OMG, I just read this book and it’s AMAZING!!! You have to totes check it out! For realz, yo! Only . . . after you read it, don’t read anything else that author wrote. Well, maybe there’s one or two, but seriously, you should quit while you’re ahead. Maybe read the recaps on Wikipedia if you have to know what happens. . .
I’m sure we’ve all come across this, an author with a lot of promise, who ends up rapidly disappointing after taking a wrong turn, often for no discernible reason, at least to the readers. It can be very hard to write well, and continuously, especially when you have an editor breathing down your neck (Hi, GI and Bots!!), and a rabid fan base clamoring for more of the character that you hated. For example, L. Frank Baum and C.S. Lewis had no intentions to continue the stories they started in The Wizard of Oz and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, yet their fans demanded it, and now we have seven Narnia books and over 40 Oz books, with thirteen being written by Baum. Agatha Christie is on record as loathing Hercule Poirot (her exact words are “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”), yet kept him going for a long time, simply to please her fan base.
There are many authors out there who seem to never run out of ideas, or at least can take a bad premise and turn it into a decent air-plane read, if not a good novel. Lois McMaster Bujold has written at least a dozen books dealing with Miles Vorkosigan, and while some are better than others, none are so cringe worthy as to make fans tell people to stop after a point. Kelly Armstrong isn’t a great writer, but she cleverly avoids getting stale by changing the main character every other or every couple of books, constantly breathing fresh air into her story. Janet Evanovich is on book number 13,495, and is still going strong with making her readers blow their diets.
Please keep in note that I’m not talking about authors who were never good to begin with. I know lots of people who read J.R. Ward, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s the literary equivalent of eating nothing but stale Twinkies for dinner. Nor am I talking about the certain, awful, plodding fantasy series that might be shoved into your face, consisting of 12 books, and counting, that are all longer then the Bible. So, that being said, here’s my quick rundown of authors that I’ve become disappointed in.
Note: While I will do my best to keep this spoiler free, I can’t promise that I won’t let something slip. Proceed at your own risk.
Jacqueline Carey – I very much enjoyed Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy. She has a very different writing style, one that borders on an intelligent Harlequin Romance novel, and knows her shit, constantly infusing her world with a “This is what could have been” vibe, and the historical knowledge to back it up. She continues this with more books set in this world, but, honestly, I started to not care as much. A good chunk of this is because continuing on with the story is anti-climatic, especially when the main character starts commanding demi-gods and the like. So, where do you go from there? Her adopted step-son, and his pseudo-bisexuality and various love affairs as he tells himself he’s not cool enough for the girl he has a crush on. After Phedre’s self assured sexuality and forwardness, Imriel just comes across as awkward, and it’s jarring. However, the writing style hasn’t suffered, making this more an “I lost interest” and less “What the hell happened?” I might check out the Namaah’s Legacy books someday. Carey also does a great sort of retelling of the Lord of the Rings from Sauron’s point of view in the Sundering.
Elizabeth Haydon – Haydon’s Rhapsody trilogy (I’m sensing a theme here) could have been the ultimate Mary Sue author insert fiction. Her main character is sickeningly sweet, supernaturally (no, really) beautiful, sings all the damn time, gets just about everyone to fall in love with her, was a hooker with a heart of gold, did I mention she’s preternaturally beautiful?, oh, and her sword burns with the fire of a holy star. However, Haydon balances Rhapsody out with a string of minor and supporting characters that exist to put Rhapsody in her place. Achmed is usually right about everything, and has no qualms about telling Rhapsody so. The trilogy even has great re-read value, especially once you told just who the omniscient narrator is, only to go back and find him randomly showing up in scenes you didn’t catch the first read. The problem with the series comes in the expansion novels. How do you top saving the world from an evil demon hell bent on destruction? Well, you conjure up an even EVILER demon hell bent on even MORE destruction. Throw in some characters who should have stayed in the shadows and way too many explanations, and you have a continuation of a series that just keeps feeling anti climatic.
Anne Bishop– Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stale and rote fantasy world. The series is darker than most of the lighthearted fantasy out there, without going into Gothic territory. The main characters all come very close to Mary Sue status, though for many of them, it’s justified in some way, usually in that we’re dealing with the elite of the world, and some very powerful magic users who’ve managed to set plans that last thousands of years, and then wait (and live) for these things to come into fruition. There’s a wobbly romance and a few “wha?” moments (like the 2000 year old virgin sex slave. . .), but the core books have a charm to them that’s hard to resist. And then the author decided to write more. I have no idea if this was for her fans, or if she just had more stories to get out of her system, but the general fan base has the consensus that they’ve been getting worse and worse. The already slightly annoying romance gets even more so. The questionably misogynistic world system quickly morphs into one where despite being in “power” women are quickly ignored or thrown onto a couch and fussed over. Bishop does do something rather interesting with following a witch who has very little power, and is not very pretty (seriously, that’s the one description that everyone keeps mentioning. She’s not ugly. She’s just not pretty. . . and tall.), but wastes it on focusing on Cassidy’s lack of classical beauty and including the former cast as main characters, still with issues. I spent most of my time skimming. From the reviews I’ve seen of the last book, I don’t see any point in wasting any more money. But I will reread the core trilogy every now and then.
Laurel K. Hamilton – Hamilton has never been a “good” author, but she seemed to have something in her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. You could even watch as her writing got slightly better, as her characters became more fleshed out, complex, and nuanced. She even wrote a separate series that seemed designed to get her shitty fan girl writing out of the way, including a modern fairy princess, a harem full of gorgeous god-like men, and lots of kinky sex. Unfortunately, that is what Anita Blake turned into, and then some. I lost it when all the gay characters ended up turning bi/straight/celibate for Anita, or were evil. Anita quickly becomes overly powerful, gorgeous without really knowing it, and is attended by a harem of men who all want to do nothing but please her sexually, which increases her magical powers. The really sad thing is that Ms. Hamilton has shown absolutely no signs of stopping this tyranny, and from what I can understand, has lost quite a few followers. As a reviewer of her Merry Gentry books once quipped “Who knew that double penetration could be so boring?”
