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Originally Posted by hobnail
Does anyone else often find that the quality or enjoyment of the books in a series decreases after the first book? For me it seems to mainly be fantasy series but not exclusively so. I think that part of my problem is that the first book has the world and character building and then subsequent books are more or less just recycling that stuff with a new plot.
An obvious case where this isn't so is Lord of the Rings where it's as if he wrote one big book and then chopped it into 3 books.
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Yep
The Lord of the Rings was not a series. The publishers originally chopped it up so they could decrease the runs each time and save money on paper because they thought it wasn't going to sell well. I completely agree with you about the quality of series these days. And it's not just fantasy — writers (or their publishers) seem to be "padding" the series to make it longer (and more boring). Most recent example (for me) was the Dean Koontz "Jane Hawk" series. I could see it work as a trilogy, but as a series of five books it seemed to take forever before it eventually plodded to its obvious conclusion.
I'm honestly getting tired of every book (or at least a lot of them) being part of a series. I think it's the same reason we keep getting sequels or reboots of movies. The studios and publishers only want to put their money into a known commodity. They don't want to take chances on something new and original anymore.