Hits and Misses in Fiction

For truly prolific authors (such as the example of Agatha Christie that someone mentioned on the other thread), I suspect it would be pretty hard to produce books where any reader loved ALL of them...but there are a couple of authors who are my go-to writers (Donna Freitas, for instance), where (to date) I've truly loved everything they've put out. (Robison Wells is also like this -- though his strength is in the exciting plots and intriguing world building.)

I also liked everything Brigid Kemmerer wrote (in her Elementals series), but her latest wasn't nearly as good (too many plot holes for my taste). However, when something like that happens, I tend to give the author one more chance, as the pattern up to that point was a positive one. :)

Others like that would include Tamora Pierce (I love most of her YA books -- only the Trickster books didn't please me as much as the others), OSC (though I mostly just love Ender, as a character, and thus all the Ender books -- the Bean ones were okay, but I doubt I'll reread them), Linda Howard (though she's much more hit and miss -- the ones I love I really love; the ones I don't I really hate), Joelle Charbonneau (loved The Testing trilogy, but Need wasn't nearly as good for me), Miranda Kinneally (though I've liked all her books -- but there are a few I *loved*), etc.

On the other hand, there are authors that I want to like but I just can't...I won't name them here (because I don't like to spotlight my own negative opinions), but I can think of two best-selling authors (at one time or another) whose characters are so selfish and whiny that I can't read any of their books, even though I've tried a couple of times. In those cases, I tend to think that the authors themselves must either have tunnel vision (ie, aren't very perceptive) or believe that all teens are self-centered beasts. ;)

And one other type exists for me -- authors whose books I loved until I met them...there are two of these, as well. One I met IRL (briefly) but had interactions with on a forum, and the other was one I'd exchanged manuscripts and personal emails with (and then had interactions on a forum). Both are good writers, and both had books that I liked very much...and then I saw their own bad behavior (on forums) and how they treated other writers. Now I won't read either of their books (not that they know this -- or care!) because I can't get that bad behavior out of my head as I read. *sigh*

And one other type exists for me -- authors whose books I loved until I met them...
Yeah, it's very sad when that happens.
The opposite can happen too, though; you can meet (say, at conventions) authors who have been fabulous people and you respect them a lot... and it can be hit or miss as to whether you can get into their books.

I have two:

(1) I loved (-loved-loved) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the first Heinlein book I ever read. Seriously, I found it un-put-down-able. But either I was very politically naive on that inaugural reading or I was distracted by the quality of Heinlein's plotting and prose, because I pretty much missed the whole libertarian aspect of the story. (I know, right?) Maybe the sex aspect served as a red herring -- I somehow thought *it* was the thing I was reading around.

Anyway, in the first flush of fan-hood, I tried lots more Heinlein -- went through quite a phase, in fact -- but nothing else ever appealed to me like TMIAHM. Then one day the penny dropped, and I wondered how I could have ignored for so long the unsubtle (and repugnant to me) political view underlying of all his books. Once I saw it, I could barely finish the book I was in the middle of, and that was that.

Some years later, one of my sons read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for HS English. I read it again with him, and what do you know: I still saw what I'd seen in the book 20 years before. So for me, I guess, that was RAH's one great book -- so well-crafted in every other respect that it smothered its own unsavory (to me) subtext.

(2) Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series. Loved the first one, really liked the second, liked the third, and then about ten pages into the fourth, found that I'd completely gone off the premise (way older man marries young girl to whom he'd acted as a father-figure while she was still a child). Could not touch the series for a decade after that. Have gone back lately and sampled some of the later entries. There is enjoyment to be had, but not if I think very hard about that premise.

What changed, I wonder? Did the quality of the stories go down, so that I wasn't able to be distracted from the ick-factor (to me, to me -- I know that others' mileage will vary)? Did I just find Mary harder to identify with after the marriage, or Holmes harder to see as Holmes once it got romantic? Maybe *I* changed.

I'd agree with you about Heinlein, except that I'd add another to the list of loved Heinlein: Citizen of the Galaxy. And maybe The Door Into Summer, but mainly for the cat.
And it's not so much the politics, but the sheer weirdness of his later work... the one that was the tipping point for that, I think, was "Stranger In A Strange Land", which I both loved and hated.

Is this at all related to singer-songwriters that one wishes would just write and not sing? Bob Dylan, I'm looking at you.

Oh yes.
And Leonard Cohen too.

Emma Bull, mainly because she never writes the same book twice.

For me, it's often because the author's interests change, as do mine. They want to (or have to, if publishers don't want to publish their other stuff) write about different things that I don't necessarily read about. I used to do that thing where I read all of authors' works, but now I make sure to read the summaries first, to decide if they're really for me. While it can be true that a great writer can make even an uninteresting topic seem interesting, this is...rare for me.

I enjoyed Dan Wells's THE HOLLOW CITY, but tried the first books of two of his series and they didn't work for me, so I DNFd early.

My tastes have changed over the years. When I first read adult books, they were chick lit. Then moved to crime. Then moved to urban fantasy. Now onto futuristics. And authors have changed genres, too. Such as I usually enjoy Kelley Armstrong's books, but have zero interest in her Age of Legends trilogy, because high/epic/traditional fantasy doesn't interest me at all.

Hmm. Most of the examples I'm thinking of are more genre-based. Like Georgette Heyer. Her historical-based romances are generally brilliant; they're really good stories based in really solid research to get the setting and language and situation spot-on. But both her mysteries and her more straightforward historical stories leave me pretty uninterested. The characters are good, but somehow I don't usually care about them. The plots aren't interesting enough to me, for whatever reason. Overall, they lack the piquancy and sparkle that all but the romances enjoy.

The other examples are certain SF/F authors, C. J. Cherryh and Ryk Spoor. Both authors have written in science fiction as well as fantasy and blends thereof; I love the more fantasy-ish ones, like the Morgaine books by Cherryh. But her extensive hard SF work I have never been able to get into. I don't care for hard SF at all. She's a brilliant plotter and creates very complex characters; I simply don't care for the genre.

I think the strongest example of this for me is one you mentioned--I adore THE LAST UNICORN to the point that I'd put it in my top ten books of all time, but the other books by Beagle I've read I've felt nothing more than okay about.

There is also the case of Meredith Ann Pierce's Firebringer trilogy, which I loved the first book of and was so frustrated the other two books were OOP... and then they were re-released and the second book left me so horrified I couldn't even bring myself to read the third (even though I'd already bought it). :P I don't know how those feelings extend to the rest of her work, though, as I think I've only read one other of her books.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned J.K. Rowling. I started A Casual Vacancy knowing that it wasn't Harry Potter, knowing that it was an "adult" novel, but I thought that I would still like it.

I had to put it down about a third of the way through. It was just too grim and drear. I'm afraid to give her Robert Galbraith mysteries a try. I'd rather keep my love of the HP series untainted.

Not so much an author, as a series.

I really like Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. Well-realised futuristic world, with an interesting culture. It's a science fiction murder mystery - and does both well. It also has good themes - things like artificial intelligence, what does it mean to be human, justice & mercy. I've read it many, many times - one of my favourite books.

The second in the series, The Naked Sun, is OK. The world just doesn't appeal to me so much, but that's a personal preference. I felt that some of the things set up in the first book were dismissed too easily in the second (such as the extreme agoraphobia of the earth dwellers). I can remember the ingenious murder method, but not who or why. A couple of scenes have stuck in my head, but in general I didn't find it so memorable, and can't remember what the themes were.

As far as I can see, from forcing myself to finish it a couple of times (thinking surely it isn't as bad as I remember), the theme of the final book in the series, Robots of Dawn, is basically sex, incest, sex, adultery, sex, toilets. It's like having started the series on the top of a mountain, the only way was down.