Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-34202220-20180104002502

Has anyone else noticed the differing quality from book to book?

I read The Barking Ghost. It wasn't just that I didn't like it; I felt it was written very ameaturly. The characters were flat (All I can really say about Cooper is that he is a scaredy cat), the plot lacked substance, and the ending just seemed so random and lazy. (Sorry to fans of this book!)

The Cuckoo Clock of Doom came a few books before it, and The Horror At Camp Jellyjam came directly after it, and those two books share a similar style, have dynamic, well-rounded characters, have interesting fleshed-out plots, and have endings that don't seem forced, but rather flow with the books. It's like these two books were written by someone completely different from whoever wrote The Barking Ghost.

Do you think R. L. Stine was just having a bad week? Do you think it's possible someone else wrote The Barking Ghost? I would say that Stine possibly improved by the time he got to Cuckoo and Jellyjam, but Barking is in the middle of both of those. I don't know what to think. 