Disappointing Sequels

[Black Dragon]

Have you ever read a fantasy novel that blew you away, making you want more, only to be sorely disappointed by a sub-par sequel?

Which sequels have been most disappointing to you?

 

[myrddin173]

I'm hesitant as to whether this would count. I don't know if any of you have read the Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper (I would highly recomend it despite what I am about to say) but I do not like the ending. At all. Period. In my opinion it cheapens everything the protagonists did throughout the series.

Spoiler: explanation

At the end, after defeating the Dark, they all forget everything related to the magical world they were involved in!

But again you should really read them, the rest of the books more than make up for the ending.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I'd have to say the Wheel of Time, books 8 through 11. Unfortunately, Jordan let himself get bogged down in a bunch of side plots with uninteresting characters, as well as interesting characters taking forever to do uninteresting things (the whole thing where Faile is captured and Perrin rescues her feels like it takes four books), and a lot of political maneuvering and people thinking deep thoughts about how they're going to do X, rather than just, you know, going and doing them. Jordan built a great world with a rich, deep history, and there was good storytelling for a while.

Brandon Sanderson really got things back on track in books 12 and 13, and I can't wait for the big finish, which should be out in a couple of months.

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

There are probably several, but I can't think of them...

The Lion of Macedon is an amazing book by Gemmel, I would highly recommend it, but I was disappointed by the sequel. The first book isn't really fantasy, more of historical fiction which I was fine with, but he went an entirely different way with the sequel, Dark Prince. It all of a sudden got very... well, not really magical, but let's say magical. It bothered me. Still a pretty good book though.

 

[mythique890]

I can think of a lot of movies, but not many books. Maybe The Dead Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, which is more post-apocalyptic than fantasy. I remember liking The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which is the first in the series, but I couldn't get through the sequel.

 

[Amanita]

I often have feel that the sequels aren't as good as the first books made me hope. For me, it is this way with the last two or three Harry Potter-books and with the last Narnia-book as well. That might be because the religious message is too obvious for my taste in this one. With Codex Alera it seems to be similar, but maybe I should finish the second book one day. The bullied outcast protagonist in the beginning put me off.

 

[Map the Dragon]

Dang...if no one is going to say it, I WILL:

The Two Towers is not a great sequel. Come to think of it, I have some criticisms as a whole for that series in terms of the pedestal on which our community places it. Though Tolkien is the godfather of our genre, he is far from the greatest. The Hobbit is genuinely the best of his books from a readers perspective. LOTR is one of the greats in world-building, though. However, in terms of a squel, The Two Towers is a rough read in comparison to Fellowship.

Another that comes to mind--The Hunger Games. The 2nd and 3rd books were progressively worse. They were sequels for the sake of writing sequels. The 3rd book was just blah. I loved the 1st, and stuck with the series, but books 2 and 3 just weren't that memorable and didn't feel authentic to the characters.

I know I'll catch some flack for these opinions, but we're an open-minded community!

 

[Telcontar]

LOTR was written as one book - it was artificially chopped into three for publication. Some problems probably stem from that.

A couple of the book in the Sword of Truth were fairly disappointing, like when he tried to leave Richard and Kahlan for awhile and turn instead to Oba Rahl. I understand why he did it, but it didn't work that well.

Also, the Silver Gryphon, sequel to the Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey (and someone else, I forget who) didn't come close to rekindling the magic I felt in the first book. Ah well.

 

[Kit]

Another that comes to mind--The Hunger Games. The 2nd and 3rd books were progressively worse. They were sequels for the sake of writing sequels. The 3rd book was just blah. I loved the 1st, and stuck with the series, but books 2 and 3 just weren't that memorable and didn't feel authentic to the characters.

Just finished reading those... Personally I didn't feel the last two books were really bad, but agree that the first was the best. I feel that part of the letdown was just because the bulk of book 1 was the game itself, and after that, everything else couldn't help being an anticlimax (even though there was a second game later on, it was a lot shorter and got inturrupted halfway through).

I was disappointed when Anne McCaffrey's dragon books got the computer back and turned from fantasy to sci-fi. I personally am a fantasy fan, and don't care for much sci fi. I didn't like to see the world take that direction.

 

[mythique890]

Anne McCaffery's books were always sci fi IMO. She wrote Dragondawn forever ago, which tells how the settlers came from earth and how the dragons were genetically engineered from fire lizards. I don't know, maybe she started out with the intention of Pern being a fantasy world since Dragonflight was her first book, but she seems more of a sci fi writer to me. You want to talk about disappointing Pern books, how about anything written by her son? NOT up to par.

 

[SLTE]

Though it borders multiple genres (what book doesn't these days?), the last couple books of The Dark Tower series were disappointing compared to the beginning and middle. The general story didn't bother me so much - the final confrontation at the Dark Tower itself was pretty neat - but King's self-insertion rubbed me the wrong way.

 

[TWErvin2]

I really enjoyed Barbara Hambly's Those Who Hunt the Night. Her sequel, Traveling with the Dead, well, it just fell flat. It was nominated for some awards, but I wasn't sure why. The first novel in the series was a Locus Award Winner.

 

[hppavmx704]

A Song of Ice and Fire-GoT was a decent enough book but after that they are getting longer and moving slower and it is dissapointing to read farther into the series IMO.

Harry Potter-The third book was very odd-ball for me. I loved the series and like the third book but there isn't a whole lot to do with Voldemort. It seems like the end was thrown together and made to fit into the plot of the series.

Twilight-The first book was the only book that I did not suffer through. The second book I had to make myself finish it and I could not finish the third.

 

[MichaelSullivan]

There's a difference between a "sequel" and a "next book in the series"....at least in my mind. A Sequel is "just one more" with the same characters and world and for me at least these are usually a disappointment because much of the character development and world building was done in the first book so the others aren't as fullfilling.

Now a book that is "designed as a series" is another matter alltogether. I have a six-book series - but none of them are "sequels". I wrote each one with its own conflict and resolution but I metered out information on a larger story arc a bit at a time. For those who have watched series like Babylon 5 you'll know what I mean. Some episodes were "fillers" and others had key components to the larger things going on.

 

[Ziggy]

A couple of the book in the Sword of Truth were fairly disappointing, like when he tried to leave Richard and Kahlan for awhile and turn instead to Oba Rahl. I understand why he did it, but it didn't work that well.

I gave up on the Sword of Truth series after I think the fourth book. It just go so ridiculously stupid. That book still annoys me. I could rant about it for ages but it's not worth the effort.

Gave up on Wheel of time after the third book I think. Some series just seem to drag on for too long.

They're the only ones that spring to mind though.

 

[MichaelSullivan]

Was reading a review the other day that made me notice that there are remarkably few long series that actually ... well "end". Still so many that are ongoing. I wonder when "enough is enough".

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Was reading a review the other day that made me notice that there are remarkably few long series that actually ... well "end". Still so many that are ongoing. I wonder when "enough is enough".

I wonder to what degree it happens where an author wants to end the series, but the fans are so rabid about wanting more that the author thinks, "Well... I could extend it a bit, I do have some ideas I didn't use earlier... and it's easier than inventing a whole new world again..."

 

[Devor]

I wonder to what degree it happens where an author wants to end the series, but the fans are so rabid about wanting more that the author thinks, "Well... I could extend it a bit, I do have some ideas I didn't use earlier... and it's easier than inventing a whole new world again..."

The author . . . and the publisher, and the editor, and the burgeoning wallet.

A lot of it has to do with future books increasing sales and grabbing new readers for older ones.

 

[Steerpike]

The author . . . and the publisher, and the editor, and the burgeoning wallet.

A lot of it has to do with future books increasing sales and grabbing new readers for older ones.

Yeah, I think that is a lot of it. Unfortunately, the author can end up harming herself and the series.

It is hard, I think, to sustain a reader's interest over a prolonged series. Jordan lost my interest a long time ago. Martin and Erikson have sustained it (and in Erikson's case, over a number of extremely long books), but in many series I feel at some point the author is stretching things out and the books become less interesting.

 

[Jess A]

Ugh. Where do I start?

Most of Jean Auel's books after the second one. I skim-read most of those. Most of Raymond Feist's later books. It was almost as though somebody else was writing bad fan fiction about his characters. I found Sara Douglass' newer series (which revisited old characters) hard-going until they picked up the pace. I lost interest in K. J. Taylor's Griffin series by the middle of the second book. The list goes on!

When I was a kid, I read the Redwall series. I continued as I got older, even though the books were for younger readers. The books became unimaginative and certainly more childish than his older ones - and it wasn't just that I was older. I found myself hating the self-righteous, whinging Abbey creatures with a vengeance.

I think I find it hard to maintain focus on series these days. It is far worse with films. Almost every film sequel is terrible. TV series grate on my nerves after a couple of seasons.