Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Are there any long series you liked that you enjoyed?
|
I don't read many series; the exception would be my jones for Napoleonic War fiction where I've read/am reading several. So I'll cite one of those, the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian with 20 books and a fragment.
These are wonderful books, the best of the genre, which I started reading over five years ago and which I enjoyed so very much that I decided to ration myself, with the result that I've recently only finished the 17th. I'm in it for the full ride, but it seems undeniable that the most recent books I've read are not up to the standard of the earlier ones. The dialogue and characterizations are as sparkling as ever, but the incident and action have become tired, at least for me. I still love the series, but too many more below-par books and I'll wish O'Brian had let Jack and Stephen go on in the ether without any more input from him.
Aside from what seems to me to be the fact that any series gets tired eventually as there's nothing new to do or say and no new way to do, is that I think the failing of the author's powers can be a factor. I just finished another book, really a novella, in a different Napoleonic Wars series which was third in the chronology but last written. It was terrible, a disjointed mess, and I saw that several reviews noted the author's age as he was in his 80s when he wrote it. I'll move on to the next, but it doesn't take many bad books to ruin an entire series.
I used to read mysteries a long time ago and I well remember that my interest in many if not most series would carry me a couple of books past my liking for them. It would be with relief that I'd realize that I was done with them. For each, it would be a mixture of the books getting bad (author got lazy and/or too big for his or her britches) and my just getting bored with everything about them. Genre books repeat.