5 Fantasy Book Series That Should've Quit While They Were Ahead

For readers, there’s almost nothing better than a series. Especially when it comes to genre fiction, like fantasy, having more than one book to fully build out a world and its characters lends to expansive, thrilling stories that keep readers engaged in ways a single book can’t. Sometimes, those series last for just a few books while others go one for lengthy runs and keep fans reading for decades.

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And then there are series that, while they may have started out strong, end up running a little too long. These are the series that, at some point, lose their way and start offering readers diminishing returns. In some cases, the stories just get so stretched out and unwieldly they no longer resonate. Whatever the case, the books lose the luster they once had, disappointing readers in the process. Here are five such series that really should have stopped while they were ahead.

5) The Wheel of Time

Spanning 15 books—14 main books and one prequel novel—The Wheel of Time series was begun by author Robert Jordan with Brandon Sanderson completing the series after Jordan’s death in 2017. The lengthy series follows a group of villagers who find themselves in a massive, world-spanning journey as they learn that one of them is a figure prophesied to either save the world or destroy it. While one can debate if the series really goes on for too long considering that Sanderson mostly succeeded at bringing the series to a solid ending, most readers feel like Jordan got well off track around book 8 in the overall series and that things should have ended there. For many readers, books 8 through 10 are slow, poorly paced, and tedious—and many readers just give up.

4) Dune

Frank Herbert’s core Dune saga consists of six novels written by the author (there is an expanded universe that was continued after Herbert’s death in 1986, but we’re not dealing with those.) But while Dune is considered one of the great stories in all of fantasy literature, as an overall series it’s one that definitely overstayed its welcome. The first book, Dune, is itself an excellent standalone novel, but an argument can be made for continuing through the second book, Dune Messiah. However, by the time you get to Children of Dune, things start to spiral into something much more convoluted and is outright bizarre by the sixth book, Chapterhouse: Dune. Just stick with the first two and you’re fine.

3) Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series started out pretty great. A supernatural noir following the titular Anita, a supernatural consultant for the police in St. Louis who also operates as a necromancer and a vampire killer, the series starts out essentially as crime novels with a supernatural twist. The series, to date, spans 30 books. However, around the tenth book in the series, Narcissus in Chains, the book shifts from its crime noir roots and became more personal with a focus more on Anita’s relationships—and taking the series more from an urban fantasy series to “spicy” erotica. For fans, the series feels like it really ends with Obsidian Butterfly (the ninth book) and the rest can be ignored.

2) The Sword of Truth

Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series is a huge 21-book series that follows a group of people on a quest to defeat their oppressors, oppressors that seek to control the world as well as unleash evil. Each of the books, save for the last three, are actually standalone novels, but they work together to create one, long sword and sorcery saga. And the first few books are truly great, with fascinating characters, intriguing themes, and engaging storytelling. Unfortunately, the longer the series goes on the more it gets caught up in the idea of the series and the storytelling declines dramatically with the books sort of collapsing into philosophical rants around ten or so books in.

1) A Song of Ice and Fire

Yes, I know we’ve been waiting forever for The Winds of Winter, but the now-15 year wait since the most recent book in George R.R. Martin’s high fantasy series isn’t the reason the saga has landed on this list.. Instead, it’s because even if we got The Winds of Winter tomorrow and A Dream of Spring next week, for a lot of fans the story should have ended with the third book, A Storm of Swords. That book actually works as a natural end for the series, with a natural climax off the War of the Five Kings and some very satisfying story resolution. If things had stalled out there, the series would have felt complete. Instead, books four and five are long, tedious, and the storylines get very convoluted and despite series characters that readers enjoy featuring in those books, they are a slog to read—especially since the elusive sixth and seventh books don’t seem to be coming anytime soon.

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