Top Five Friday: Top Five Authors Who Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead:

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This week we are listing authors who continued to write their series long after they were interesting, or authors who just ran out of original ideas a loooong time ago. If you want to participate, grab the code above, write your top five authors who should have quit while they were ahead in your blog and comment here so I can post a link to your blog!

Top Five Friday: Top Five Authors Who Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead:

Emma's List
1. Orson Scott Card. Ender's Game was amazing. It truly is one of the most fascinating, original and important science fiction books ever. Definitely among the very most enjoyable to read. But the series degenerates. Fast and hard. He wrote way, way too many sequels and spin-offs. I am sure they are very profitable but he apparently ceased to have anything interesting to say other than what was in Ender's Game.

2. Frank Herbert. Dune was a very intense book with a fast plot and interesting characters. The same cannot be said for its sequels. Frank Herbert apparently outdid himself with Dune. The rest of the series is pretty... meh. I actually liked his son's prequel books quite a bit but it was a chore to get through the rest of the Dune books, and totally not worth it.

3. Stephen King. Certainly one of the most prolific authors of our time. I have found very few of his books to be worth reading, personally. The ones I enjoyed were the first four books of his Dark Tower series. I got very attached to the characters, the plot was interesting and using the term "lobstrosity" just warmed my heart. The last three books, however, were heinous. Really bad. I wish I had stopped with book four. The story quickly faded into page long descriptions of snot, (no, I did not make that up) self-insertion (not that either) and lack of coherency. Very disappointing.

4. Terry Goodkind. I just wish he had never started writing. His Sword of Truth series is the most violent crap I have ever read in my life. I think he may have missed his true calling as a serial killer and/or rapist based on the themes in his book.

5. Sue Grafton. I don't really mind her writing too much. Like many authors she repeats stuff. A lot. She has a theme, it works, she sticks to it. I read several when I was younger and then stopped at some point. Meh.



Emily's list. Spoilers in #2 and 4.

1. Frank Herbert, for basically the same reasons Emma listed, though I think reading up through God Emperor of Dune is still worthwhile.

2. Robert Jordan. I enjoyed the first four or so. I read up through book 8 or 9 or somewhere around there. I lost track because they all blurred together with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of people wandering around, Rand marrying way too many people, Perrin having a really awful wife, and Mat doing nothing but flirting with girls. Also, way too many descriptions of men staring at women's ankles. When the books are people wandering around for 600 pages and then there's a big battle and then we start all over again in the next book, I get bored. Now that Brandon Sanderson is writing them, I am slightly more interested but by this point I'd have to go re-read the whole series and get refreshed and caught up, and that just about kills my interest.

3. Douglas Adams. I loved the first two books, liked the third, and kind of wish I hadn't read the rest. Mostly Harmless was not a good read.

4. J.K. Rowling, for a few reasons: a) 7 books later, the biggest twist she could come up with was "Harry has to die"? b) nothing happened in book 7. c) That epilogue was awful. Awfulawfulawful.

5. Charlaine Harris. The last few books in the Southern Vampire series have not been all that good. Lots of random backstory, with the entire plot crammed into the last 50 pages. I still like (most) of the characters a lot, and I still want to know what happens to them, but the last few books have just been really weak on storyline.