crappiest fantasy books?

[SpookyFrank]

No sense of a world in the background?

LOTR has no society, no everyday life. There are lords in towers and knights riding around getting in fights but nobody planting turnips or fixing roofs. The exception to this is the description of the Shire, which does feel more like a real place.

 

[Cid]

RA Salvatore.

 

[TruXta]

LOTR has no society, no everyday life. There are lords in towers and knights riding around getting in fights but nobody planting turnips or fixing roofs. The exception to this is the description of the Shire, which does feel more like a real place.

I think you're a bit confused here, Tolkien was hardly trying to recreate a recognisable society as would a regular historian.

 

[Santino]

I think you're a bit confused here, Tolkien was hardly trying to recreate a recognisable society as would a regular historian.

Which is why there's no sense of a world in the background.

 

[TruXta]

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.

Why? If you read it carefully you'll realise it's set in the arse-end of great civilisations, when the great Ages are over and Man is set to take over. It's supposed to be empty and desolate.

 

[TruXta]

Which is why there's no sense of a world in the background.

I should have been more precise, Tolkien wasn't trying to create a recognisable human society. His whole impact has been about world-building after all, so I find these sentiments slightly odd. There's plenty of other charges to levy at Tolkien mind you, this one wouldn't reach my top 5 list of stuff he didn't get right.

 

[bi0boy]

Why? If you read it carefully you'll realise it's set in the arse-end of great civilisations, when the great Ages are over and Man is set to take over. It's supposed to be empty and desolate.

Take over what? A couple of elven camps in a forest and disused mine or two?

How many men are there anyway? Rohan is a village on a hill, and then there's a few people in Bree like a thousand miles away.

 

[TruXta]

Take over what? A couple of elven camps in a forest and disused mine or two?

How many men are there anyway? Rohan is a village on a hill, and then there's a few people in Bree like a thousand miles away.

Take over the world. The other races are dying and/or leaving. The vast majority of men seem to be the great unwashed hordes in the south and east that only figure as distant cardboard racist stereotypes.

 

[Pickman's model]

Why? If you read it carefully you'll realise it's set in the arse-end of great civilisations, when the great Ages are over and Man is set to take over. It's supposed to be empty and desolate.

And with about 10 women in it

 

[TruXta]

And with about 10 women in it

If that. Off the top of my head there are only two female characters with any voice - Galadriel and Eowyn.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think you're a bit confused here, Tolkien was hardly trying to recreate a recognisable society as would a regular historian.

No. But there's nothing in the background, no one picking the tobacco, no one making the swords: can't think of any mention of blacksmiths. It's like a poor cartoon.

 

[TruXta]

No. But there's nothing in the background, no one picking the tobacco, no one making the swords: can't think of any mention of blacksmiths. It's like a poor cartoon.

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but the world he was seeking to describe wasn't that of the lowly folk, with a partial exception for the hobbits. The world he fleshes out is that of high myth, so no wonder that certain elements are stylised.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but the world he was seeking to describe wasn't that of the lowly folk, with a partial exception for the hobbits. The world he fleshes out is that of high myth, so no wonder that certain elements are stylised.

Yeh. Even so there's lots which prevents any suggestion of disbelief, e.g. frodo and Sam going through mordor with a murderous captive

 

[TruXta]

I guess people draw their own lines as to what is believable in the context of fantasy and similar.

 

[bi0boy]

I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but the world he was seeking to describe wasn't that of the lowly folk, with a partial exception for the hobbits. The world he fleshes out is that of high myth, so no wonder that certain elements are stylised.

You at least show the lowly folk in the background though, otherwise the high myth people are just poncing around in an empty farce.

 

[marty21]

I've never felt that fantasy books could do with a bit more realism in them .

 

[TruXta]

You at least show the lowly folk in the background though, otherwise the high myth people are just poncing around in an empty farce.

That's what Bree and to an extent Rohan is for. Also, in many ways LOTR was seen as a sequel to the Hobbit, which had a lot more folksy elements. So seen in that context I don't fully agree that he completely disregarded the lower classes.

 

[bi0boy]

That's what Bree and to an extent Rohan is for. Also, in many ways LOTR was seen as a sequel to the Hobbit, which had a lot more folksy elements. So seen in that context I don't fully agree that he completely disregarded the lower classes.

It doesn't need a discussion about the latest firework manufacturers' strike, just a passing mention of a few towns where so and so came from would be nice, a few more dots on the map to show the world actually has enough people in it to be worth saving from teh darkness.

 

[campanula]

Julian May and all the prehistoric shite (the Many coloured something...land? torc?) I found a whole heap of them in a junkshop in Southwold during en endless wet Walberswick camping summer which made them almost bearable. Suffice to say, I have not one fucking clue about plot, characters or anything apart from the general tedium and endlessness of it all.
Steven King's Dark Tower - for some reason, my youngest raves about this and continually thrusts copies at me (I read 3/4 of the first one)
James Barclay - so bad I only recall the rather nice 2coloured book jackets
Years ago, I recall a (very) long series of books which, on recollection, seemed to be mainly about gigantic vehicles - Amtrack/Amway?

Grief - the thing with this thread is that bad fantasy (and believe me, I have read my share) flees my head in self-defence against swamping by mediocrity, leaving only fleeting memories of turgid prose, telegraphed plots and hateful characters...or worse, characters who fail to register even a meh).

 

[Pickman's model]

I've never felt that fantasy books could do with a bit more realism in them .

Realism the wrong word, I'm talking about the ability to believe in, to imagine, the world presented. And you can see the world's created by leiber, by Fletcher pratt, by ursula le guin working. Even Robert e Howard's conan is set against a believable background, he wrote an essay, the hyborian age, about the history of the period.

 

[TruXta]

Anyway, back to the OP - Wheel of Time for me. I'm sure I read some right stinkers at a younger age but thankfully all memories have been erased.

 

[TruXta]

Realism the wrong word, I'm talking about the ability to believe in, to imagine, the world presented. And you can see the world's created by leiber, by Fletcher pratt, by ursula le guin working. Even Robert e Howard's conan is set against a believable background, he wrote an essay, the hyborian age, about the history of the period.

IIRC Tolkien wrote one or two small things about the back history of Middle-earth too.

 

[Pickman's model]

IIRC Tolkien wrote one or two small things about the back history of Middle-earth too.

Yeh and much good it did him.

 

[TruXta]

Yeh and much good it did him.

I doubt many people bothered with the appendices in Return of the King to be fair.

 

[Pickman's model]

I doubt many people bothered with the appendices in Return of the King to be fair.

By the time you get that far you feel you really have journeyed to mordor and just want to chuck the bloody thing into mount doom.

 

[campanula]

Still, getting the hang of it now. Greg Bear. Now this is an utter mystery to me - how someone can write a book of the calibre of Blood Music, Darwin's Radio...can churn out the ludicrous Dinosaur Summer or that FBI drivel...without even a pretense of writing for children.
CJCherryh is another prolific writer who's Downbelow series (and Cyteen) rank in the very top echelons of SF/fantasy...and then she comes out with some twaddle about elves or that Morgaine shite. And all those Foreigner ones.
Melanie Rawn OMG - such utter piffle (Sunrunner's Fire (I think and a whole load of vaguely theatrical stuff)
Sherri Tepper - another one who has gone off the boil/gotten lazy. How much did I love The Gate to Women's Country? And Grass. And a whole lot of The True Game stuff...while now it is a post menopausal ecowhine from disappointed women with horrible partners (and yep, I feel almost complicit in the betrayal of female writers here but really!)
Greg Egan/Rudy Rucker - a pair of sf writers who cannot resist baffling the reader with invented science...and the subsequent tedious explanations of - look how erudite/profound /technical we are...and it doesn't matter a bit that it is all piffle because it sounds...feasible. Well maybe...but also dull.

Oh, I am off to scout the shelves and stairs.

 

[campanula]

Pickmans - I so agree - I am heartily sick of the Royal Family/aristos in SF and fantasy - Robin Hobb comes to mind immediately as yet another nitwit besotted by the great man/blue blood idea of history (alternative or otherwise).
Whilst I accept that relationships to power are always part of the dramatic arc and narrative, it enrages me that 'power' is so often represented as some moribund noble family tripe.

 

[Pingu]

I doubt many people bothered with the appendices in Return of the King to be fair.

some of us have managed to read the silmarillion... i have to say even as a die hard Tolkien geek that was hard going

 

[TruXta]

some of us have managed to read the silmarillion... i have to say even as a die hard Tolkien geek that was hard going

Some of the stories in that were quite good. I even managed a few of the Lost Tales....

 

[Pingu]

No. But there's nothing in the background, no one picking the tobacco, no one making the swords: can't think of any mention of blacksmiths. It's like a poor cartoon.

sauron?

many smiths are mentioned across the books (OK not horseshoe making ones but swordsmiths etc are mentioned a lot)