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Originally Posted by haydnfan
Just as with the Gap series, sometimes a writer develops a story and then decides to revisit that universe and only then comes up with a major arc. That happened in Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth. Not a great novel but the followup was a very memorable epic called the Commonwealth Saga.
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This IMO can be a deterrent, as well. I really *liked* the first few novels in the Dresden Files series. I was specifically interested in the idea of a "wizard PI" series, where each book could be more or less standalone. Once he started adding what I call "the huge fantasy arc" in book 4, I became more and more dissatisfied with the books.
I picked up Kristine Kathryn Rusch Retrieval Artist series with the same hopes - mostly standalone mystery series, set on the moon. And it mostly was, although like some mystery series, they did build on each other and it would be harder to treat them like true standalones. Then she wrote the "Anniversary Day saga" - 8 flipping books with an overall "evil warlord" type of arc. I hate those types of stories. I read the books, and enjoyed them although to a lesser degree than the others, because I'm hooked on the characters. But I'd have been happier to just have some more mysteries for the hero to solve.
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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Interesting. I haven't read those. I've read the Mordant's Need series, which I liked and the first six of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which started off interesting, but had become unreadable by book 6. It's not a coincidence that I never bought any Donaldson ebooks to replace by paper copies.
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The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were the first fantasy books I ever read. I loved the first 3, wasn't as pleased with the 2nd 3, and own, but still can't force myself to read, the last batch (I think there were 4 in the last "trilogy"). Thomas Covenant was such a unique type of character to me (I mostly read romance and mystery novels, and hadn't discovered urban fantasy until a couple decades later). I liked Mordant's Need as well, but hated the first Gap book so much I never went back and tried to read the rest of them. The only other "epic" type fantasy I read was Jordan's Wheel of Time. I got impatient with doorstopper books that covered only 3 days of time, and gave up on those around book 10 or so.