30 Days of Book Talk discussion

Many book series decline in quality as they go. What is a series that maintains its quality, or even improves as it goes?

I'm not a big series reader, and tend not to be interested in repetitive books that do the same things as the ones before them. I've enjoyed a number of trilogies, but series longer than that maintaining quality without becoming repetitive are very rare in my experience. I do think Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet does an excellent job of this, for something longer than a trilogy (if only barely!).

The only series that never went downhill in my eyes was The Twelve Houses series by Sharon Shinn. All 5 books were great.

There has been one other long series I read and that was The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, but for me it went downhill as of book 7-8, even though I read all books in the series.

Nowadays I just don't have the patience for overlong, new series with too many installments. Either I just loose interest if I have too wait for too long in between publications or if I learn that something goes beyond a trilogy/tetralogy, I won't go into it at all.

I abandoned The song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin after book 2 and The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas after book 4.

Oof, Wheel of Time went downhill so badly.

I actually still like the Song of Ice and Fire series, although it's true books 4 and 5 haven't quite kept up the momentum of books 1-3. Of course the 10 year wait between books puts a serious damper on enjoying it.... so by "still like it" I suppose I mean "back in 2011 the last time a book came out, I still liked it."

The only series I ever stuck with was The Cat Who... series by Lillian Jackson Braun. Not great literature to begin with, still many of the books were fun and charming. But the series definitely varied in quality throughout and, in my opinion, became unreadable towards the later end.

Harry Potter and the Dark Tower series of Stephen King are the ones that kept me captivated all through their 7 books.

Katherine Kerr.

I thought about Harry Potter, because I definitely enjoyed it throughout. I do think it becomes a bit bloated starting with book 4 though. Prisoner of Azkaban was the highlight of the series for me, as much fun as I had with all of them.

In the science fiction realm, I'm way into The Expanse through eight books with a final ninth coming along soon-ish. The first book is Leviathan Wakes and the plot begins in a medium future where humans have spread to Mars and the Belt and then an ancient alien technology is found and sets things in motion.

Common thread of Daniel Abraham (one half of James S.A. Corey) in another pick that comes to mind - a fairly traditional epic fantasy called The Dagger and the Coin, which begins with a book called The Dragon's Path. Just a great villain in this series and I enjoy its take on some fantasy tropes that feel refreshing without seeming like they're trying too hard to subvert expectations. This was five books and then it was over.

I have been trying to avoid long series over the last several years, perhaps because the ones I had gotten invested in either took forever for new books to finish off or are still taking forever for the next book. GRRM, Rothfuss, I'm STILL looking at you.

I'll ditto Expanse and Daniel Abraham, especially The Long Price Quartet. It's slower and more character-driven than most fantasy series where you follow a few characters over 60 years. And it's magic system is quite unique where an "andat" is a kind of spirit, an idea or a concept given form. The first book is good, just a little hard to get into. Then each book gets better with three and four being fantastic. One of my all-time favorite fantasy series.

I've mentioned both the Winternight and Xenowealth books in other threads and both of them quite consistent as well.

A Song of Ice and Fire is still one of my favorite series, but I have to admit that the quality and pace has dipped a little.

The last one I want to mention is the Tales of the Ketty Jay by Chris Wooding. This is an airpunk fantasy series. It has a lot of similarities with the Firefly TV show if you've ever watched that, but set on a world with airships. The first book comes roaring out of the gate and doesn't stop for four books.

Aside from Harry Potter, I would say one that has stayed consistently very good-to-excellent is C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake novels.

One that dipped but recovered is Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels.

And if we're talking "fell horribly" - I've never read Wheel of Time, so my vote has to be for Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels.