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Some great examples in here already. Discworld didn't really hit their stride until about book eight, I'm told it's similar with Dresden but haven't gotten that far yet. And I agree that the J.K.Rowlings Harry Potter books just kept getting better. I'd say this holds especially true for self-published books (there could be some bias creeping here), which means the "first book is free" thing often doesn't help as much as it should.
If I sat and thought about it long enough I'd probably come up with a matching set of series where things just went downhill after a mediocre start ... but such books are so forgettable that, well ... you know, I don't remember them.
What I would say is that once you've read the first you are probably better placed to interpret other people's reviews. If many others say things get better, well that sounds promising. If subsequent reviews only say the book is as good, or not as good as the first, then you know not to bother.
Donaldson's first Gap book was - I think - a bit different to the other examples. It was very well written - so well done it really puts you off - so there was no doubt the rest would be as eloquent, the question was only whether you could stomach them. It turns out to be an amazing journey, one huge novel spread over 5 (4 in some ebook editions) novels. As ZodWallop said, such a situation is quite rare.
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