Writers That You Started Out liking and you End Up Hating.

[BAYLOR]

Which writers and why ?

 

[Droflet]

David Weber. Starts out good then becomes goes over the same tired material. Blah, blah, blah, space battle, out. Started back with Mutineer's Moon. First book in the trilogy, great, second okay, third, see above.

 

[Vince W]

Agree on the Weber front. I really enjoyed HH in the beginning, but by the end of the series it get very Tom Clancy with all the weapon descriptions and such. Then there's Tom Clancy...

 

[Spade]

Patricia Cornwell. Her mysteries just started being copy and paste situations with annoying characters.

Ben Bova. Just politics after politics after annoying characters and more copy and paste situations on planets. He hasn't written anything worth glancing at since Jupiter, which I read as a teen - so even that might not be good.

 

[Parson]

Frank Hebert ..... Dune an absolute wonder and from there the books rapidly degenerate. I'm not sure I really enjoyed one after Dune Messiah.

 

[Toby Frost]

To be honest, I thought that God Emperor of Dune was a noticeable step down. I think Herbert made the mistake of destroying the interesting power structure of the empire and replacing most of the better characters with drab fanatical Fremen. It's hard to write a good sequel in a gutted setting.

To be honest, I felt that Asimov went downhill when he started writing the last few Foundation books. The cold 1950s style of the earlier books left a lot to be desired, in my opinion, but some of the later stuff was bloated and weak. And the less said about some of Arthur C Clarke's collaborations with Gentry Lee, the better.

 

[biodroid]

Raymond E Feist - The Riftwar trilogy, they seem to be only about Jimmy the Hand, I just couldn't be bothered by reading the rest of them.

Brent Weeks - The Night Angel trilogy, I got fed up with the main characters whining and moping that no one loves him and people urinating on bread and feeding it to prisoners. It was bleak.

 

[nixie]

David Eddings and Robin Hobb, to be fair and don't hate Hobb but after awhile I find her characters depressing.

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I should add that it's not a case of "hating" those writers, just regarding their later work as weak.

 

[Venusian Broon]

To be honest, I felt that Asimov went downhill when he started writing the last few Foundation books. The cold 1950s style of the earlier books left a lot to be desired, in my opinion, but some of the later stuff was bloated and weak.

Totally agree. I think part of the problem was that he got it in his mind to connect every single fiction he'd written into an 'Isaac Asimov universe'. So a rather than go into interesting ideas, he was writing 'bridging pieces' to connect everything up.

 

[Luiglin]

George RR Martin. I love long stories with many plot threads but later books in the Song of Fire and Ice had too many that just weren't needed and some that were excruciatingly dragged out. It was getting to be a chore to read them. I just wanted to scream ... 'Get to the bloody point'.

 

[Venusian Broon]

George RR Martin. I love long stories with many plot threads but later books in the Song of Fire and Ice had too many that just weren't needed and some that were excruciatingly dragged out. It was getting to be a chore to read them. I just wanted to scream ... 'Get to the bloody point'.

His quality of writing is good, so I was able to get through all that has been published quickly...

...but, yes he meanders more than meandering Jack McMeander, the winner of this year's meandering competition.

 

[Toby Frost]

Totally agree. I think part of the problem was that he got it in his mind to connect every single fiction he'd written into an 'Isaac Asimov universe'

This explains why I am very wary of Stephen King's Dark Tower books. The "single continuity" thing seemed to become quite fashionable a few years ago. It also explains why I'm highly suspicious when people like George Lucas bring out sequels years after the original stories and claim that they'd had everything planned that way from the start.

 

[Vladd67]

You say that though, and even though he denied it for ages I can remember when Star Wars came out Lucas being quoted as saying that Star Wars was the start of middle of the story, it’s just that he liked those characters best.

 

[Parson]

You say that though, and even though he denied it for ages I can remember when Star Wars came out Lucas being quoted as saying that Star Wars was the start of middle of the story, it’s just that he liked those characters best.

I had heard and if I remember correctly it was supposed to be a quote from Lucas, that "Star Wars" (not ever "A New Hope") was filmed first because Lucas felt that it was the most salable story and went there first to get his foot solidly in the high end movie door.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Terry Goodkind

 

[Talysia]

I wouldn't say hated, but I struggled with Raymond E Feist's later books, to the point that I still haven't finished the series. I loved the first half of the saga, but I just couldn't get in to the second half. I felt at the time that each generation of new characters seemed like copy/pastes of their predecessors, maybe with a few twists.

I haven't read them in a long time, though, so maybe my feelings will have changed.

 

[Inari Writer]

I wouldn't say I hate Terry Goodkind.

But I loved the Sword of Truth series for a long time.

Then I read the book where the series' main character 'breaks communism', (admittedly a weird religious version of communism), with good old fashioned hard work and gumption.

And the other book where the main character ultimately decides to return the kingdom of pacifists to their magically enforced isolation. Because pacifism is 'too dangerous' to be allowed to spread.

So yeah; I don't think that Mr Goodkind and I have quite the same view of the world.

Great imagination though. And I still hold to his statement that people believe things because they want to believe them or because they're afraid that they're true.

 

[Vince W]

I struggled through Goodkind's Sword of Truth. Then promptly dropped it into the nearest bin I could find. Best place for it really.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I wouldn't go as far as hate, but certainly there are some big authors that I read loads, then it all got 'meh' as everything seemed to become samey and well-trodden.

So an authors like Stephen King, I read voraciously as a 11-14 year old, (King is YA right? Well, it was YA for me in the 1980's), but got tired of him after a good 8-10 of his bricks. But still got a soft spot for him, I suppose.

And Terry Pratchett. I think I've read the first 12 discworld, then I just drifted away. Needed something new to fuel the creativity.

Turning to SF, I think Iain M. Banks is great...but all his SF is essentially 'Culture', even the non-culture SF has the same feel, except perhaps for Feersum Enjinn. So I kinda lost interest after Excession. I've returned and filled in the blanks more-or-less and although I enjoyed them (well, one left) they just don't have the same impact on me like the first three Culture books.