Top Ten Tuesday #434

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week since I last did one of these. As I mentioned in my last post, this past week was a slightly quieter one for me, which was much needed because I have a fairly busy week coming up again this week. I had my Theatre Roulette show last Tuesday, which as I mentioned in my last post was Oklahoma, and it was an…..interesting experience. I’d heard enough about the show to realise that it was kind of like marmite, and I think I fell somewhat in the middle of the people who loved and hated it? I didn’t hate it, the cast was fantastic, I didn’t get to see Sam Palladio but his understudy, George Maddison was terrific and had a really lovely voice, and the rest of the cast were also superb (particular shout out to Paige Peddie who stole the show for me as Ado Annie!) and the songs were enjoyable.

However the staging was kind of dull, the lighting choices were really distracting (they have the lights up for most of the performance except for some extended blackout sections) and the story itself was just kind of dull and confusing. It also suffered from a similar problem as Cabaret with the songs being really poorly distributed between the first and second acts, so the first act was a lot longer and had a lot more songs than the second: now granted, the second act is usually shorter in most shows, but it’s usually much more balanced in terms of songs and tends to only be about a 5-10 minute difference. It was also just VERY LONG: it’s almost a 3 hour show, and whilst granted, I have been to shows that are of a similar length (Hamilton, Wicked, Cabaret, all almost three hours), they didn’t FEEL as long as they actually were so when I got out, I didn’t feel like I’d been in there for three hours whereas Oklahoma really, really did. All in all not the best show I’ve seen this year, but hey, you can’t love them all and I still thought the cast was good and it was nice to visit a theatre I hadn’t been to before. I will definitely do Theatre Roulette again because it was such a bargain to get a seat that good for £25, but hopefully next time I’ll get a better show!

This week I have a few things on: I’m going to Samantha Shannon’s London event for the new 10th anniversary revised edition of The Bone Season tonight, which I’m really looking forward to, I always have fun at her events and I can’t wait to see the gorgeous new redesigned hardback in the flesh-I got into The Bone Season quite late so the hardbacks for The Bone Season and The Mime Order were already out of print at that point, so it’s nice I’ll actually now have a hardback Bone Season for my collection. Then on Friday, I’m going to see Guys and Dolls at the Bridge Theatre with my family, which I’m massively excited for as I’ve heard such good things. We’re not standing as none of us really want to stand for an almost three hour show, but hopefully it will still be great even without that aspect. Then on Saturday, I’ll be unexpectedly back at Operation Mincemeat again as I won the lottery this week! I wasn’t expecting to be back again so soon (I have tickets booked for later on in the year) but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of £25 tickets for my favourite show, especially when Saturday tickets are usually a LOT more expensive. Plus I never win the lottery for anything, so I’m celebrating finally actually having some success in a ticket lottery!

This is once again running the risk of turning into a theatre blog, and I do not have the time to start another blog at this point, so let’s get back to the topic at hand! It’s Tuesday, so I have another Top Ten Tuesday for you all, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s TTT was meant to be a genre freebie, but we had one of those at the beginning of the year and I’ve already done lists of my recommendations for my favourite genres (historical fiction and fantasy) which haven’t really changed much, so instead, I’m going to be talking about Series I’m Not Interested In Finishing, inspired by a post a couple of weeks back from Lindsey @ Lindsey Reads. I knew I had quite a few of these but it turns out I had even more than I thought I did, so you guys are getting a DOUBLE LIST today. These are series where I read the first book (or in some cases the second as well) and either didn’t like it, or found it just okay and have lost interest in reading the rest of the series. Here we go:

1. Legacy of Orisha Trilogy-Tomi Adeyemi

I loved the first book in this series, it was one of my favourite books of 2018, so naturally I was super excited for the sequel. Then I read the sequel in 2020, and it really disappointed me, it suffered hugely from middle book syndrome, the plot was confused and basically going round in circles and the characters all took a big backslide in their development. Initially I did think I would read the third book, because I do hate to leave series unfinished when I only have one book left to go, and a lot of trilogies do have a dip in the middle so it would be unfair to judge it too harshly on that. However it’s now three years later and there is no sign at all of this book, and my interest has just completely dropped off. Not Tomi Adeyemi’s fault, life happens and if the book takes this long, it takes this long but my interest was already waning after the second book and the long wait for the third has just sealed that I probably won’t be finishing this series.

2. An Ember In The Ashes Series-Sabaa Tahir

I read the first book in this series back in 2019, I think, and when I did my review of it, I said I thought I would still read the sequel, however four years later, I think it’s safe to admit that I won’t. I didn’t love the characters & I found the world-building kind of thin which are both pretty big deal breakers to me in terms of fantasy. I know a lot of people love this series, but there are so many other books out there to read that I don’t really want to be wasting my time on three more books when I found the first one only okay.

3. The Winternight Trilogy-Katherine Arden

This was a very simple one for me: I didn’t like The Bear and The Nightingale, so I’ve got no interest in reading the sequels. It was so slow and confusing with a barely discernible plot and flat characters who I could barely distinguish from each other. I know a lot of people like this series and that’s great but I just don’t have the patience for two more books that are more vibes than plot.

4. Red Queen Series-Victoria Aveyard

I enjoyed the first book in this series well enough, was it kind of cliche in terms of being a YA fantasy that reads like every other big YA fantasy of the last few years? Sure. But it was fun enough that I wanted to read onto the sequel. And then I read the sequel. And it was such a trudge to get through, it was so boring, there was barely any plot, the characters were hardly developed at all and the main character annoyed me to no end. It was a very easy decision to drop the series after the terrible time I had reading the second book.

5. This Poison Heart Duology-Kalynn Bayron

I didn’t hate This Poison Heart but it honestly felt like it should have been a standalone book that was extended into a duology by shoehorning in a plot twist at the last minute, which is never something I love. I also didn’t really love any of the characters enough to be willing to sit through another 200 pages of build-up before anything exciting happened to them for another book. It’s a shame because this book had a cool concept, but there just wasn’t enough there for me to pull me into reading a second book.

6. Charlotte Holmes Series-Brittany Cavallaro

When I finished A Study In Charlotte, I actually thought that I might read the sequel, as despite my bug bears with the first book, I did enjoy the mystery, which is really the most important thing when you’re dealing with a Sherlock Holmes retelling. However, I’ve not found myself pulled to go back to these characters in the six years since I first read the book and I think the fact that I found them kind of thin on the ground anyway and I’ve just not felt that pull to want to return to their world means that finishing this series is likely not on the cards for me.

7. Graceling Realm Series-Kristin Cashore

Another fairly easy one for me. I hated Katsa, I found the world building in this book to be extremely lacking and I wasn’t a fan of Kristin Cashore’s writing style. As harsh as it may sound, there was really nothing in this book that made me want to come back for more of the author’s work.

8. The Invisible Library Series-Genevieve Cogman

This one was just so confusing! Genevieve Cogman tried to throw in basically every supernatural creature that you could possibly have in a fantasy novel and every idea that you could possibly fit in but none of them were developed or utilised well. It was a shame because it was such a cool concept for a book: librarians as spies who retrieve books from alternate realities but it almost seemed as if she overthought it and we ended up with this jumbled mess. Safe to say given I was that confused reading the first book, the rest were never on the cards.

9. Alex and Eliza Trilogy-Melissa De La Cruz

Somehow I rated the first book 3 stars when I read it, which doesn’t really match up to how salty I feel about it, so I was obviously feeling generous that day. It was packed full of historical inaccuracies, and incredibly basic ones as well which suggested that the author hadn’t really done her research and it was also just an incredibly slow paced story that felt maybe better suited to younger readers than the teen readers it was actually pitched at. Anyway, I wasn’t all that interested in reading two more books after the lacklustre first one.

10. The Hollow Crown Duology-Zoraida Córdova

I read the first book during the early days of lockdown in 2020 (I say early, it was like May/June but honestly that whole first portion of lockdown kind of blurred together for me in a What is Time kind of way, essentially that whole first three months seemed like March to me). I enjoyed it okay and I think at the end of my review I did say I was still interested in reading the second one but looking back on it, there wasn’t actually a whole lot I really liked about it: I liked the writing style and the magic system but I found the characters flat, it was very slow paced and the plot was kind of dull and predictable. It’s not one that’s stuck in the mind since reading it, so I don’t think I’ll be going back for the second one.

11. Battalion of The Dead Trilogy-Kat Dunn

I knew by I think less than halfway through this book that I would not be reading the sequel. This is still such a sore disappointment for me because I was so expecting to love this one. The whole premise sounded right up my street but the execution was just…..not there. It was too fast paced (an odd complaint for me, but it does happen), the characters were so flat and despite this being billed as a found family type of book, they barely seemed to like each other and it just felt like a sequel was so forced, much like This Poison Heart, the end of the book seemed to be wrapping up well and one loose plot thread was introduced basically to force the book to have a sequel. As you can probably tell, I still feel very salty about this one!

12. Everless Duology-Sara Holland

I actually did mean to read the second book in this series, as I did enjoy the first one, but I got declined for the sequel on Netgalley, and I didn’t want to buy the book in physical copy as I didn’t have the first one because I’d got that one through Netgalley. I don’t have a Kindle, and at that point I didn’t have Audible, so I really just had no suitable way of reading it. Cut to now, it’s five/six years later and I’ve forgotten everything that happened in Everless pretty much, to the point where I’m just not really interested in reading Evermore anymore.

13. Havenfall Duology-Sara Holland

Honestly, I don’t know why I was interested in reading the sequel to Havenfall in the first place, because I wasn’t thrilled by the first book, I think I got reeled in by the fact that something exciting happened at the end of the first book and I wanted to know what happened next. I did get the second book from Netgalley and started to read it, but it was in the midst of my great reading slump of 2021. I haven’t felt the pull to go back to it since and honestly I don’t think I ever will.

14. The Devouring Gray Duology-Christine Lynn Herman

This is another one where I think I only wanted to read the sequel because something cool happened at the end of the book because I didn’t really enjoy the book that much: it was very slow paced, the characters were boring and flat and it didn’t provide the creepy atmosphere I was hoping for. At the time, I wanted the sequel because of whatever happened at the end of this book but as the years have passed, my interest has waned and I don’t see myself reading the sequel now.

15. Wintersong Duology-S. Jae Jones

There was never any doubt I wouldn’t be reading the sequel for this book: I was surprised I made it through Wintersong, I really should have DNF’ed it. It was so confusing, I didn’t have a clue what was going on for most of the book, it was very slow paced, the setting wasn’t explored anywhere near enough and we didn’t really get to know the characters much beyond the main romance plot, so I just got bored. I appreciated the author doing a retelling of a lesser known story but it didn’t really work for me.

16. Cursebreakers Trilogy-Brigid Kemmerer

Okay please don’t hate me everyone, I know how beloved this series is. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t: I liked the characters (well I liked Harper and Grey, I wasn’t keen on Rhen), I liked the writing and I liked the disability representation. However, the pacing was super uneven and the author tried to do this contemporary/fantasy mix and it ended up being not quite enough of either. I think it’s one of those cases where the hype kind of ruined it for me, but I just wasn’t engaged enough to consider reading the sequels.

17. The Poppy War Trilogy-RF Kuang

Again, please don’t hate me! I couldn’t deal with the violence in this one, it was too much, which is not the book’s fault, I knew it was violent going in, I just didn’t realise quite how much and though I’m generally fairly good with violent content in books, this was violent to the point where I felt physically sick. It also felt very gratuitous, like the detail was given just to shock the reader and I think Kuang could have still got across her point without describing a pregnant woman being torn in half or a young woman being raped in brutal detail. I also just couldn’t get along with Rin at all, I found the worldbuilding quite lacking and the characters in general quite underdeveloped. It was pretty clear from fairly early on in this book that I was neither here for good time nor for a long one (well at least after the 18+ hour audiobook had finished!).

18. Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy-Laini Taylor

Agh this one does slightly kill me because I got my entire set of these signed by Laini Taylor at YALC in 2017, and I so enjoyed Daughter of Smoke and Bone so I was really expecting to love the rest. Alas, then Days of Blood and Starlight happened: it was super dark and depressing, it was so slow and Karou was basically unrecognisable from the character I loved in the first book. I think I could have potentially got over most of that because I did want to know how the story ends but then there came the point where there was the unnecessary and quite brutal attempted rape scene and I just tapped out, I find those hard to read in general and this one just came completely out of nowhere, had no bearing on the plot whatsoever and I just found it so off-putting. After reading Strange The Dreamer and realising Taylor has a tendency to use rape as a tragic backstory for her female characters, I decided I just couldn’t with her books anymore. I read Night of Cake and Puppets for the cute Zuzana and Mik content, but I can’t see myself ever actually finishing this trilogy, such was the sour taste that Days of Blood and Starlight left in my mouth.

19. Kingdom of The Wicked Trilogy-Keri Maniscalco

I initially thought when I finished the first book at the end of 2020 that I would continue because it had a pretty cruel cliff-hanger and I thought I needed to know what happened. But three years have passed since then and I’ve realised that I don’t really care enough about Emilia and the other characters to continue with the story. I found Emilia kind of bland and just didn’t much care about her, the world-building in this book was fairly sparse so it’s not like I had the pull of an exciting world to bring me back and I wasn’t all that invested in the main romance. Basically, if there’s no real reason pulling me back in, then I won’t continue a series and I’ve not found one with this series, as the years have passed, I’ve completely forgotten what the cliff-hanger that ended the first book even was, so I don’t care about finding out what happened anymore.

20. The Lunar Chronicles-Marissa Meyer

I read the first and second books in this series, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first book but I heard it got better so I tried the second. I did enjoy it but not so much that I was rushing to read the third and over the years, it’s just a series that I’ve not found myself drawn back to. I’m not really much of a sci-fi person to begin with, and I didn’t LOVE the second book so much that I felt compelled to make the even bigger time commitment to the third and fourth books given that they are significantly chunkier than the first two. I reckon it’s probably time to accept that this is one blogsphere favourite that I won’t share.

So there we have it, you made it to the end of this MAMMOTH POST. I wasn’t expecting it to be this long, but it turned out that I have a LOT of thoughts about why I didn’t continue with these series! Have you read any of these series? Did you like them? Are there any series you’ve lost interest in, either after the first book or partway through? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic, the theme is simply Water, so I think I’m going to do a cover themed one for this but I’m not quite sure yet as I don’t know if I have all that many books with water themed covers, only one is coming to my head right now, so you’ll have to wait and see I guess, how I interpret that quite vague and loose theme!