Worst fantasy book you have read?

[Brian G Turner]

I've only read the second in the series, and it was painful. I agree with you on the names too. The whole book felt like I was reading some reclusive high schoolers' RP session. The dialogue was on par with mediocre fanfiction and most of the characters couldn't hold my interest. So many cliches too.

Heh, I did think of Dragonlance, but remembered it as a fun read when I was young. Raistlin was a memorable character. I think DL would probably be classed as Young Adult fiction if released now.

 

[seaside]

Heh, I did think of Dragonlance, but remembered it as a fun read when I was young. Raistlin was a memorable character. I think DL would probably be classed as Young Adult fiction if released now.

I liked him and Kitiara, and I WOULD have liked the dragons had we been able to learn about them. That was part of my frustration with the book. I tried not to take it all too seriously, but even then it was tough to get through. I only slogged to the end to accurately be able to talk about it on my blog.

 

[svalbard]

Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy was so bad that reading it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Heh, I did think of Dragonlance, but remembered it as a fun read when I was young. Raistlin was a memorable character.

Raistlin is my only positive memory of Dragonlance - I'm a sucker for characters who can't be trusted. The rest is just a blur of D&D stereotypes...

 

[Jade44]

I have to agree with a few posters about Terry Goodkind's last books in the Sword of Truth series. I began to wonder if it would ever end and then when it did I found the ending to be something of a cop-out.

I would like to add one more candidate for poor writing and that was the Darksword Trilogy by Weiss and Hickman. Not only was it very poorly written, but I found the ending to be very disappointing.

Since that time I have adopted a philosophy that has me putting the book back on the shelf if I don't like it. There are so many fantastic works of fiction out there I am not going to waste my time with a book that seems to be going nowhere. That is easy for me to do since I don't buy books, I use the public library.

 

[seaside]

I'm just now remembered The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven was pretty terrible. It felt like he just turned his world over to another author and said have at it. It had nothing that I loved from the original.

 

[Lord Soth]

Heh, I did think of Dragonlance, but remembered it as a fun read when I was young. Raistlin was a memorable character. I think DL would probably be classed as Young Adult fiction if released now.

Where do you think my nickname came from? I loved them in my early teens, and lapped up the whole Dragonlance / Forgotten Realms books. I'd probably be very dissapointed if I read them again now, though I must admit to being tempted to buy the Chronicles and Twins trilogies again.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Got to agree with I, Brian:

Otherland - ridiculously overlong, completely boring after a promising beginning. How I finished it I'll never know.

Angels and Demons - tried twice had to give up twice!

 

[Rosemary Fryth]

Worst fantasy books? Well Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series started out ok, however the later books just dragged on and on, his editor really should have gone through his books with a hacksaw. Seriously. I mean I have the patience of one of those medieval stone effigies that you see carved onto cathedral walls, however even I gave up on WoT after I think the third book. Also Tad Williams books get (dis)honourable mention.

 

[CyBeR]

Licia Troisi gets my vote here.
I only barely suffered through her Nihal from the Land of the Wind piece of garbage and I'll be damned before I pick up another of her books. The cover sold it to me the first time around (and the 2 for 1 offer in the store at the time), but I'll never be making the same mistake again. Donated it months ago to a program gathering books for children. Maybe they'll find more enjoyment in it.

 

[Moggle]

It must be really bad, to attract such... hatred... among its reader.

I decided to try out the book for the hell of it and have completely over 50 pages so far. It typically takes me about 25 pages to determine what I'm getting myself into. I'm almost never wrong, and based on what I've read so far, I'd say the book can't be any worse than average or slightly below average. Newcomb's style isn't exactly the greatest, but it isn't enough to elicit hatred from anyone, or at least it shouldn't be. It seems to me that he's just another victim of the, "I hate any kind of hero fantasy" crowd.

 

[Anne Lyle]

It seems to me that he's just another victim of the, "I hate any kind of hero fantasy" crowd.

I haven't read it, but I've read the reviews and I was under the impression that the hatred comes from his rampant misogyny rather than poor writing.

 

[Azzagorn]

Twilight! Enough said lol

 

[Talhe]

Now, before I list my books, there's one tidbit that's important to know about me: I like reading horrible things. Horrible books and comics that are so awful that they dig deep into the Earth in an attempt to suck, only to come out gloriously on the other side as things of beauty. These books are so horrible that they travel the universe for eons before winding back to Earth and destroying it due to their horrible horribleness.

Ahem. Now that I'm done with the dramatics...

The Baldur's Gate novelizations by Philip Athans. Cross-media adaptations aren't known for being high-quality, but these novels take the cake and eat it in front of a orphanage of starving children. The only things taken from the games that was consistently accurate are the names; everything else that could be screwed up, was. Characters, the setting, actual writing, basic human psychology... I'd need to write a review to get into how awful they are.

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan. The book irrecoverably convinced me that Jordan enjoyed making the fans suffer by stretching out the plot, and enjoyed the thought of how many trees died to print his books. The plots in the last... two, maybe three books had begun to move at a snails pace, but Crossroads was the worst yet; it was made up of each characters viewpoint over the course of two very, very boring days. Worst five dollars I ever spent.

 

[Moggle]

I haven't read it, but I've read the reviews and I was under the impression that the hatred comes from his rampant misogyny rather than poor writing.

Is that what ppl are saying? I'm probably a third of the way thru, and while I find it odd and annoying that he doesn't explain why only sorceresses are bad and wizards are good, Newcomb does make it a point that this is not absolute in either case. Does this mean he's a misogynist or is promoting misogyny in his book? People are getting way too carried away with this stuff.

 

[Starchaser3000]

I have been told that my self published book is "bad" because of gratuitous sex and violence, frequent drug and alcohol abuse from some of the characters, and terrible b-movie quality dialogue. But it seems mixed in that some people have told me that this is a good thing, while others in negative bad taste. Anyway, this thread is great. I share a lot of the same opinions here, and I am also intrigued to research these allegedly crappy fantasy books that I have never heard or read.

 

[Count Zero]

The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, I couldn't believe how blatantly and cynically derivative it was. I'm astonished he wasn't sued by the Tolkien estate.

 

[firepanda]

Robert Newcomb's Chronicles of Blood and Stone.
All Terry Goodkind past book 4 of SoT.
I found quite a bit of Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan quite dry as well.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for mentioning The Fifth Sorceress. I'd never heard of it before, but something with so many one star reviews has to be worth taking a look at!

I don't know how the author survives. I got one one star review for Maverick and it felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach by a donkey.

Cheers, Greg.



OMG I just read it (the reviews that is, not the book).

As well as 81 one star reviews it's got 37 five star reviews which only goes to show how different people react to the same thing. Meanwhile the number of reviews somewhere in the middle is relatively few. Reading between the lines it sounds to me like the book was on the poor side of things and needed a serious edit, but the sterotyping of women as either evil or vapid pushed it a long way over the edge. From there it became a sort of love it or hate it book, though a two to one margin says hate it.

What I will say in its favour is that it has 168 reviews all up, so someone's reading it. In fact quite a few someone's since I generally get less then one percent of my readers reviewing my books. (Not sure what that says about my books though!)

 

[sabolich]

I, somewhat masochistically, stuck with The Wheel of Time series long, LONG after I should have quit on it, but finally stalled out in the middle of Winter's Heart. I never finished it and will never read any of the subsequent doorstops in that series. I do try to be loyal to authors I like, and I realize Jordan was dying, but.... please.

The Sword of Shannara was the first book that I ever seriously considered chucking in the trash. I found it in the day room of the barracks at summer camp in ROTC and the only reason I didn't was because reading material was in short supply and it didn't belong to me to start with. Total Tolkien rip-off.

I read one book by Mercedes Lackey, having bought it sight unseen through the Science Fiction Book Club. I don't remember the title, but I will never, ever, under pain of torture, ever read anything by her again. I can only surmise from her popularity that it was an aberration and her other books are better. I leave that to someone else to decide/defend because huh-uh, no way am I going to waste money on an author who not only spends the entire book telling and not showing but then tells you twice what she just told you. Please, authors, do me the courtesy of assuming I have a brain and know how to use it.