The T5W topic for this week was actually books you wish had sequels, but since I rarely wish for that… I’m twisting it. So, on Sci-Fi & Scary it’ll be “Should Have Been Stand-Alone Books” . These sequels ruined the series for me. Oh,Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme created by Lainey from Gingerreadslainey & now moderated by Sam from Thoughts On Tomes.
Should Have Been Stand-Alone Books
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (The Ender Quintet). As much as I love the first book, I’m just not a huge fan of the rest of the series. I just wasn’t interested in Ender’s journey of redemption. I mean, he was a great used and abused kiddo that came through to kick some serious buggy butt. Let it rest there!
- Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. This series is probably partly responsible for my disenchantment with Koontz. The first book was amazing. The second book was great. The third book was… well, you get the point. If he’d have left it at the end of the first book, Odd would have been a memorable character imprinted favorably on my memory. Instead, he was that character that could have been cool, but that Koontz fiddled with too much.
- Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (Rama). GAH! The first book was wonderful! The spaceship, the discovery, all of it…fantastic. The sense of mystery still at the end. Annnnnnnnnnnnd…then he screwed the pooch with Rama II. Boy, did he ever. I couldn’t even finish it, it was so bad.
- Cinder by Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles). The first book was brainless fun. I loved the Cyborg aspect, the robot companion, the mystery…everything. And then there was Scarlet….and Cress…and I’m only going to read the last book in this series if someone pays me to do it. I fee like she just stretched too far trying to make this a series when she should have left it with that one initial good idea and then moved on to something else.
- 14 by Peter Clines. Okay, technically 14 doesn’t have a sequel. It has a ‘side-quel’. Still. 14 was great once I got into it. The Fold left me with a burning desire to smack some ego outta the main character.
What about you
LMAO! I thought the same thing! I was like SELDOM have I read a book and thought – gee we should ready get another 465 pages of this. The Lunar Chronicles was one that would’ve worked better as a trilogy and I don’t think we needed the last Princess, there was not enough time to develop her and I do think Meyer stretched herself too thin. The best book of the bunch I think was Fairest which was the shortest – hah!
Yeah. I feel like sequels are cash grabs a lot, and that ruins the quality because they weren’t really *meant* to be.
“Dune” really wasn’t designed for a sequel, so I’ve never read any of them.
“Foundation’s Edge” changed the whole interpretation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, in part to unify with his robot books. At the time I hated it. Now I’m more just iffy about it.
Charlaine Harris I think should have stopped with the Sookie Stackhouse books somewhere around volume 4. “Were-panthers?” No; she’s just reaching to keep the series going.
I’ve been reading Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series, and personally think she’s making the same mistake Asimov made with “Foundation’s Edge”: trying to pull her works together in the fifth book of the series. It shifted the focus from the cryptids to magic, which isn’t what I was reading the series for.
Hm, I was recently eyeballing McGuire’s Incryptid series. I’ve only ever read her as Mira Grant.
I really need to read my Asimov books! I’ve got a couple laying around the house that I’ve just never delved into yet!
Of the Incryptid books, like the Star Trek movies, I’ve liked the even numbered ones better. “Midnight Blue-Light Special” contains four chapters from the perspective of an intelligent cryptid. And “Pocket Apocalypse” has Alex Price acting as the scientist he is supposed to be, as opposed to a weak version of his sister in the previous book.