The Wingfeather Saga ending basically ruined the entire series for me. : P And it just wasn't a fabulous series. The head-hopping almost made me stop the series, and, like Ela said, the characters were.....mostly unlikeable.
SPOILERS!!!
For example, I wasn't the least bit sad when Podo died. He was really a boring character, in my opinion.
END SPOILERS!!!
And...well, a couple of you already know of my detestation for Sara Cobbler. She is the Suest Sue to ever Sue. SHE HAS LITERALLY NO FLAWS. It makes for a very boring character.
Like someone else said, I immediately guessed who the monster in the hollows was. And I also was disappointed that they didn't explore the relationships between the sets of brothers more. That's just my opinion on the series. I thought it was better...until the ending. And then I hated it so much that all the stuff I disliked before became.....worse in my mind. I know some of you really like it...and I'm not trying to insult the series, I just don't particularly like it. 🙂
What about you? Have you read any series you wish you'd abandoned sooner? Or that made you want to burn the lot when you reached the final page?
Sagan om Isfolket, Sandemo.
It turns out one of the heros, Marco, is none other than Satan. Byron style - the noble rebel who defied a narcissistic God, you know that rant.
The bad guy is some kind of Antichrist figure, the protagonists are his relatives, who have taken side against him. The scenario is pretty much like Rob Skiba's scenario for Nimrod, except that in the end there is a merely human defeat of this guy (and diabolic too).
Now, that book series is really sth which I do not recommend anyone to read.
What's with all the series lately where you've followed something for four to seven books, the stakes couldn't be higher (danger, death, world domination), only to find that ALL THE VILLAIN REALLY NEEDED WAS A HUG (No, seriously. Hug him and he'll go wibbly and lay down and conveniently die.) Without naming names, I've read two or three series with that approach recently.
There was ONE such villain in that series, but not the major one.
Some guys are like that.
I agree with Kristi about the sequels to The Imaginarium Geographicum. Book one was enjoyable, but the sequels less so until the end when the plot was so frustrating that reading was like walking uphill barefoot through stickers. I wanted so much to love this series but...
yeah, the sequels were bad.
I loved the Wingfeather Saga, but I can appreciate that others didn't. It's all cool.
I've had series that I wish I abandoned, but more for my mental state then for poor quality of the writing. Though his tendancy to kill off characters who were not major players (or in this case of this one book everyone one except the two protagonists) did annoy me.
You gonna tell us which series? Or would that be too spoilery?
Warning: Due to the sometimes dark nature of later books, young should be advised to avoid the Shannarah series of books, and sensitive readers this review.
*returns about three to four years late to answer question*
Kristi, I think I was referring to Terry Brooks Shannarah series. (Not TLC or Lil recommend.) Although a friend of mine is very certain they are terrible writing, I'm not critic of good taste so I couldn't say. I liked the first one when I read it was a kid "The Sword of Shannarah." Then I found Lord of the Rings and realized how very plagiarism-y the Shannarah seemed. #genericfantasywriting.
The series and the following one "The heritage of Shannarah" had some parts that I really liked and characters too and interesting ideas, but they got a whole lot darker over the series. Sword" is in my opinion the best and lightest of them which features an evil overlord baddie overcome by truth. (The author tries to follow a family line, but sometimes jumps many years ahead so you don't really find out what happened to the other people other books.) It also has demons, I think featured in the second book I think, progressing to the last book in the heritage of Shannarah (at least that I read) into a sort of evil demonic zombie like force that takes people over. (There's no god that I remember being mentioned, unless it's in 'Sword' and the demons are defeated by magic. I didn't at all appreciate the making of something spiritual into a fantasy element.)
I appreciate the chance to have gained ideas from his universe (however generic) and to meet (to me) interesting characters, but the forces the characters often fight is pretty dark sometimes. I can't think that I'd ever re-read this series.
I still haven't finished Wingfeather but the first books were more deeply to my mileage than seems average for this crowd, so I do intend to eventually give it a shot.
One that I remember being deeply disappointed in was Donita K. Paul's Dragonkeeper Chronicles. It had a few fun ideas and a lot of cute characters and memorable imagery initially, but as it went on there were a couple of twists which seemed very anticlamactic to me, a very rushed finish, and um... there was a character who had been a child who turned out to have been child-regressed by magic, and suddenly falls in love with her adoptive guardian upon being re-adulted, which felt super skeevy to me.
No idea what they did with it or how they reversed the ending but it can't be much worse than what they originally did.
I have an update on this: A couple years later when I was back in Oxford I got to see some of the new eps. What they did was fairly clever. Inspector Lewis stayed retired with his Sergent taking over as DI and a new Seargent -but he was still involved in the cases.
I only read the first Wingfearher Book - given to me by a friend. Would like to finish it one day but haven't gotten around to it
On DragonKeeper: I had a similar experience. It's been a long time since I read them, but definitely the earlier ones were the best. I found book 2 (or 3?) first, so read them out of order and actually preferred it when it was from Bardon's (?) POV. He was a really relatable character for me at that age (I was in undergrad). Parts of the story I found really compelling and I threw myself into, but I don't know if I'd feel the same now.
What I most distinctly remember was being disappointed in the characterisation of the Christ-figure in the series. In the earlier books, he seemed to be very definitely a manifestation of Christ (God-incarnate) in that world (like Aslan in Narnia) but in later ones he seems to have flaws or faults so maybe a mortal "Messiah-type" (like Aragorn or Gandalf in Rings) but not divine. I found that shift disconcerting though maybe if I read him as more of an Aragorn from the start, it wouldn't be so bad. A much younger friend borrowed my copies some time ago (she's now the age I was when I read them) and she read some of them last year with mixed reviews. I don't think she finished them.
Once a daughter of Eve. Now a daughter of the Second Adam.
(@ajnos) Ah right, the Paladin conundrum. I remember being a little confused at the shift although not as frustrated as you, I just wondered if I had missed any clues to his characterization earlier on? And I remember there was a sequel series that I don't know how far it got, lost interest promptly after the first book, which revealed that Paladin is a title not an individual name and different ones get called for different... worlds? regions? To be the local guardian/shepherd of the population. Which would have been a potentially interesting bit of worldbuilding if she'd bothered to reveal it (or perhaps to make it) within the span of however many books she had set up originally!
Definitely finish Wingfeather. And don't forget to watch the series! Your mileage may vary on whether you like the way he wraps things up, but I thought the ride well worth it in any case. Also the music is beautiful, even though we only have two songs thus far. (Proud to have backed "My Love Has Gone Across the Sea ages ago during his Kickstarter for book 3...do we have a full recording of Jodi Benson singing that yet?)
I will move "finish Wingfeather" up my priority list... I have a deep stack of books but I can probably find a place to slot my next one back in soon.
