Jumping the Bookworm

Every summer Hollywood seems to bombard the general public with a non-stop barrage of sequels, most of which turn out to be lukewarm rehashes of films that weren't very good to begin. For this, Hollywood portrayed as ultra-conservative, artistically bankrupt, and generally, the root of all evil. We are told we would be better off reading a book.

And yet - if walk into a bookshop now, the shelves are groaning with sequels, neverending series, spin-offs, etc. It just proves that the 'struggling' author finds it as hard to reject the mighty dollar when the publisher comes knocking.

What are the sequels that shouldn't have been written? When did a series start to curdle? When is a spin-off a bridge too far?

Just to get things started. I'll nominate Joseph Heller's sequel to Catch-22, Closing Time. Other than of the suitcase of money, what was Heller thinking when he decided to write this mess? Heller didn't know what to do with the old C22 characters, and the new characters seem to belong to a different book. The ideas are lesser re-workings of the previous work, and the humour is cliched and tired.
The reading public wasn't demanding a sequel, it reads like Heller didn't want to write a sequel, and yet we still got a sequel, which just goes to prove that want the market wants the market gets.

You scooped me: Closing Time well and truly is a disaster of a book. I was working at a bookstore when it was first released, and couldn't wait to get home to start reading.

I haven't read this yet, but surely the sequel to Huck Finn (err.. or further sequel to Tom Sawyer) called Tom Sawyer Abroad would make the list? Has anyone read this one? After the powerful ending to Huck Finn, Twain follows with a story wherein (according to Amazon) "...Tom is not satisfied with is his life on the Mississippi River and begins to seek out a new adventures. Tom, Huck and their friend Jim ride a hot air balloon over the oceans to far away lands." Was this written solely to ward off creditors? Or as part of a campaign to drive readers mad?

I enjoyed Chrichton's Jurassic Park so why did he ressurect characters to make Lost World which wasn't anywhere as good.

Douglas Adams's hitchhiker guide was good but by So long and thanks it was very poor. Fortunetly mostly harmless did a very good job of ensuring there could be no more sequels.

To be honest very very few authors can hold the story together as well past the third book as they did initially. My personal theory is that, having met sucess they no longer "allow" the editor to make as many cuts as they did initially, hence you get these overweight (have you noticed all books get fatter as a series progresses, usually to their detriment) sequels. If only the author could accept that the heavy editing required to make the first book a success was a requrisit for the future ones.

One of the few who can write decent sequels is Cherryh

Well, I've already mentioned Anne Rice in a few other threads. Books she shouldn't have written: anything after Tale of the Body Thief, and there are those who would even disagree with that. The Mayfair Witches books after the first one (I personally liked The Witching Hour, but Lasher and Taltos were so screwed up). Leave the science to actual science fiction writers!

I didn't mind Blood Canticle, mostly because it was short and put an end to the whole horrible mess.

I agree with reading_fox on the sequels to the first HItchiker-book. Also, I can possibly stand Speaker for the dead, the sequel to Ender's game, but after that it's just too much (Xenocide and Children of the Mind). I know a lot of people disagree with me, but this is how I feel.
I'm undecieded on Tehanu, the late addition to the Earthsea-trilogy - it's programmatic and rather stiff, very un-Leguin (or; very much like her earliest stuff) who's one of my favorite authors, but then there are this nice love-scene which makes me feel good every time I reread the book...

I've never seen as vitriolic a reaction as when I mentioned Tehanu to a co-worker. And others have expressed the same sentiments of absolute disgust. "Feminist bullshit" was their phrasing, I believe.

I personally never thought it was so bad, though I definitely feel it's very different from the first three books.

The love scene was nice, wasn't it? Maybe I just feel that way because I wanted it to happen.

Yes, I thought so too, and maybe thats why - I've waited for it since my first reading of The Tombs of Atuan and then the whole book builds to this wish for them to get together!

But as I said - I'm undecided. Part because in Tehanu she makes the characters come alive in a kind of everyday, and not heroic, way, and that's good. But that's the bad part as well - Ged/Sparrowhawk IS a kind of hero and in Tehanu he's down and out.
I've read somewhere that she took some fire for making a story wholly about boys/men when she as a woman ought to tell coming of age-stories about girls/women, and that the writing of Tehanu was a way to make things right. And there ARE passages when this "as a woman"-thing goes over the edge - sequences where Tenar argues with herself about the strengths of women, linking womanhood with something unique, something no man can aspire to, some kind of higher being. And as a woman... well, lets just say I shut my mind, flips some pages, and take up reading where it's OK (and not so elitist) again.

Scarlett, Alexandra Ripley's execrable follow-up to Gone With the Wind, is an abomination unto the literary gods, and she will surely suffer torments in some deep circle of hell.

The story goes that Douglas Adams only expected to do the first three books but was contractually obligated somehow for more. Apparently they basically had to lock him in a hotel room to get them in.

jmnlman
Strategist's Personal Library
http://jmnlman.blogspot.com/

Douglas Adams never really wanted to be a writer. I forget what he really wanted to be, but that didn't pan out so well, so he had to continue writing books to make money. Perhaps there was a contract involved.

But he didn't like writing the novels, and once he got the television and radio deals he began writing the television series to contradict the books and the radio show to contradict the television show AND the books, and so on and so forth. They weren't written in that order, but you get the idea.

(I believe I got this information came from the intro to The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is all five books in one large book, but I can't be sure. I'm going off memory and I won't be offended if you correct any misinformation, so feel free.)

Not really sure how much this pertains to the original topic, but I thought I'd put it out there while we were talking about Adams.

Re message 8 - Busifer, I read that story about Le Guin as well, that she used Tehanu as a way of atonement for making the initial trilogy male-centric. I think the biggest problem with the book with regard to the others is tone, as Lampbane says. Rather than being a seamless addition to the Earthsea trilogy, it just jars. This is especially the case now when the four books are published together. When considered on it's own, it still has problems though, it is very predictable, and the writing is tired. It does read like a book Le Guin is writing out of necessity, rather than compulsion. I think you could make an argument that Tehanu is just part of a general decline in the strength of LG's novels. It is puzzling that it won the Nebula prize though, was it for old time's sake?

I haven't read that. It's entirely possible. I remember him saying that somewhere that he kept having trouble fleshing out the story for the books.

Thought you were reffering to Le Guin as He for a moment there.

I wouldn't say "decline" - some of her more recent stuff (Gifts and Voices) are if not brilliant nice to read, and Changing Planes is a nice collection of stories. I also remember liking The Wind's twelve quarters, but I don't seem to rememer much of it...
But I agree if you're thinking of all these rehashes of the Earthsea universe she managed to wring out, maybe nice for the kids but not that fun for the rest of us...

(Personal favorites - most of her stories set in the hainish universe)

Tehanu is only so odd because of the gap until the fifth work The other wind came out. This puts the flair back in, and tehanu gains depth, Teahnu works very well as bridge between the old Earthsea and the new strength of the dragons! I would put Earthsea as one of the very few series that does work very well past the third book.

Additonally I'm just re-reading some of my Clancy which starts fairly well, and is just about still OK at Sum of fears but is trully terrible for debt of honor, executive orders and he really really wants adecent editor by Bear and Dragon - or at least someone who has been abroad in the last decade. Many Many books to far in this series.

16: Agreed! And what does Ryan do next? Become Pope?

I thought Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series was excellent, even addictive, in the beginning. Then after Blue Moon, the series went to hell. Anita Blake has gained so many powers, allies, and boyfriends in recent books that there is no room left for the mystery that drew me in in the first place. The author seems to have run out of story lines and is now filling the pages (more and more of them each time) with mindless drivel. Much to my chagrin, I have read each book since then, hoping upon hope for a return to the old days. Danse Macabre, the latest installment, has convinced me I am wasting my time. I will never read another book by Ms. Hamilton.

Oh I agree with you about LKH and the Anita Blake series. It was actually Blue Moon where she jumped the book/shark so to speak. She had to appease the Richard crowd, so rather than continue to write organically, she plotted it. They all started to act like pod people. It also destroyed the relationship between the 3 main characters, and she has never been able to write a decent story since.

When she started to write the Merry Gentry series, she turned Anita into Merry with a gun. But they were never the same and so we get the necro-slut and her obsession with power and control. Anita has become very nasty and selfish, and LKH has destroyed all the other female characters, and made all the men worship her. The stories now, besides non-stop boring sex, are all about Anita and her underlings. She spends almost no time with any peer or person with superior power or humanity. So sad.

Re: message 3: I haven't read this yet, but surely the sequel to Huck Finn (err.. or further sequel to Tom Sawyer) called Tom Sawyer Abroad would make the list? Has anyone read this one?

I've read it. It wasn't exactly bad, (though I wouldn't call it good, either), but it was extremely little-kiddish compared to Huck Finn.

SPOILER ALERT

Some few years ago I started and read 99% of the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. As palate cleansers between the more serious political and contemporary NF I like to read, they were perfect. The adventure in each one held my attention and made me look forward to the next one. As volume after volume came and went, as the margins grew wider and the fonts grew larger, it was apparent the writers were getting tired of the work, but I slogged ahead, determined to finish.

Finally, that golden day came when I held the last volume in my hand. Yes, there were only about 80 words to the page, and yes, the longer chapters were four pages, but now I would know the manner of Jesus' second coming and be there to feel the thrill.

Little did I know this world would end in an immense flood of blood and gore with the holy survivors racing from place to place on foot at speeds approaching that of sound to voyeuristically witness Jesus (He of the turn the other cheek) killing vast hordes of people with a sword in his mouth where his tongue had been. Page after bloody page of the most violent,
most sadistic, most revenge filled violence imaginable. I had to put it down. I couldn't finish it. Eleven and a half volumes of deepening dreck only to bail out at the end because of the total unreadability of this trash.

My heart goes out to those who feel vindicated in their belief by this unmitigated slaughter.

"Unmitigated Slaughter" would be a good band name.

I'm a Patricia Cornwel fan, but her Scarpetta series definitely jumped the bookworm at The Last Precinct and slid down the muddy hillside with Trace and Predator. I don't care for her other series' at all; however, her biography of Ruth Bell Graham is highly interesting.

geneg, you are my new best friend.

I enjoyed Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris very much when I read it years ago, but Hannibal was beyond awful. Jody Foster refused to reprise her role in the sequel--she appears to be a wise woman.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne It's the sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's also absolute dreck. Having to do with Andersonville Civil War prisoners making a hot air balloon to escape and land on this deserted island where Nemo just happened to park the Nautilus while he is waiting to die.

At least the long categorization of marine life is missing.

Disney also made a god awful follow up movie hoping to cash in on the success of the first book.

i've got to ditto the above thoughts on sequels to ender's game and gone with the wind, and just say how glad i am i never knew there was a sequel to catch-22!

a couple of trilogies which should have died after the second book (or, the third books which shouldn't have been):

kim stanley robinson's blue mars - almost enough to make me regret getting into the series to begin with

alastair reynolds' absolution gap - so far beyond "reasonable suspension of disbelief" as to be laughable

Not great literature or anything, but I think Robert Ludlum's Bourne series got significantly dumber and less plausible with each entry.

(I just want to say, I feel like such a dope, I JUST NOW got the title of this thread. In my defense, I only heard the original phrase for the first time a month or two ago ;)

These are not great literature either, but Lillian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who books are lots of fun...for the first dozen or twenty. But the most recent half-dozen-ish have been getting progressively worse.

Admittedly the first ones were written as long ago as in the mid-60s, and the author is 90+ years old...

I read the first two Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth books in 2 days. I then proceeded to buy 3, 4, and 5. By the time I finished Book 5, Soul of the Fire and realized that the series wasn't over, I put them away and haven't read a bit of them.

Really. It was just that not inspiring.

Hey, since we're talking about fantasy authors, how about the Dark Tower series by Stephen King? Once his accident happened, the series really went coo-coo. And the books got overly long. Which isn't that unusual for Stephen King, but still....

If we can go to children's fantasy, how about the Time Quartet? A Wrinkle in Time is all kinds of wonderful and amazing (I make it a point to reread it at least once a year). A Wind in the Door was pretty good and I liked the naming of the stars and mitochondria parts. Not as good as A Wrinkle in Time but still worthwhile. Many Waters took a different perspective by following Sandy and Dennys on an adventure of their own. Upon rereading it I saw that it was quite didactic and prudish in places but there still is some merit. By the time we got to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, just ick. Poorly written and I just couldn't buy how Calvin's mother could save the world from an evil dictator by having her ancestors being more loving or whatever the hell it was. It's the only book in the quartet I haven't read more than once.

#32 - I enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door. I read the others, but did not care for them at all. I have also read A Wrinkle in Time several times and frequently suggest it to my students.

I thought Many Waters came out after A Swiftly Tilting Planet, though chronologically STP is last.

But yes, agreed. The end of Swiftly Tilting Planet? Dreck.

Did anyone read the one after that? I don't know if I should bother.

I was so disappointed by Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: A Novel after Wicked I was really excited to read Gregory Maguire's next book but this was like a cheap knockoff. Wicked was all about politics and fantasy and then Confessions wasn't anything original.

I am surprised by the Blue Mars backlash, although Red Mars is the most exciting I feel like Blue Mars is one of the most original love stories I have ever read, the scope of the book is so huge and the ending completely killed me for days.

Lampbane, I think Many Waters was written after A Swiftly Tilting Planet. That was just the order I read the books in (and in my opinion, order of descending quality).

I think there might even be another book about the Murry family...one that features Meg's kid. Or am I making that one up? Either way, I really don't have any desire to read it.

NocturnalBlue -

An Acceptable Time is about Meg's daughter, Poly. That and Many Waters are the only Murry family books I like anymore, actually.

Funny! I was just trying to re-read Madeleine L'Engle for the first time since I was a teenager. I read A Wrinkle in Time and thought, "Hey, that was pretty good! Why didn't I finish the series when I was a kid?" Next was A Wind in the Door and I thought, "Ooo-kay, this has little or no relation to the first book and Meg's an amnesiac, but it's readable." Finally, half-way through A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I realized that I had good reasons not to finish the series. The whole alternate-reality, pseudo-historical tripe was just too much to stomach. L'Engle's writing isn't that spectacular either, children's author or not.

I think that Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider's of Pern series started to jump the bookworm right around Dragonsdawn and most definately after All the Weyrs of Pern when a comptuer left over from when the planet was first colonized is discovered and the people learn how to use it gaining electricity and things like that. In 2 books she took a delightful fantasy series and turned into a hookey sci-fi story. I stopped reading after All the Weyrs of Pern becuase I was too discusted with the change. I still see new books for the series every so often in the bookstore...and her son has even written some Pern novels. Most of the new novels actually go over events that happened in earlier time points of the story. They should just let the series end.

Oh, Mostly Harmless broke my heart! I love the Hitchhikers books, but you could tell in Mostly Harmless Douglas Adams just wanted to get it over with, which made the story sloppy and cruel to the characters.

Ender's Game - amazing
Speaker for the Dead - readable
the rest - what the hell universe is this anyway!
Ender's Shadow - yes, I read a few of them. Somewhat enjoyable, but truly a faint shadow the brilliant original.

I read all of the Wrinkle in Time books, but the only one I went back to and reread over and over was Many Waters. I honestly can't remember a single thing about A Wind in the Door or A Swiftly Tilting Planet, though, so maybe they qualify.

The sequel to Dairy Queen was way, way too heavy, and didn't pick up the themes that made the first one a good book.