Series you wish you never kept up with. (Moved from Novels)

This isn't quite an answer to your question but I am so glad I never kept up with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

A vast meandering story over 12 volumes (each 500-1000 pages) with more loose ends than a plate of spaghetti - and then the author dies before completing the last one.

The Anita Blake books, from what I hear. I've only read the first two.

Twilight.

Mortal Instruments.

I have a terrible, terrible time not finishing things that come in a series. It eats away at me. That's why I put down Eragon after the prologue.

I also read every single Goosebumps, Nancy Drew, and Boxcar Children book. It was kind of a waste of time, but then again I was a kid so it was probably better than playing nintendo.

The War Against The Chtorr. It's been something like 20 years since the last book and still David keeps on promising the last/latest book in the 5-book "trilogy". I love Gerrold's writing, but there's gotta' come a time when it's obvious that the series is never going to be finished and the author's lost interest.

The Sword (CashCow) of Shannara. If it's possible to write the same book over and over again, Terry Brooks found the way.

Brandon Sanderson, who was chosen to finish the "final volume" in Wheel of Time, has now announced that it will take him three more volumes to finish the story. It's incredible. The series that will not die. Perhaps Jordan's successor should have been, not an author, but a vampire-hunter who could drive a stake through it.

Have to second the Shannara books and the Wheel of Time. And sucker that I am, I'll be reading all the rest of the WoT books as well.

I suppose it's beneficial in a way though - after reading Wheel of Time to its current point, I now hate letting any plot run on too long, which I suspect is a good thing for someone as wordy as I generally am

Twilight. I read them all out of some twisted obligation to finish the series, and managed to kill more than a few braincells in the process. And I didn't even like Twilight to begin with! I'm a pain with series books. If I read the first, I have to read the rest, so I tend to be selective about which series books I pick up now.

I've just read the first in "The Demon's Lexicon" -- so that's another series to finish as and when it's released. I've also just bought "City of Bones" (two more to go in that series), "Vampire Academy" (not sure how many more in that series), and "Marked" (I think three more). I have to read YA fantasy because it's my genre, and yet they rarely come as standalone novels. Grr.

The Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The last two books have been dreadful.

But my all time top pick is the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. The first 3 books were clever. The next 27 (or however many there are) were formula.

I loved the first four or five books of Rice's Vampire Chronicles...then...ARGH! It went downhill fast. She should have thrown in the towel.

Another vote for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Just stop at book five, or whichever one had Mat as a General.

Ender's game...It ended after speaker for the dead. The other stuff was not Ender, at least not to me. But, yeah, I've heard some of the spinoffs are good.

Feeling compelled to finish a series is something I gave up after highschool. That being said, series which I've abandoned are:

The Wheel of Time
The Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries
The Anita Blake series

scarletpeaches said:

The Anita Blake books, from what I hear. I've only read the first two.

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Good to stop when you did. I read four or five in that series. It was one too many.

Namatu said:

Good to stop when you did. I read four of five in that series. It was one too many.

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I actually didn't mind them up until book eight. After that, any semblance of story and character started suffering in order to squeeze in more and more sex.

I usually just give them up, no regrets.
Wheel of Time (I actually couldn't get through the first one)
Lord of the Rings
Xanth

Vicki Pettersson's The Second Sign of the Zodiac series. The first was slightly innovative and exciting, so i ran out and bought 3 more of 'em. Big mistake. They're all the same book. Her character never gets any smarter, never learns from her mistakes, and the bad guys keep getting away with *the same* things over and over.

Lilith Saintcrow's Dante Valentine series. In the first book, we have a very interesting girl who kicks ass and angsts over her past and her boyfriend. Lurv! So i bought a couple more (you think i'd have learned after Pettersson.) Book 2: girl angsts over her past and her boyfriend. Book 3: Girl angsts over her boyfriend and her past. Good god, girl! Get over it, already! I've got 4 and 5, too, but i haven't (and won't) read 'em. I have a sneaking suspicion she'll be angsting over her past and her boyfriend.

I have to agree with Sleepsheep about the Dresden Files, too. Not that he's always the same (or the plots are) but i found, after a while, that the author *has* fallen into a pattern of sorts (which he didn't have, at first) to wit: MC gets beat to a bloody pulp through 2/3rds of the book and *then,* when he should rightly be on the critical list, has to face the toughest guy (with no further boost of any kind of power or time to rest) and beat him. ::shakes head:: just doesn't pass my believability test.

OTOH, i've found some series that seem to get *better* with age:

Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series. Her characters grow and change and their relationships flower and/or die. And it's a fascinating twist on the urban fantasy idea.

Elizabeth Bear's series (any of 'em.) They're really more like progressive story lines, with her, i think. They're just yummy-good.

cat

I can't think of any series I regret having continued to read. I enjoy series. When I come across a character I really like, I look forward to all their adventures. I think I read nearly all the series Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote and don't regret a minute of it. And I wish I could find more of the old pulp serials, like The Shadow, Doc Savage, et al.

As far as Anita Blake, I think I read the first 8 or so. I only stopped because they were progressively getting more focused on the sex and less on the magic and adventure that drew me in in the first place.

I liked Twilight the first time I read it. New Moon was actually really fun for me to read, considering the so-called "vampires" are AWOL almost the whole time. The other two I didn't like. Now I'm "editing" Twilight; I just found my copy of the book, and I'm going through it with a pencil (all my red pens died T.T) and fixing things. I've taken out a lot of references to the unnatural hotness of the "vampires."

I refuse to read anything in the Earth's Children series now. It seemed more like porn to me than anything else. I had to skip what felt like half of the second book to avoid all the sex. It was disgusting. Though, the non-porn parts were quite interesting.

I couldn't even get through the first twenty pages of Sword of Shannara. If I hadn't gotten it from the library, I would have bought a new box of red pens and gone to town on it.

I read the first book in the Pendragon series--the dimension-travelling and stuff. The storyline was kind of fun, but the characters were flat and boring. Someone died, and everyone was sad, and I was like, "Big deal. She died. Boo-hoo." I didn't care about any of the characters.

I wish I'd never picked up the Harry Potter series. I only started reading it because the fourth book was so delightfully long that I just had to read it, and my brother refused to let me until I read the first three. By the end of the series, I hated all the main characters. My favorite character was the evil lord dude. I wanted him to win in the end, in all honesty.

LilliCray said:

I wish I'd never picked up the Harry Potter series. I only started reading it because the fourth book was so delightfully long that I just had to read it, and my brother refused to let me until I read the first three. By the end of the series, I hated all the main characters. My favorite character was the evil lord dude. I wanted him to win in the end, in all honesty.

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Yeah, Voldie rocked, or could have. He got too muhahahaha-ish at times, but that devastating flayed fetus image in Book Seven redeemed him and JKR.

Never had a series I pursued to my regret, because if I don't like the first book, that's it. My favorite series now is Preston and Child's Pendergast & Friends saga. I'm also looking forward to the next book in Del Toro and Hogan's vampire epic, which just started with The Strain. The writing's a bit clunky, but in this case, the tasty pulp sweep of the story compensated for it.

Harry Potter. I got up to the fifth book and stopped. I originally stopped because I thought the fans were a bit nutty and I wanted no connections with that, but when I revisited them, I thought her writing was poor.

I think that was the last series I read? I don't have the patience for them, tbh.

The Dragon Quartet. The first books were great, and the fourth book was just a huge letdown. I can't quite put my finger on why, but the storytelling seemed to change and it was like Fire did a complete change in personality with no real explanation as to why. Which was a shame, he didn't seem the type to just shrug his shoulders and give up all of a sudden.

Yet another vote for the Wheel of Time series from me. I only made it to book seven, but even that was way too much. I should have stopped at the end of the second one.