iO9 recently did an interesting article: When is the right time to finally give up on a series?
I’m of the school where I’ll rarely give up on a book, and that completist bit will keep me reading a series long past when I should give up–I keep going for the love I had of earlier books. But The fact I hate cliffhanger books makes it both harder and easier for me to give up on a series. (I have to know what happens, so I’ll often buy the next book to find out what happens, but if a series starts going downhill, I can abandon it in fear of the dreaded cliffhanger possibility.)
So, what series have I abandoned? As I am a voracious reader, this will probably be a long list, so for the sake of brevity, try not to list too many books where I read the first book and then gave up.
Piers Anthony‘s Xanth series.
And I almost gave up on the Incarnations of Immortality. Xanth just got inanely repetitive, to the point that even as a young reader I just stopped reading.
Jim Butcher‘s Harry Dresden series.
I might eventually get back to this, but when I got to Changes and Michael told me it was a cliff hanger, I said ‘screw it’ and gave up.
I really loved the early Harry books: he was struggling and kind and generous and had complicated friendships, plus: mysteries! But then, as the series wore on, the fun stopped making up for the fact that I knew that Harry was always going to win.
Rachel Caine‘s Weather Warden series.
I liked the idea of the fantasy, but waaay too much focus on fashion and boinking. Here’s what I wrote in my review of the last book I read (Chill Factor):
She’s gorgeous and dresses well and can walk in high heels. So what? Rachel Caine writes about this like it’s a good thing for a woman to be obsessed with fashion and looking good and remaining thin and spending all her money on clothes. All I can think is, “What a waste.”
Gail Carriger‘s Parasol Protectorate.
I loved the first book (Soulless) in this series so very very much. I read to the third book based on that initial love, and then just gave up. Here’s an excerpt of the last review I wrote.
All in all, I found Blameless disappointing. Most of the characters were flat, the bad guys were one dimensional, and there seemed to be a lack of logic in the way she was treated in Italy.
Karen Chance‘s Cassandra series.
This was where I started to discern that there was urban fantasy and there was paranormal fantasy, and the paranormal was filled with boinking, so I was going to have to be more careful about picking up books.
I mostly found myself annoyed with Cassie, and tired of the fact the she was constantly surrounded by hunky, gorgeous guys. Please. It’s as if absolutely everything in this story related in one way or another to sex. Either Cassie thinking about sex or sizing up every guy some comes across as a potential partner for boinking. Even when she was in danger she couldn’t stop thinking about sex.
Whatever.
Carole Nelson Douglas‘s Delilah Street series.
Book two ended with a HUGE cliffhanger, so I read Vampire Sunrise to find out what happened and then never went back.
Jennifer Estep
I’ve read two series by her, the Elemental Assassin series, of which I read one book, and the Mythos Academy series, of which I’ve gotten to Dark Frost.
The Elemental Assassin series was just chock full of boinking. So I read one book and gave up.
The Mythos Academy series I really really liked, even the last book I read , but I keep reading the synopsis for the next book and thinking, “Really? No.”
I know I shouldn’t base a book by the synopsis, but it just sounds so unappealing.
Yasmine Galenorn‘s Sisters of the Moon series.
This was a very strange one, because each book is written from the POV of one of the three sisters, and I really liked the books written from the POV by Delilah and Mennoly, but hated Camille so much that after Dragon Wytch I couldn’t read any more.
Charlaine Harris‘s Sookie Stackhouse series.
You knew this one would be on here, didn’t you?
I loved this series so very much for the first few books. And I was very much Team Eric.
(And I have to say that I’m a big Eric fan, since he’s one of the few who has always tended to see to her material needs when others have ignored or been blind to the financial difficulties their demands have placed upon her. [I always appreciated the fact that Eric had her driveway regraded. That sounds like something silly, unless you’ve ever lived with a gravel driveway, then you realize that he was interested in making her day-to-day life easier, not just impressing her.])
But then, it just became Too Much Too Much.
I have discovered that I no longer care what happens to Sookie.
This book didn’t enrage me with plot holes or issues, I just realized I do not care in the slightest what happens to Sookie or anyone else in the series.
And so, for me, here (Dead and Gone) the series ends. Wish it had lived up to the promise of the first few books, but the endless (and ridiculous) romantic entanglements just got to be too much, and the mysteries took a back seat to everything else.
So long Sookie.
Kim Harrison‘s Rachel Morgan series.
Michael really liked this series, and I tried, I really tried. But I found Rachel generally irritating, so after reading The Outlaw Demon Wails I never read another. I think I picked up the next couple books for Michael, but I’m not sure if he read them or not, and I decided if he wanted ’em, he could buy the rest for himself.
Naomi Novik‘s Temeraire series.
I loved the first three books, and even got my grandmother to read them, but after reading Empire of Ivory I gave up. The story wasn’t as good, the book ended on a cliff hanger, and I never went back. (Weirdly, I thought I’d read further than that, but, I hadn’t.)
Kat Richardson‘s Harper Blaine series.
I got to Vanished and then abandoned this series, despite my love for the first book in the series, Greywalker. Here’s why I gave up:
Now, Harper is not just a Greywalker, but a “special” Greywalker.
Bletch.
Can’t we have a fantasy heroine who isn’t all sooper special?
Michelle Sagara‘s Cast series.
I haven’t actually officially abandoned this series, I just can’t be bothered to go back and read anything after Cast in Chaos.
I guess since that was in 2010, and there have been three books published since then, that kinda counts as abandoned.
Thomas E. Sniegoski Remy Chandler series.
Here are my thoughts on the last book:
One other thing. Upon inspection, this is a really terrible cover. Every time I looked at the cover, I kept thinking Ben Browder was about to be attacked by mini-glowy-eyed hyenas and extra tall, extra skinny jawas. I know that a cover shouldn’t make or break a story, but I really hate bad fantasy covers. With covers like that, small wonder no one wants to take the category seriously.
So although this story does have much to recommend it, it is most definitely not my cup of tea, and in comparison to other books set in Hell or that deal with Lucifer, this was unfortunately a letdown.
And now I want to watch “Farscape.”
I’d forgotten how much I hated that cover.
F. Paul Wilson Repairman Jack series.
This is another that I didn’t actively give up on, as much as I failed to continue reading it.
Ah…. now I remember why.
Crisscross (2004)
Jack is still in the Repairman business, despite the fact that Gia doesn’t like the way she never knows if he’ll return safely from his fix-it jobs. And with Gia’s pregnancy (Despite the fact this is a multi-book pregnancy, Gia is only at 20 weeks. She might be pregnant for years at this rate)
Infernal (2005)
Also, Gia’s pregnancy must be the longest in the history of the world. Poor woman. Luckily for her she’s still barely showing. (Excuse me? Bogus!)
So, any mistakes in there? Anything in that list that got better after the nosedive in quality? Obviously, some series simply aren’t a fit for me (generally the ones full of boinking) but other series I gave up on because it felt like the quality of the series fell off, and I’d be happy to learn things got better in later books.
But I won’t believe you if you tell me the Sookie series got better. I’ve read the reviews.
