Raymond E. Feist does not know how to pace a book series

[loinburger]

The Serpentwar Saga has four books in it, as follows:

Shadow of a Dark Queen: An evil queen is trying to take over the world, and our heroes must delay her! (Ordinarily they'd defeat her, but this is a book series.)
Rise of a Merchant Prince: Our book's hero must become rich, so that he can be rich! (I am not making this up.)
Rage of a Demon King: It turns out that the dark queen from the first book was a demon, and now our heroes must defeat him to save the entire friggin universe or at least a sizable chunk of it!
Shards of a Broken Crown: After saving the entire friggin universe (or at least most of it) in the previous book, our heroes must now defeat the scattered remnants of the slain demon's mercenary army! If they fail then nobody will give a ****!

This would sort of be like Rocky losing in the first movie, and then spending the entire second movie training and never actually fighting anybody, and then becoming champion in the third movie, and then spending the fourth movie selling electric grills.

[rah]

The real question is, Did you buy one of those grills?

But I do like your summary.

[Uncle Sparky]

I've considered buying one of those grills. I like grilled food, but I suspect it would be one of those things I buy, use for a couple of weeks, then put in the back cupboard. I bought a sandwich press in the '80s, that I brought out briefly in around '05, that sits beside a wok that hasn't seen any work in at least 10 years.

Anyone here own, and use, an electric grill?

[loinburger]

I got one when I lived at an apartment complex that didn't allow real grills. As a grill it's terrible, but as a grilled cheese sandwich maker it's pretty good.

Things I would not make on it: raw food of any sort, it was too difficult to ensure that it was cooked thoroughly without being overcooked (maybe the more expensive electric grills have temperature controls, but I got a cheap one with only two settings: off and high)
Things I would make on it: precooked food, e.g. frozen chicken strips (after thawing in the microwave) or a sandwich with deli meat

My grilling replacement was a cast iron frying pan. I used safflower oil since it's reasonably priced and it's got a ridiculously high smoke point, and all of my cast iron has an enamel coating (usually Lodge brand) so I don't need to worry about seasoning it or having my food taste like rust or whatever.

[Jon Miller]

I liked the first trilogy. And the trilogy with Wurts.

I tried this one. I did not complete it.

JM
(I didn't like the in between ones either)

[rah]

I haven't read any of his stuff in a long time. And since I'm old, I don't remember much of it. So it's likely that I wasn't very impressed.

[loinburger]

I found this series while going through my old paperbacks to decide which I should save for my nieces and which should be used as kindling. Feist went in the kindling pile.

[BeBMan]

After the traumatic experience of reading all original Dune books, increasingly losing track after pt. 3, and a similar xp with King's Dark Tower series I decided not to get "epic" stuff going over three books anymore

Or do the TV version (in case of GoT).

[loinburger]

For the past several years I've mostly been reading short stories, especially in collections by different authors - that way even if a story sucks you've only wasted about a half hour of your time on it.

[rah]

I found this series while going through my old paperbacks to decide which I should save for my nieces and which should be used as kindling. Feist went in the kindling pile.

Probably a good choice.
While pondering why I don't remember a lot of old plots, I recently tried to estimate just how many books I've read. It's probably close to around 5000. The real question would be how many of them were worth it. I fear that my kindling pile would have been a real bonfire.

[loinburger]

Most of the books I've read were just a more portable form of television, i.e. they were about as engaging and memorable as a typical sitcom episode.

[rah]

I'd like to think that at least 25% of them would be ones that I would recommend, but when I tried to estimate it, I really couldn't. So 25% maybe a bit optimistic.
Better than thinking that over 75% were trash.

[The Mad Monk]

Probably a good choice.
While pondering why I don't remember a lot of old plots, I recently tried to estimate just how many books I've read. It's probably close to around 5000. The real question would be how many of them were worth it. I fear that my kindling pile would have been a real bonfire.

Most writing is done to feed the author's ego, so...a bonfire of the vanities?

[pchang]

More like a bonfire of the inanities.

[self biased]

I got maybe fifty pages into some Feist book a few years ago. I returned it to the bookstore that had recommended it to me, on the grounds it was awful. the owner gave me a full refund.