Books which went on for too long?
 

What series for you started out epic, but then killed itself off by just dragging on for too many books.

I have a general rule of thumb that a series which goes over 3 books is often doomed to be average because by the fourth book the reader is too use to the characters and too comfortable with the world he is in, meaning things become very stilled and safe. Now I know there are exceptions, my favourite series is malazan book of the fallen which lasted for ten massive books, but these books are normally rule breakers, IE Malazan had no main character.

So which books went on too long for you?

I found the northern lights a pretty tedious read personally V:

My highlight of reading it was that I had a nosebleed over the subtle knife and the blood on the book seemed appropriate for the title.

It would have been nice somewhat shorter but yeah went on for too long imo

Anne Mccaffrey's books, and the Redwall series

@Grim:Really? I found those books to be epic and in no way too long or convoluted. Interesting. o0

@Kudos: I have never read her books so I cannot say, but have to agree on the Redwall series. Those were wonderful fiction books for youth kids, but by the end it did feel too much of same old, same old. I think maybe the problem was that though his books did not get worse par-say, they were very formulaic and so once you had read one, you had read them all. Ironically my was Rakkety Tam just because the wolverine was a legend.

This! I loved Redwall for a long time, but they were all very similar. My favorites were the ones that broke the mold.

My feelings towards the series is the same; I think that is why I loved the Highlander, and I also loved Legends of Luke. In both of these stories he broke his rule that all non-vermin are saintly and that they must be immortal on the battlefield. (It got a little tiresome knowing that the good guys simply could not lose, haha, which I think is what many series which go on for a long time suffer from, they become predictable; in Harry Potter, JK to her credit in the fifth book decided to kill off a good guy to mix things up, but she made the mistake of saying this was going to happen and so by god, it was obvious that old Black was going to be the one off'ed, he was the only good guy who could die at this point without leaving the story in limbo. I think this also why she went kill crazy at the end. lol

I couldn't make it past book 8 in Wheel of Time, Perrin was just far too angsty for me. Since the last book is coming out this month, I think I might have to give it a go again though.

A Series of Unfortunate Events, that isn't to say I disliked it towards the end but that it could have included so much more in the time it stretched itself out to have. Plus I felt that the twelfth book had a much more fitting setting to end the series than the thirteenth.

The tales of this mortal realm all continue past necessity, much like the mortal world that spawned them. But the end shall come soon... Soon...