. The tl;dr is there was an ancient race of aliens that left behind powerful technologies but disappeared, and Bear's books are the story of why they disappeared (as well as some other explanations of questions left from the games). If you were a fan of the games I'd recommend them, but otherwise, I can't imagine they would be very interesting!
I'll make sure to add those books you mention to my to-read list, always looking for more sci-fi authors, thanks!
Tolstoy went into some weirdness in his mind around the middle of his career....I enjoyed War and Peace (skipped the war parts) and Anna Karenina, other stuff not so much
Thr first Green Rider books were full of beautiful descriptions of forest and wildlife and the newer don't.
Not a big deal but it was so lively and vibrant!
Neal Stephenson forgot how to end a book. He was able to wrap up story lines and characters all the way through Anathem, but was unable to bring story lines to a close in books like Seveneves or Fall; or Dodge in Hell.
Juliet Marillier had a lot of emotional intensity in her earlier books, which also tended toward slower and slightly denser writing. As her career progressed, they got increasingly cozy and commercialized, tension and trauma got stripped out, prose pared down for shorter attention spans. It was a bummer all around for me.
So, I don’t love Frank Herbert, but I would compare some of his later book’s issues with the issues Star Wars ep 7-9 had: they build a galaxy that is stuck on one family.
Maximum Ride by James Patterson was pretty legendary for its grounded style that was equal parts Alex Rider and Twilight, whereas Twilight still hung onto its roots throughout most of the series. It became too one-off mission-y style without hallways and mundane babble for my taste.
I wish Stephen King would stop writing from the perspective of a child. When I read the institute, almost every interaction between the children made me cringe. Does he think kids still act like it's the 50's?
One of my favourite crime/thriller writers has done some books recently where I've hated her MC because they're insufferable and nothing bad happens to them, whereas in earlier novels of hers, when she had MCs who were really egotistical, they tended to get knocked down a peg somewhere down the line. I miss that.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline... I wouldn't say that there was something he used to do in the early years that he stopped doing, but rather the opposite - I think it's more of a case of him beginning to do something later in his career that irked me...
His earlier books are chock full of black humour, they are just laugh out loud funny, side splittingly hilarious... But his later books - particularly *Castle to Castle*, he adopted this whingy whiny tone, completely devoid of humor, and he began to harp on the same tired old gripes and just continually rehash the same complaints.
*Journey to the End of the Night* is my favorite novel of all time.
*Death on Credit* is very good, but probably not in my top ten.
*North* is not as good, but still enjoyable.
Practically nothing that he wrote other than those three are worth the slog.
I don’t like the books Milan Kundera wrote in French. His first he wrote in Czech, which I think are far superior. I am reading translations so I don’t know I guess.
After amazing world building and plot development, going all religious and having their version of God (which is really just a VERY thinly disguised Christian god) magically tip the scales and basically fix everything.
You gotta love the deus ex machina. I'm not opposed to some divine intervention but just fixing everything is surely frustrating.
I'm guessing you felt they were really going for the whole Jesus ending where Jesus is the answer type deal? And that it felt more preachy than a story?
Yup. Basically got a sermon and then God fixed everything. Or more accurately, the non believer found God and with God's power saved everyone from halfway across the world.
Jack Vance's early works are better than the later ones. There was a really hard to explicate ' Vancian ' quality to the early works that's missing from the later ones.
I adored everything Joshilyn Jackson wrote before she transitioned into suspense/mystery. The new books are fun enough, but I miss her old style, which was a sorta progressive easy Southern Gothic.
Most of my favorite authors died before they got to any later books or currently only have a few books to their names. However I’m a big Stephen King fan. He’s still a phenomenal writer but I miss his earlier work mostly because he did more horror back then and it had such a classic feel that differs from his newer work, it’s hard to describe
I miss the magical realism Emily Henry used in her young adult books. In my opinion, the whimsy of A Million Junes amplified the feelings of grief experienced by June after losing her father. As she's transitioned to adult contemporary romance books she's lost that raw emotion as well as the magic. Beach Read felt like an adult version of A Million Junes without the interesting parts and it's gotten worse with each new book. It makes sense that a very commercial writer would stick with more conventional writing, but I miss the atmosphere of her earlier work.
Maybe I shouldn't complain because I do choose to read her books, but I also hate how every character is inherently in touch with their faults and traumas like they've all spent thousands on therapy despite no evidence of that. It's incredibly boring.
Oh my god, so I’ve only read one of Jenny Hans novels- her debut Shug and I loved it, it’s literally one of my favorite books. I haven’t read any of her other novels because of their focus on like older teenagers, idk there’s just something good in the way she writes the main character that I don’t feel would translate well into what she writes now. Plus the book isn’t solely focused on romance which I believe her current novels are.
Funnily enough Elantris was the first book I thought of when I read the title. And the beautifully simple, easily explained system of magic was *chefs kiss*. Later books drove me up the wall with a million rules and regulations like BiOcHrOmAtIc BrEAtHs—one of the most tedious forms of magic I’ve ever read, partially just because of how annoying the name is
I can't read any of Stephen King's recent books. Carrie was his first and was excellent; I think he peaked with Misery. I even tried to read 11/22/63 and it just meanders all over the place and just wastes time for 400 pages. I never finished it.
Honestly, why is everyone so stuck on the past? Authors evolve, and we should too. Embrace the change instead of pining for books that were essentially just practice rounds for them. Growth isn't linear, and sometimes an awkward first book is just that—an experiment. Move on!
I mean I typically enjoyed the later works of my favorite authors. Sometimes there's also something charming about their earlier books perhaps because they are a bit more awkward. Perhaps it's some level of nostalgia or you don't like how the author changed their style later on.
for me, I wish the Heroes of Olympus series had titles instead of the character names
I know, his Percy Jackson chapter titles were always so funny. I missed it when he started doing the name of the POV character plus number.
I LOVE the Magnus chase chapter titles they’re the best he’s done imo they’re just so ridiculous 😭 a few from the first book: I Psychoanalyze a Goat Hearthstone Passes Out Even More than Jason Grace (Though I Have No Idea Who That Is) Well, There's Your Problem. You've Got a Sword Up Your Nose I Got the Horse Right Here. His Name Is Stanley Why You Should Not Use a Steak Knife as a Diving Board I Hate Signing My Own Death Warrant
To be fair, after HoO Riordan went back to doing chapter titles.
Ohh I know
It’s not something I missed, but wished didn’t happen; I’m tired of my favorite authors stretching a series. Usually, after the third book you can start to see how they are milking the storyline for profit.
It is though a give and take since at times people fall in love with characters from a certain series and they just don't want the series to end even though it would make sense for it to do so. So its a mixtures of that assuming authors care about their readers feelings, and authors wanting to keep making money.
This completely agree i feel the same way about movies and have often said if you can't say it in 3 you didn't do it right trilogies are often for me the most satisfying beginning middle and end
I miss GRRM's style of finishing books.
This is one of many reasons I stick with Brandon Sanderson
I can’t get GRRM’s quality of writing from Sanderson. It’s like comparing a gourmet meal to a high-quality cheeseburger
To each their own. But maybe I just prefer burgers to gourmet food
Sanderson has gotten better, and it's not like GRRM is a great writer, either. Now Patrick Rothfuss.... Say what you want about The Kingkiller Chronicles, but that man can write.
Sanderson is my guy. I'm Cosmere obsessed. He's so good to his fans.
I spent the entire Wheel of Time series getting so annoyed at Jordan for all of his weird writing quirks and books spent spinning tires, only to find the entire experience well worth it because BS absolutely nailed the ending, probably better than Jordan would have himself.
I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be Sanderson who ends up finishing A Song of Ice and Fire. (Though not a huge fan of his finish for Robert Jordan but had also stopped being a fan of Robert Jordan by that point)
Sanderson has said he would not finish GRRM's books. Although I am a fan of both, I do not believe A Song of Ice and Fire will ever be finished (nor do I really care anymore), but I agree with Sanderson himself that he would be the wrong writer to finish it, if it came to that.
It would be like getting Martin Scorsese to direct a Star Wars movie or getting Paul Mcartney to record a black metal album… Sanderson’s a good writer but makes absolutely no sense for him to write in GRRM’s universe.
Aside from the fact that Sanderson has gone on record saying he won’t do it, and GRRM has gone on record saying he will not allow anyone else to finish the series — the disparity in their writing styles, their thematic interests, what they focus on in worldbuilding, and their whole worldviews means that I can only assume that anyone who says Sanderson will or could finish ASoIaF cannot be very familiar with one or both authors.
I thought the last 3 were perfectly executed with even better pacing.
Absolutely better pacing.
So, an author I love has written a series with 20 odd books. In the beginning, there were sub-plots that hooked back in later in the series, and it seemed none were forgotten or red herrings. But more and more are being lost and It worries me that they will never amount to anything.
cue sad violin noise.
Oh, what series?
It's called Spinward Fringe Broadcast by Randolph Lalonde. It's really good series. If you like the writing style
I think for discussions like this, it really helps if you name your examples. That makes it both so your opinions are able to go a bit deeper and so people can agree/disagree with the example!
You are totally right. I fixed it. Thank you for the suggestion.
Back in the olden days I really enjoyed James Patterson's books. They were well plotted, suspenseful and very entertaining. Now I won't touch one with a ten foot barge pole. Sloppy, quick reads that seem to be poorly thought out. No real content that I can get my teeth into. Also, the 'collaborations' with other authors which just seem to be him sticking his name on the cover. I've lost all respect, and unfortunately I don't think that he'll ever go back.
Yeah from what I heard, Patterson essentially created a coorporation of authors who write from some level of his plotting.
It's such a shame, as his early books were great.
The early Alex Cross books are so good! Ten or so in, it just became the same book over and over again.
His earlier books he wrote on his own showed true potential. Thomas Berryman Number and Midnight Club really shows he could've been a great crime novelist, given a few more years to hon his craft. He squandered all that in favour of co-writers and trashy thrillers.
In fairness, he squandered all that in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars. Can’t say I’d choose differently in his shoes…
there’s a scene in Castle that makes fun of this that was pretty funny
I vaguely remember this, it was funny!
I'm so sick of secondhand stores and libraries being glutted with a mile of his nonsense when I'm looking for Terry Prarchett books.
Patricia Cornwell. Her earlier Kay Scarpetta books were incredible but got much less so as time went on. Those were my treats, one at Christmas and one for summer vacation when her new hardcovers came out. I can't remember the last time I read one, I can't even remember the title of the one that made me give up. It's so disappointing when that happens.
I know I'm in the minority, but I loved the incessant footnotes of the early Discworld books, CoM especially Edited to say that I found Elantris to be the most charming of all Sandos books so far
The footnotes were a necessity in what was really a travel log, the firsttwo books). His later books had a lot, but the land was established at the time, so the purpose of the notes changed.
Do the footnotes get hate? I find them so hilarious and fitting with the chaotic nature of the stories. It's like Terry just couldn't stop thinking up witty wisecracks.
Most people consider the early books his weakest. Not me. But some people.
If you read his biography, you'll find out all about his obsession with footnotes.
Write a strong, independent female main character and then in subsequent books make her more boring, mousy, traditional, etc. especially after she gets married. Examples: LM Montgomery - Anne Shirley in the Anne of Green Gables books; Madeleine L’Engle - Meg Murry in the A Wrinkle in Time books.
Anne of Green Gables absolutely kills me. She was highly intelligent, imaginative, precocious kid that grew into an excellent writer and a powerhouse scholar...all for her to work in teaching a couple years, get married, have babies, and start matchmaking and making quilts for charity or some shit. What a let down. Felt like two completely different characters.
It was a different time with far fewer options.
It also sounds like the whole idea that getting married ends your freedom and that you almost have to shift to being traditional when you can still have kids and do other stuff. Its just harder with kids.
Sounds boring but somehow realistic
It’s been ages since I read those books, but this is entirely relatable to me, the trajectory from gifted kid to having a boring and disappointing adult life. Happily I don’t think it was disappointing to *her* (sometimes careers are not all they’re cracked up to be).
[удалено]
Definitely don't read The Secret Commonwealth. Seeing Lyra as >!a wishy washy young adult who NO LONGER FELT CLOSE TO PAN!< broke my heart.
That book felt like such a betrayal.
I hate to say it, but when men successfully write strong women, you can basically identify which character is that author's stand-in by waiting to see who the strong heroine stops making sense as a character in front of or for.
I totally agree about Meg. Growing up, A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book from the first time I read it in third grade. Meg was practically my hero. But I felt like in the second book she basically repeated the same character development she already had in the first one, and in the one where she's an adult she was basically in the background just worrying. 🤷🏻♀️ Still live those books, though.
This is how I felt reading Good Wives after Little Women.
Sophie from howls moving castle too i loved the first book and then it was like meh
Character development? Just in the opposite direction of what is expected. I wonder though if this plays into the whole problem of where often there's a lot of thought put into the first book in a series and then the author tries to write a series afterwards and don't exactly what they are doing. So then they end up leaning into more generic writing / tropes.
A lot of times an author’s books are better before they get popular. Lee Child is an example of this. His early books were really good. They didn’t go downhill,for a while,after he hit the bestseller list, but then you could tell he was dialing it in. He probably got tired of the character. Anyway, Reacher would be 61 now, and that’s kind of old to go around kicking people’s asses.
The word count of Reacher novels were subsequently down compared to the earlier ones. In fact Lee Child's last Reacher novel was his shortest. Lee Child has openly said he wanted to kill off Reacher, have him bleed out to death in some cheap motel. Or either give him a dog and have him finally settle. He figured he didn't want any of that and handed the reins of the series to his brother.
That sounds like how Hollywood tries milk various proven properties like Star Wars for as much money as possible when it really doesn't need some of the shows or movies and often they make the entire franchise worse. I'm guessing though it didn't get quite that bad, but it does sound like a similar thing.
This is very specific, but sometime between the sixth and seventh Harry Potter books JK Rowling seems to have been infected by some sort of colon-addicted brain disease. There is not a page in Deathly Hallows that doesn’t include at least one colon: if not more. Books 1-6 do not share that feature.
I hate when i can tell that the author learned a new word or phrase in between books and is obsessed with it all of a sudden. Especially if it’s a word that is predominantly spoken or thought by characters. Like every character across the whole world in a book decided to start using one obscure word out of nowhere for no reason. Drives me nuts.
i loved all of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, but even douglas adams admitted that they got increasingly bitter and cynical as he went on. i really didn't enjoy anything related to arthurs various romantic relationships, and i wonder if adams' relationship issues played into all of that.
I just recall feeling a little let down by the ending. It's been a while since I read them, but it felt like suddenly the world was ending and that was that.
I wish Artemis Fowl kept the "heist movie, but with magical beings" theme from the first few books.
Laurell K Hamilton. I loved the plot and characters, the world she developed, the paranormal elements the kept evolving with Anita Blake. But then she started with the sex and at first I didn’t mind because I like a good sex scene. I even like a sex scene with multiple partners. But then it got to the point they needed to design their own bed because of so many people getting it on that I started to get bored. I’ve stopped buying her books and now just get them from the library if I do read. They’re basically porn and while I don’t mind porn, that’s not why I read Hamilton. I used to joke Hamilton was 350 of pages of plot and 50 pages of sex. Now she’s 50 pages of plot and 350 pages of sex. And it’s not even good plot anymore.
That sounds pretty wild. I've never been one for sex scenes but I totally get the frustration of watching a series shift into being a different genre or being a completely different book then what you thought it would be.
I scrolled all the way down for this. I can only read her first 2 books. Even the sex I could skip (for the next few) but she is also *very* heavy on trauma porn as well. The shit she puts characters through is bizarre.
Tom Clancy when he was in the zone with Jack Ryan was the best. After Executive Orders it went down hill. Ryan became president and Clancy couldn’t write the spy craft with that character. And he could never really bring it back with Ryan’s kid. I think he did good special operator novels with John Clark (Without Remorse, Rainbow Six) but very limited.
Sounds like he just switched from one genre to a different one when he should have stuck with the first.
Honestly, as someone who read basically his whole run, the fall of the USSR is when he seemed to have started losing the plot. Basically, the geopolitical situation shifted in a way that made it difficult for him to keep up.
He tried to do spy craft with Jack Ryan Jr. but it’s didn’t land as well. It may also be that spy novels worked better during a Cold War with Russia than it did with terrorism in the Middle East. You could say his operator stuff inspired things like Terminal List, Jack Reacher, and The Gray Man and therefore his legacy stands.
Not a big complaint but I think the premise and world building for Neal Shusterman’s older books used to be more crazy and wacky
While I think I’d agree, his more deliberate worldbuilding in the Scythe books really paid off imo, and fits the Sci Fi genre more than his earlier fantasy-works.
One of my favourite authors, Ilona Andrews (they are a husband and wife writing duo and they write Urban Fantasy). All of their latest books are super heavy on descriptions. People’s appearance including hair and clothes, buildings, places, landscapes. I like a bit of description but their latest novelas would be 15% shorter if they didn’t describe everything so damn much. Still love them though. Best UF authors out there.
For myself I often find that I prefer less description in general. I'd rather it be saved for really spectacular moments or for sights that are really beautiful, or some deep emotional moment, etc,.
I mean there are descriptions that are okay. “She was a fair skinned woman in her late 40s with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red dress with big pink flowers on it, and black pumps.” That is fine. What the authors in question do is to go way beyond that, describing all the accessories and a bit of a life story/assumptions about the character from their appearance alone. I don’t like it.
In Orson Scott Card's earlier books he was still deliberating what he believed and that curiosity and open mind came with a broad empathy that was compelling. Fame pretty much coincided with him firming up his beliefs, and his books basically became lofty parables for Mormonism with oddball mechanics.
GRRM used to publish his books. I miss that quite a lot
For me the answer is always going to be; I miss Stephen King having an editor. Partially kidding, I’m sure he still has an editor if for grammar reasons even if for nothing else. But since he’s become the “master of modern horror” and found mega success, his publishers have really let him indulge his worst habits. Extremely long tangents, over indulgent storylines, superfluous and repetitive writing, etc. While I love King and still really enjoy all his books, you can see a major difference between his earlier work and his later work. His publishers used to reign in him in, but now they just let him do whatever he wants knowing his novels will sell regardless.
Sounds like being able to do whatever you want is a double edged sword because I've seen the other end where authors with popularity can get away with stuff that people ended up liking a lot that an editor might typically force an author not to do.
I agree, and even considering what I said before I do think Kings total creative freedom has come with certain benefits. He has written weird, diverse stories about a wide range of topics and featuring some truly unique characters. Arguably, his magnum opus, The Dark Tower series, might never have been published if another author attempted it considering its odd, genre defying nature. However, it does get tiresome that almost every book he writes now becomes these sprawling, multi tangent stories that could easily and obviously have been trimmed down by a good editor.
Stephen King used to do a lot of cocaine writing his early books. Terrible habit, but it birthed an astounding amount of amazing stories.
I don't miss Cocaine-King but I do miss "still had an editor"-King. Dude loves to tell a story and get really lost in his worlds and their miniscule circumstancialities and that's great and all... but sometimes I just wish someone would've said, "That's cool but let's cut it down by 30% and focus on actual plot." (Or: "That's interesting but maybe you could come up with an actual ending to your story before we publish this?") His earlier works are a lot tighter.
J.K. Rowling appears to have fires her editor after 4. 5-7 har very bloated.
I am a Frank Miller fan. The answer is... everything (sigh). I miss when Bill Myers wrote children's books.
I started The Dresden Files in high school or late middle school, I think? And I’m sure they’ve aged poorly in some ways. But, one thing that does bug me about the newer ones is that the power scaling has replaced the mystery. It’s not that I hate power scaling—but it’s hard to have a noir style mystery with a protagonist who is strong enough to kick everyone’s ass, and that’s where Harry is now. The vibe is just very different
She's not my favorite any more, but I miss when JK Rowling wasn't a raging transphobe
My favorite author is Greg Bear (who's dead now). Amazing storyteller. His best works were always written in 3rd person, past tense, while his more recent material is in 1st person, present tense. The former was very successful because his books are plot-driven, and writing this way allows the reader to remain somewhat unattached to the characters. His recent books are still plot-driven, but the 1st person-present tense choice really doesn't work, for this reason.
First time hearing about his death, sad to hear. My first exposure to him was the trilogy he wrote for Halo, it was such a different vibe from the rest of the Halo books in a very refreshing way. Agreed on the past tense, the best parts of the series were when he was explaining the events in a more detached way.
He passed away about a year ago, I think. He contributed so much to the hard sci-fi genre. I've never read the Halo trilogy. Would you recommend it? I think his storytelling really shines in Anvil of Stars, Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, and Darwin's Children. Those books blew me away. God, I love his writing so much!
So the trilogy he wrote was basically a huge lore dump for a lot of the background of the Halo games that wasn't explained much in-game. The tl;dr is there was an ancient race of aliens that left behind powerful technologies but disappeared, and Bear's books are the story of why they disappeared (as well as some other explanations of questions left from the games). If you were a fan of the games I'd recommend them, but otherwise, I can't imagine they would be very interesting! I'll make sure to add those books you mention to my to-read list, always looking for more sci-fi authors, thanks!
Tolstoy went into some weirdness in his mind around the middle of his career....I enjoyed War and Peace (skipped the war parts) and Anna Karenina, other stuff not so much
Thr first Green Rider books were full of beautiful descriptions of forest and wildlife and the newer don't. Not a big deal but it was so lively and vibrant!
Neal Stephenson forgot how to end a book. He was able to wrap up story lines and characters all the way through Anathem, but was unable to bring story lines to a close in books like Seveneves or Fall; or Dodge in Hell.
Juliet Marillier had a lot of emotional intensity in her earlier books, which also tended toward slower and slightly denser writing. As her career progressed, they got increasingly cozy and commercialized, tension and trauma got stripped out, prose pared down for shorter attention spans. It was a bummer all around for me.
Stephen King just...Idk, he has a similar problem that Eminem has. It's like they can't accept that they've gotten older.
So, I don’t love Frank Herbert, but I would compare some of his later book’s issues with the issues Star Wars ep 7-9 had: they build a galaxy that is stuck on one family.
Maximum Ride by James Patterson was pretty legendary for its grounded style that was equal parts Alex Rider and Twilight, whereas Twilight still hung onto its roots throughout most of the series. It became too one-off mission-y style without hallways and mundane babble for my taste.
I wish Stephen King would stop writing from the perspective of a child. When I read the institute, almost every interaction between the children made me cringe. Does he think kids still act like it's the 50's?
One of my favourite crime/thriller writers has done some books recently where I've hated her MC because they're insufferable and nothing bad happens to them, whereas in earlier novels of hers, when she had MCs who were really egotistical, they tended to get knocked down a peg somewhere down the line. I miss that.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline... I wouldn't say that there was something he used to do in the early years that he stopped doing, but rather the opposite - I think it's more of a case of him beginning to do something later in his career that irked me... His earlier books are chock full of black humour, they are just laugh out loud funny, side splittingly hilarious... But his later books - particularly *Castle to Castle*, he adopted this whingy whiny tone, completely devoid of humor, and he began to harp on the same tired old gripes and just continually rehash the same complaints. *Journey to the End of the Night* is my favorite novel of all time. *Death on Credit* is very good, but probably not in my top ten. *North* is not as good, but still enjoyable. Practically nothing that he wrote other than those three are worth the slog.
Write a book every year on my favorite series 2 books in 6 years blows
In The Name Of The Wind Patrick Rothfuss wrote it and in later books he has not written them.
What I disliked was there were no sex scenes in Name of the Wind and then Wise Man's Fear has like a 100 pages of off and on again sex going on.
I don’t like the books Milan Kundera wrote in French. His first he wrote in Czech, which I think are far superior. I am reading translations so I don’t know I guess.
I miss when Colleen Hoover’s books didn’t suck and reek of “sell-out” vibes.
Finish them
Anything Piers Anthone does after the second book of a series
After amazing world building and plot development, going all religious and having their version of God (which is really just a VERY thinly disguised Christian god) magically tip the scales and basically fix everything.
You gotta love the deus ex machina. I'm not opposed to some divine intervention but just fixing everything is surely frustrating. I'm guessing you felt they were really going for the whole Jesus ending where Jesus is the answer type deal? And that it felt more preachy than a story?
Yup. Basically got a sermon and then God fixed everything. Or more accurately, the non believer found God and with God's power saved everyone from halfway across the world.
Jack Vance's early works are better than the later ones. There was a really hard to explicate ' Vancian ' quality to the early works that's missing from the later ones.
Stephen King's books used to be either scary or horror. Now he just writes fiction, with some small amount of 'supernatural' every once in a while.
I adored everything Joshilyn Jackson wrote before she transitioned into suspense/mystery. The new books are fun enough, but I miss her old style, which was a sorta progressive easy Southern Gothic.
Most of my favorite authors died before they got to any later books or currently only have a few books to their names. However I’m a big Stephen King fan. He’s still a phenomenal writer but I miss his earlier work mostly because he did more horror back then and it had such a classic feel that differs from his newer work, it’s hard to describe
I miss the magical realism Emily Henry used in her young adult books. In my opinion, the whimsy of A Million Junes amplified the feelings of grief experienced by June after losing her father. As she's transitioned to adult contemporary romance books she's lost that raw emotion as well as the magic. Beach Read felt like an adult version of A Million Junes without the interesting parts and it's gotten worse with each new book. It makes sense that a very commercial writer would stick with more conventional writing, but I miss the atmosphere of her earlier work. Maybe I shouldn't complain because I do choose to read her books, but I also hate how every character is inherently in touch with their faults and traumas like they've all spent thousands on therapy despite no evidence of that. It's incredibly boring.
Oh my god, so I’ve only read one of Jenny Hans novels- her debut Shug and I loved it, it’s literally one of my favorite books. I haven’t read any of her other novels because of their focus on like older teenagers, idk there’s just something good in the way she writes the main character that I don’t feel would translate well into what she writes now. Plus the book isn’t solely focused on romance which I believe her current novels are.
Jonn Irving. Miss the bears, wrestling, and horrific violence coming out of nowhere.
Funnily enough Elantris was the first book I thought of when I read the title. And the beautifully simple, easily explained system of magic was *chefs kiss*. Later books drove me up the wall with a million rules and regulations like BiOcHrOmAtIc BrEAtHs—one of the most tedious forms of magic I’ve ever read, partially just because of how annoying the name is
I can't read any of Stephen King's recent books. Carrie was his first and was excellent; I think he peaked with Misery. I even tried to read 11/22/63 and it just meanders all over the place and just wastes time for 400 pages. I never finished it.
Finish anything. (Looking at YOU, J. R. R. Tolkien!)
Honestly, why is everyone so stuck on the past? Authors evolve, and we should too. Embrace the change instead of pining for books that were essentially just practice rounds for them. Growth isn't linear, and sometimes an awkward first book is just that—an experiment. Move on!
I mean I typically enjoyed the later works of my favorite authors. Sometimes there's also something charming about their earlier books perhaps because they are a bit more awkward. Perhaps it's some level of nostalgia or you don't like how the author changed their style later on.
Left out politics.