[NogDog]

I stop when it's no longer worth the time and money to me to keep going. Since I have no real problem abandoning a single book in the middle if it's just not working for me, I have no problem stopping in the middle of a series, either. If it's a series I was really liking, I might give the author one Mulligan, but not two in a row.

 

[Lisa J. Yarde]

When the writing becomes trite and boring, or the POV characters become meaningless. Examples? The Sookie Stackhouse novels dropped after the seventh because the characters just don't seem true to themselves in later books. GRMM's Ice & Fire series has great characters who've been dumbed down or sent on meaningless journeys; I feel like the authors bored with their wanderings so I get bored too.

 

[Ann Chambers]

I tend to downgrade the series from "gotta have it as soon as it comes out" to buying paperback or waiting for the ebook price to drop, and then finally dropping the series entirely.

Usually I lose interest when the story quality fails or when the books start being too similar.

Gave up on Patterson a few years ago, skipped quite a few Cornwells (the last couple have been better but still not as good as the early ones), dropped Evanovich/Plum a couple of books back.

It makes me sad when I have to drop a series because I loved the first books...

 

[dalton_wolf]

I generally stop reading when the quality falls or it seems like it is a different writer and the story can't hold me anymore. But I always stop when the main protagonist is killed off or when the focus is shifted permanently from the main group, to another group of people (beings) in a series. I feel that I've invested a lot of time and emotion (and money) in a character or group of characters and expect to keep reading about their exploits, not some new group. A lot of authors, and their defenders, say that they're just being realistic when they kill off a character or move on with another group. 'That's life," they say. "So get over it". But I say if I want realism, why in the Nucleus am I reading a fiction book? People die every day in life. People who have been in your life for decades move away and you lose touch. If I want 'realism', I can read non-fiction or, hey, maybe I'll just go live my own sorry life.
I read for escapism, not for realism, to go places I can't go in real life, to dream of doing wondrous things and encountering people and beings I have no hope of meeting in the 'real world'. Reading fiction is all about the imagination, about taking a trip within your own mind, a trip you get to share with the author and your fellow readers and I want to hold onto those characters and those worlds until I fall asleep at night and know that they will be there the next morning to comfort me and take me on another journey the next day, and the day after that and for many days after.

 

[Kristine McKinley]

I find it very difficult to stop reading a series when I've put in a lot of time with it. However there have been a couple that I've dropped or downgraded. I only made it to book 4 in the Stephanie Plum series and when I realized that she wasn't going to pick a man any time soon I stopped reading. Somewhere around the 7th book I downgraded The Southern Vampire Mysteries to checking out from the library. I don't know what happened but the quality of that series dropped dramatically, I kind of blame the TV show on that one.

 

[Chad Winters]

I quit George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and The Wheel of Time series because they were huge books where not a lot actually happened and huge time periods between book releases usually means I felt I needed to go back and re-read before reading the newest book and I just didn't have the time

 

[Mike D. aka jmiked]

Sometimes I don't exactly know why I quit reading a series. Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels fit into that category. A few books back, a new one came out and I just yawned.

Most of the time, I quit because a series gets (subjectively) repetitive. This happened with J.D. Robb's In Death series, as well as David Weber's Honor Harrington series.

Curiously, this does not seem to happen with mystery series (as opposed to crime series). I even re-read the 40+ volumes or Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, J.D. Carr's Merrivale and Dr. Fell series, the 30+ volumes of Ellery Queen, etc. I have little tolerance for an extended series (more than four or five volumes) of SF or Fantasy work (there are exceptions, but a vanishingly small number).

Just from reading the threads around here over the last several years, it's apparent that I like stand-alone novels far more than most here. Some of my favorite authors didn't write anything that would qualify as a true series at all.

Mike

 

[tensen]

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series - Laurell K Hamilton. I loved the first few. I thought Anita was great, until she slept with the vampire and then became a nympho having sex with 3 or 4 people at once.

Absolutely. I really liked the first two or three. The original concept for the series was good.

 

[Carrie Rubin]

When I stop caring about the characters. This happened to me with Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series, just as others have pointed out before me. Plus, the writing styles of these novels changed. It became more about the technical issues than story telling and characterization.

 

[Geemont]

When I feel like every book is the same. Sometimes that's 2 books in. Sometimes it's 20 books in. Sometimes it never happens.

This is pretty close to what I think, but I'd say the sameness will creep into every series eventually. No author is immune. As a rule of thumb, books four and five are the red hot danger zone were most start to fail. I did read nine books in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Papers, but that is about as far as I have ever gotten in a series.

Episodic series where the reader can read the books in any order, by their very nature, must rely heavily on sameness. It's just plugging in formulas. Unless the events of the story fundamentally change the character, there is no way to escape this outcome.

 

[RosanneRivers]

I stop reading when I feel like I'm being strung along. So when the end of the book doesn't wrap up what it set out/promised to do at the start just so you'll buy the next one! I love series which concludes everything it set out to at the start of the novel, but the writing was so good that you want to read the next one anyway!

Is anyone else like this?

 

[lmroth12]

I tend to stop when the author has changed and it shows in the writing. There was a very popular (still is) mystery writer who started out with the most spine tingling, page turning books I had ever read, about ordinary people who found themselves thrust into extraordinary events, who struck it rich and suddenly started populating her books with "the jet set" crowd and kept name dropping places from her elite world all through her books. Success just doesn't work for some people, as they seem to lose the spark of inspiration and creativity that made them popular in the first place. Out of kindness I won't name who it is, but it's a shame that the quality of her books suffered from her fame. Because she truly was a great writer in the beginning. I still read her old books, but no longer buy the new ones.

 

[maryjf45]

I dislike it when characters become stuck in a rut, not progressing, becoming less real and interesting. It's kind of depressing, like having a friend with Alzheimers, they slowly dwindle away.  A cozy mystery series called Her Royal Spyness has become like that. Writers sometimes lose their passion for a story but keep going for other reasons. I detest the Sookie Stackhouse series, but I liked Charlaine Harris' older Aurora Teagarden series, which I thought progressed nicely and had a good ending. Her Grave Sight books also. Another series that I've liked is the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois Bujold. All of her books are good, actually. Game of Thrones I dropped before finishing the first book, because there were too many story lines and too few characters that I liked. I will still read the next Gabaldon book, but she has so many strands going as well. So much happens to Jaime and Claire that it seems unreal at times. Maybe she should let them semi-retire in peace and continue with the next generation. I have also enjoyed The Change series by S.M. Stirling which starts with Dies the Fire. It's not finished yet, and sometimes drags, but it's characters and action are worth it.

 

[Tony Richards]

I cannot recommend enough the late Ross MacDonald's series of Lew Archer detective novels. There are a good number of them and, going by the blurbs, they might all appear to be quite similar, but they are not. Each new tale is fresh, engrossing, and wonderfully well written. It's one series I can't get enough of.

 

[67499]

When the main character ceases to grow.

 

[Verbena]

When books become boring，the writer lost his meaning.

 

[Adrian Howell]

When I feel the "been there, done that," that's where I stop reading. A book series is great when you fall in love with the characters, but it can't read like an episode out of a weekly TV series. The plot, the characters... everything has to evolve. If the series isn't moving forward, then neither am I.

 

[Nope]

.

 

[Carol (was Dara)]

I quit George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and The Wheel of Time series because they were huge books where not a lot actually happened and huge time periods between book releases usually means I felt I needed to go back and re-read before reading the newest book and I just didn't have the time

I quit The Wheel of Time series for the same reason. I followed the books for ten years but the wait time between releases was so long I kept having to go back and reread from book one, so I'd understand what was going on. After I read through all the existing books twice (some of them three times), I gave up. Which is a shame because I was only one book away from the last one. Hubby keeps trying to get me to pick it up again and part of me does want to know how it ends. But I'd have to read books 1-13 again and I just can't summon the interest.

 

[Grace Elliot]

This is such a good question!
For me it's if I can do withou knowing the conclusion because I just don't care about the characters any more, or feel there is nothing left to discover about them.
This question set me thinking about soap operas and why I continue to watch Coronation Street, but can turn off Eastenders. It's down to caring, cliffhangers and the characters not acting 'out-of-character'.