crappiest fantasy books?

[toggle]

what's your view on the crappiest fantasy ever?

david eddings and the 1 sided characters and plots you can see a mile off?
terry goodkind's written with one hand- torture fantasies?
terry brooks doing the same book over and over and over again?
stephen donaldson for sheer tedium?

or can you find something that outdoes all these fine efforts in how to write utter shite?

DotCommunist - said it needed a thread of ti's own

 

[DotCommunist]

well to my mind eddings rates at least .2 on the ludlum/herbert scale. Thats frank herbert. I use the scale here to judge when pulp meets genius and when it hits fails.

Anne McAffrey though, no -.1

Katherin Kerr- really not my usual thing but yes 7

Obligatory mention of how FUCKING LONG it took to finish the Wheel of Time. I thought I might die before he finished it ffs 5 and that 5 is cos sanderson wrapped it up quickly and with no braid tugging from nynaeve

oh robin hobb is rubbish except for liveship traders

 

[JimW]

Was told to avoid Jack Vance Cugel books as misogynist drivel but since I took the advice not actually read them. McCaffrey is a good shout.

 

[NoXion]

Found a stash of Wheel of Time books once when I was squatting. Having no TV and no internet meant I was held hostage by Robert Jordan's prose.

 

[MrSki]

well to my mind eddings rates at least .2 on the ludlum/herbert scale. Thats frank herbert. I use the scale here to judge when pulp meets genius and when it hits fails.

Anne McAffrey though, no -.1

Katherin Kerr- really not my usual thing but yes 7

Obligatory mention of how FUCKING LONG it took to finish the Wheel of Time. I thought I might die before he finished it ffs 5 and that 5 is cos sanderson wrapped it up quickly and with no braid tugging from nynaeve

oh robin hobb is rubbish except for liveship traders

The Wheel of Time.

I found book 14 in the charity shop for a quid & had to read it again. It is okay if you are familiar with the other 13 but fuck me it was an effort. It would have been good condensed into five books & had a few less blonde haired characters whose names began with E



Still at least there is more humor in book 13/14

 

[DotCommunist]

The Wheel of Time.

I found book 14 in the charity shop for a quid & had to read it again. It is okay if you are familiar with the other 13 but fuck me it was an effort. It would have been good condensed into five books & had a few less blonde haired characters whose names began with E



Still at least there is more humor in book 13/14

but less aes sedai spanking each other.

 

[MrSki]

but less aes sedai spanking each other.

Too true. There is no spanking in book 14.

 

[DotCommunist]

Too true. There is no spanking in book 14.

I don't even think whatsisface got a kick out of it cos the corporal punishment bitswere written with no kink at all. I tell you what sanderson did for the finale, which in no way justifies the time I wasted one every single doorstop but does provide some balm for my wound,he made Rand cool again. He made him the healer-of-the-land figure like a king is mythically supposed to be.

 

[MrSki]

I don't even think whatsisface got a kick out of it cos the corporal punishment bitswere written with no kink at all. I tell you what sanderson did for the finale, which in no way justifies the time I wasted one every single doorstop but does provide some balm for my wound,he made Rand cool again. He made him the healer-of-the-land figure like a king is mythically supposed to be.

He also made it funny in the odd place with Matt & his Doris. I enjoyed 14 more than 13!

 

[toggle]

well to my mind eddings rates at least .2 on the ludlum/herbert scale. Thats frank herbert. I use the scale here to judge when pulp meets genius and when it hits fails.

Anne McAffrey though, no -.1

Katherin Kerr- really not my usual thing but yes 7

Obligatory mention of how FUCKING LONG it took to finish the Wheel of Time. I thought I might die before he finished it ffs 5 and that 5 is cos sanderson wrapped it up quickly and with no braid tugging from nynaeve

oh robin hobb is rubbish except for liveship traders

the second series tacked onto liveship traders isn't a patch on the first. but i do rather like fitz. more in the relationship with the fool and the bits where the wolf runs rings round him


wheel of time defo drags on and on and on and on and dosen't go anywhere or do anyhting fast enough to need to wade through pages and pages of travel journal to get to anything happening. a quest journey with some bits that just teach the backstory is one thing. multiple simultanious fucking quest journeys got boring.

 

[DotCommunist]

the second series tacked onto liveship traders isn't a patch on the first. but i do rather like fitz. more in the relationship with the fool and the bits where the wolf runs rings round him


wheel of time defo drags on and on and on and on and dosen't go anywhere or do anyhting fast enough to need to wade through pages and pages of travel journal to get to anything happening. a quest journey with some bits that just teach the backstory is one thing. multiple simultanious fucking quest journeys got boring.

I dn't know if you play RPG's but looking back the WoT was like a Dragon Age game only I had no choices. I think I most closely identified with matt, gambler and guerilla

 

[toggle]

mcaffrey - a post tech society with gen eng dragons was a really cool idea. a half decent writer could have done so myuch more with that concept. there's a few moments of decent plot and characters and dialogue, but far, far too much dross in between. and post fucking tech society does not fucking mean you find a natrually growing plant so you can fix everything. grrrrrrrrrrrr

 

[toggle]

I dn't know if you play RPG's but looking back the WoT was like a Dragon Age game only I had no choices. I think I most closely identified with matt, gambler and guerilla

enough to get your point.

 

[DotCommunist]

Controversial cuss here, and I only lay it because I re-read a few years back and grown me did not afford it the respect 16 year old me did. I loved these back then but they don't stand. Stephen Lawheads pendragon cycle and the Silver Hand books. Did download for a re-read and it wasn't there. Just clunky and obvious, like david gemmel minus the frequent bouts of intense violence described in loving detail. iyswim

 

[Corax]

Stephen Donaldson and Robert Jordan fighting for top spot on my shitlist.

 

[DotCommunist]

donaldson wins for having a rapist as a hero

 

[tommers]

Covenant isn't even the worst of his books. He did a science fiction series as well that is just fucking horrible. Starts off with his heroine being repeatedly raped and gets worse as it goes on.

Awful.

 

[bi0boy]

Controversial cuss here, and I only lay it because I re-read a few years back and grown me did not afford it the respect 16 year old me did. I loved these back then but they don't stand. Stephen Lawheads pendragon cycle and the Silver Hand books. Did download for a re-read and it wasn't there. Just clunky and obvious, like david gemmel minus the frequent bouts of intense violence described in loving detail. iyswim

I loved the Pendragon Cycle when I was a teenager. A breath of fresh air from the typical chivalric Arthruian retellings I'd read before e.g. Rosemary Sutcliffs's King Arthur Trilogy

 

[Idris2002]

A Song of Ice and Fire.

Dreadful. GRRM has the. " what happens next" thing, sure, but only just. I'm actually not bothered I'd he doesn't live to finish it.

 

[8den]

Eddings. Honestly don't know how he has the nerve to hand them to his publisher.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

oh robin hobb is rubbish except for liveship traders

Get the fuck out of here.

Then come back, so you can get the fuck out again.

 

[Brainaddict]

Covenant isn't even the worst of his books. He did a science fiction series as well that is just fucking horrible. Starts off with his heroine being repeatedly raped and gets worse as it goes on.

Awful.

Not sure that's quite fair. Did you read to the end of it? The entire plot arc is the rise of the character from ultimate victimhood to her being master of the universe. It could be argued that it is an exploitative way for a male writer to write a woman character, but I didn't think that was the vibe of it by the end. It was a while ago I read it though

His prose is shit though. I often wanted to re-edit them to half their length just to make them more readable.

 

[Brainaddict]

Piers Anthony.

 

[Pickman's model]

Must be 30 years or so since I read the shanaara books but the horror of their crapness is still etched on my mind

 

[Pickman's model]

Them and eddings

 

[Pickman's model]

Eddings. Honestly don't know how he has the nerve to hand them to his publisher.

his publisher has more nerve, being the one who actually foists them on an unsuspecting public.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm going to stick my neck right out and name Tolkien, for the lord of the rings. If you compare lotr to e.g. leiber's swords series or pratt's well of the unicorn, let alone grrm or reh I think frodo and gandalf come off worse.

There's no sense of a world in the background which could actually exist, which many so-called lesser writers can deliver, there's so much of it where suspension of disbelief is difficult if not impossible and it swings between melodrama, the tawdry and the twee.

 

[TruXta]

No sense of a world in the background?

 

[Santino]

He's right, there's just the characters wandering around a mythical wilderness. There's no sense of society, politics, culture, religion or what ordinary people are like.

 

[bi0boy]

No sense of a world in the background?

This is something I felt when reading his books too. There's the Shire and Bree, two small settlements in the entire north east. How many cities are there? Just Minas Tirith, even though it feels like a big castle? There's no infrastructure and not enough people in the world. It should be teeming with farmers and traders, dirty market places, traveling dwarven farriers and elven caravans selling stuff.