[JohnH]

I don't really want this to become another bitter rant against each pet-peeve author.

However. I was wondering who else has read a fantastic first novel (fantasy of course) only to read the next work by that author and find it to be utter dreck. Or just a huge drop in quality?

Goodkind is the most obvious for me. Simplistic and a bit coarse, at the time that I read it Wizard's First Rule seemed to hold quite a bit of promise. Then I went on. Yuck does not describe my feeling enough for Goodkind's subsequent works. What is more those idiosyncrocies (that really does not look right but I am too lazy to get out my dictionary)that I was able to forgive (yet still hope would go away)in the first book became incredibly irritating in an attempt to re-read the first book to see if I was delusional in my intitial take. Like Eddings and Brooks, whose work was entertaining at the time, Goodkind's first book was not bad, but really was not as good as I thought the first time. It was all relative to what I had to compare it to and what I had to read at the time.

Nevertheless, Goodkind's second book was a huge stumbling block.

Jane Routley was another whose second book was a bit of a stumble. Nowhere near as bad as Goodkind's. Her second book still was quite good. But the second book lacked the charm that the first book had. It was not quite as engrossing. Enough so that I wondered if I would continue with her work if the trend continued. Certainly had her third book had declined from the second book's quality, as the second did from the first, I would not be looking forward to her next book.

[Rob B]

JohnH

Good topic. Though we rant against authors in other topics and often this is a good topic too.

For me one author that sticks out in this area is James Stoddard.

I absolutely loved his debut novel The High House - a wonderful novel that paid an homage to writers before him, but also was a fascinating original work in and of itself.

On that, I picked up the follow-up The False House. Don't get me wrong, False House was a better than average book, but Stoddard set the bar VERY high with his Debut novel.

[JohnH]

I had totally forgotten about Stoddard. I agree completely. Almost like it two books by two very different authors.

[Bardos]

Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy. I liked the fist book, but not the other two.

[Eventine]

Sort of agree with Bardos, but I felt Liveship Traders was a let down after Farseer. The rep she gave herself as an author capable of writing something off the mainstream took a massive blow after Liveship Traders IMHO.

[Qin]

Anything by Anne Rice following the conclusion of the original Vampire Chronicles story-arc (i.e.: Interview, Lestate, QotD) was complete and utter crap. I've tried reading her other works since then; The Mayfair Witches, Memnoch, Violin, etc. All of it was absolutely atrocious and painful to read.

She needs to remove the endless homeoerotic descriptions and get to making an actual point.

[SusF]

The only Rice books I liked are Interview, Lestat, and The Mummy. Rest was very dull.

I did read Pandora. Pandora's life was interesting until she turned into a vampire, then it got tedious.

I didn't like Queen of the Damned because the "twins" just appeared out of nowhere in the last book. Way too contrived and convenient.

The Mummy was the best, though. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/smile.gif

Susan

[Ballinda]

Anne Rice? Loved Lestat, Queen of the Damned, the Bodysnatcher? <-- can't remember the exact title. I found Interview mediocre, and I couldn't even get through Memnoch or any of the others. Lestat just lost his charm over a while.

[Pathir]

I read 'The Song of Albion'-trilogy by Stephen Lawhead and thought it was magnificent. But then I picked up one of his other series, The Hall of the Dragonking' or something like that, and found it disturbingly boring. Couldn't get into it at all.
Strange...

[Shehzad]

I feel Feist had that problem too...