Hand off.

[Jolly]

I've only read a couple of Lee Child's Reacher novels. A few years back he decided to quit writing them and hand the series off to his brother.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grant_(writer)

Has there ever been a successful series handed off by the author that maintained the quality of the original?

[Doctor Phibes]

@Jolly said in Hand off.:

Has there ever been a successful series handed off by the author that maintained the quality of the original?

The Bible.

Brandon Sanderson managed to actually finish The Wheel of Time series, something that was clearly beyond the original author, Robert Jordan.

[George K]

@Jolly said in Hand off.:

Has there ever been a successful series handed off by the author that maintained the quality of the original?

There are those who claim that the Dune prequels have been as successful as the original six Frank Herbert books. In terms of sales, that might be the case, so I suppose that counts as success.

However, in terms of quality, there is a lot that criticizes them for being much more shallow than the original six.

I've only read the first 3 original books - started to get too weird for me, maybe I'll try again. But the dozen or so prequels are fun, light reading.

[taiwan_girl]

@Jolly said in Hand off.:

I've only read a couple of Lee Child's Reacher novels.

I think it was you who recommended them to me to read.

I think that they are a good fun read.

Dont know if I have read (or noticed) any difference between the two arthurs.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Jolly said in Hand off.:

I've only read a couple of Lee Child's Reacher novels. A few years back he decided to quit writing them and hand the series off to his brother.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grant_(writer)

Has there ever been a successful series handed off by the author that maintained the quality of the original?

It's never going to be identical, so no, the qualities are always going to be slightly different. I think a more reasonable metric might be, how bad did they screw it up?

Dune's handoff was pretty good I'd say, as was Tolkien's, for that matter. I've been reading over several of the ancillary books over the past few months and I've really got to applaud his editing, documentation and understanding of what's best for the stories.

[Horace]

The authors who wrote Conan books long after Howard was gone, had the advantage of knowing what the world loved about the stories, and focusing on that.

[LuFins Dad]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Hand off.:

@Jolly said in Hand off.:

Has there ever been a successful series handed off by the author that maintained the quality of the original?

The Bible.

Brandon Sanderson managed to actually finish The Wheel of Time series, something that was clearly beyond the original author, Robert Jordan.

I’ll agree with Phibes, here. Sanderson did a nice job ending The Wheel of Time. The weird thing is now Sanderson has built this huge fantasy epic tying in like 5 different series, and is at real risk of not being able to finish it adequately.