(This is primarily aimed at readers but there isn't a readers' section of the forum so I'm sneaking it into Story Recommendations, which it arguably is.)
In the opinion of you, the reader, are there any series, say of books of at least short-novel length (45,000 words), where you'd recommend at least one of the sequels as being better than the initial story?
ETA: I'm looking for stories and sequels on SOL, Scifistories or Finestories.
AJ
Sea-Life's 'World of Light' — particularly books 3, 4 and 6
EzzyB's Chaos books, in particular 'Anita's Rescue'
Discworld
If you consider 'The Hobbit' to be the first of the Middle Earth books, then those as well
Zelazny's Amber cycle
Zelazny's Amber cycle
Some of the later ones were not so hot, and the first two or three were really good.
I was never that fond of 'Nine Princes in Amber', but I was only thinking of the first series (Corwin's books). The Merlin books didn't hold my interest so I always forget them. My bad.
I would add Mike Cropo's universe - Wolves and Dragons of the Blood.
Note that the last story is unfinished due to the author's death in 2018.
Note 2 - Premier stories.
Second. The later books are better than the first. All of them have issues, and also all of them are readable, but they get stronger.
Aliens is a better movie than the original Alien.
Alien is more of a horror/suspense movie, set aboard a starship; with other SciFi aspects.
Aliens is a military SciFi movie, with intrigue, suspense, and elements of humor, Cyberpunk and romance too. Mostly an action adventure movie.
Aliens provided a bigger and more in depth view of the world/galaxy, and I believe is more engaging. Both are good movies, but I believe Aliens is better.
On SOL the John Taylor series by Lumpy, the stories keep getting better. I'm not sure that it is a linear progression, however, several of the sequels are better than the original.
I think they may all be worth reading, although I have not read them all.
https://storiesonline.net/series/1243/john-taylor
On a pure technicality, 'Books 2 and 3' of Arlene and Jeff are better than Book 1, in my opinion. Mind you, it's all one download, but Roust broke them into books, so the 'sequels' are better.
In my opinion, Hoisington's Wynter stories (premiere only, now) significantly improved as they developed.
Cainneach McEinri's Sarah's Saga gets MUCH better, in a way similar to Arlene and Jeff but multiplied. The first book is just plain hard to get through for quite a while, and if the author hadn't flat-out said 'it gets better' I'd have dumped it.
I'm sure there are plenty of others, but those jumped out at me immediately.
In my opinion, Hoisington's Wynter stories (premiere only, now) significantly improved as they developed.
I found the first - as in original - story to be virtually unreadable, more for the content than for the style. The others were better.
I have my strong suspicions that both Wynter and Arlene and Jeff started out from a desire to get to a certain similar situation, and both authors quickly realized that wouldn't drive the story for long and found far more to do with it.
I could be wrong, though.
Both are (to me, at least) much more readable than the first book of Sarah's Saga, which I can't imagine appealing either to people who enjoy the fetishes the book gets into or people who dislike them (and I think few are in between), so by comparison the later volumes are a bigger jump in quality.
Thinking Horndog's Swarm Cycle stories definitely fall in to this category. Even if you ignore the various stories by other authors, the first and third stories are pretty threadbare. Average Joes is basically the setup for the whole universe, but it could easily have been stripped of a lot of the text and added as a flashback or prologue in a later story.
