Tuesday - Sequels

The time was the week before New Year's, 2008. I had the week off of work and devoured Roger Zelazny's first five Amber books in rapid succession. It's not often that I dream about the books I'm reading. That's usually confined to Stephen King works, most notably The Tommyknockers and The Dark Tower. I dreamed of Amber several times that week. When the story of Corwin came to a climax, it was one of my favorite conclusions to a story since Stormbringer or The Dark Tower.

In the aftermath of Amber, I contemplated reading the second five books, the story of Corwin's son, Merlin. It took a year but I finally caved in. Was Merlin's story as good as Corwins? It was not. Was I glad I read it? Nope. I thought it diluted the original five books and diminished them somehow.

Upon finishing The Fall of Hyperion, I had similar misgivings about continuing on. Would the Endymion books soil the memory of Hyperion forever? I finished Endymion last night. While I still have Rise of Endymion on deck, I'm very pleased with how Endymion is going so far. It's not another second Amber series, that's for sure. Dan Simmons is one smooth bastard.

Other Sequels I could have done without:

1. Every Elric book from Fortress of the Pearl onward
2. The Star Wars prequels
3. The Shadow War series that was a sequel to the movie Willow
4. Return of Superman (although I liked the part where Superman got shanked)
5. The upcoming Mad Max sequel
6. The Lost Boys direct to DVD sequels
7. All of the Anne Rice vampire books after Queen of the Damned