The books are good for what they are: children’s books that take you from ~8-13 years old. I loved them when I was a kid, and now it’s just hard to get through them because the writing is just average at best, and the plots are so basic they undermine the actually interesting setting and prevent it from being as mindblowing as they could have been.
I’ve read a lot of fantasy novels, there are a lot of bad ones. She’s no Pratchett, but she easily beats average for fantasy novel series - the world is fucked up but vibrant, the characters memorable and it doesn’t get boring and repetitive after the first book like so many other series.
The primary audience is definitely young teenagers, but it was really good at drawing in adults, as well.
Agreed on the number of bad ones. I just read the first book of a james patterson series, and I don’t understand how it was ever greenlit. I know there was that quote about 90% of everything being trash, and it was just ‘in the old days’ that we never saw anything but the 10%, but I just struggle to see harry potter now as part of the 10%. I’ve read too many good books and series to believe it does have a place in the 10%. I know, on some level, that they aren’t that bad, but I just have this whiplash from the feelings I had about them as a kid and how I read them now.
Yeah make no mistake, I’m definitely not reading them anymore, even though that’s one of the series that I reread (past tense) several times and would probably keep rereading every so often if the author didn’t turn out to be … that.
The books are good for what they are: children’s books that take you from ~8-13 years old. I loved them when I was a kid, and now it’s just hard to get through them because the writing is just average at best, and the plots are so basic they undermine the actually interesting setting and prevent it from being as mindblowing as they could have been.
I’ve read a lot of fantasy novels, there are a lot of bad ones. She’s no Pratchett, but she easily beats average for fantasy novel series - the world is fucked up but vibrant, the characters memorable and it doesn’t get boring and repetitive after the first book like so many other series.
The primary audience is definitely young teenagers, but it was really good at drawing in adults, as well.
Agreed on the number of bad ones. I just read the first book of a james patterson series, and I don’t understand how it was ever greenlit. I know there was that quote about 90% of everything being trash, and it was just ‘in the old days’ that we never saw anything but the 10%, but I just struggle to see harry potter now as part of the 10%. I’ve read too many good books and series to believe it does have a place in the 10%. I know, on some level, that they aren’t that bad, but I just have this whiplash from the feelings I had about them as a kid and how I read them now.
Yeah make no mistake, I’m definitely not reading them anymore, even though that’s one of the series that I reread (past tense) several times and would probably keep rereading every so often if the author didn’t turn out to be … that.