Whats the worst you've ever read? Scifi/Fanstasy

[Hypersmurf]

I've probably blotted out the very worst, and I screen out a lot of junk (I think) but I did read Dawnthief, by James Barclay, when I was on a real "fantasy mercenaries" kick, and thought it was atrocious. Indistinguisable characters, ... aaaaugh, just bad.

It is atrocious... and yet, for some reason, I read it twice, and actually really enjoyed it second time through.

The writing didn't improve, but it was sorta fun, somehow

It's quite like a transcript of a RPG campaign, in some ways. I read them more like that than as a novel, and it made it cooler

To the point that I paid money for the sequels

-Hyp.

 

[Filby]

It's quite like a transcript of a RPG campaign, in some ways.

Oh, yeah. That reminds me, I forgot Shadowdale. Gah.

 

[Pants]

My Worst (in no particular order):
1. Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan - Wins the 'Most Useless Book in a Series Award,' in that it really didn't further the plot at all. In fact, the first HALF of the book is spent retreading the last day and a half (about) of tha last book. When a whole chapter is used to describe a woman taking a bath without giving any nice, juvenile, sexual descriptions, then the book has more than jumped the shark, it jumped eight sharks and killed Hitler with a garbanzo bean.

2. Redemption of Athalus by David Eddings - I like Eddings despite his problems. His villains are worthless, his heroes perfect, and the plots simplistic, but he usually writes some good, fun stories. Not so with Redemption of Athalus which manages to make villains even more worthless than usual who are getting the crap kicked out of them by a bunch of cardboard, super heroes. Flush it, it sucks.

3. A Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind - Poor characterization, poor writing, boring, poor plot, pretty much poor everything.

Most Overrated Books:
1. Dune by Frank Herbert - Yeah, I can see how everyone and their dog loves this book, but it honestly didn't do a damn thing for me. I've tried to read it at least twice, but I usually only get about halfway through before I get bored and put it down for something else.

2. Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson - A pretty good book actually, with some fairly solid writing and characterization, but it's overly philosophical and Erikson REALLY tries to write in a poetic, prosaic style that occasionally hits the mark, but usually ends up falling flat or sounding very awkward and very stilted.

3. The Dark Tower books by Stephen King - Great ideas contained herein, although marred with usually poor execution. Let me say that, overall, I am not a King fan. His dialogue usually sounds stilted, he's very verbose when brevity would work better, and he seems to really stray off on tangents. The Dark Tower suffers occasionally from this, but really, the biggest problems I have with these books is that the characters do very little for me (aside from Roland, I dislike the rest) and the fact that the series seems VERY aimless at points, as if King had no idea of what was going to happen beyond the next few pages.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

The worst sci-fi novel I ever read from beginning to end, though, was Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams, the fifth and last book in the "increasingly innappropriately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy". It was like Adams was saying, "Here's your effing sequel, I hope you choke on it!" I finished it in despair for the utter loss of everything that had made the other books great.

It was pretty bad. It did have one great moment, though (possibly one of the best in the series). When Ford is being hunted in the Hitchhiker's Offices by killer robots, and he stops and looks at them disparagingly and says, "Hey..." and then proceeds to jump out the window. For some reason, the visual I get of that moment, of him about to chastise the robots and then rabbiting, just cracks me up.

 

[The Other Librarian]

3. The Dark Tower books by Stephen King -

<snip>

the fact that the series seems VERY aimless at points, as if King had no idea of what was going to happen beyond the next few pages.

I think this is symptomatic of King's writing process. From what I know about his methods, he is not someone who plots out or outlines his novels, so your assumption is largely correct.

FWIW, I really like King as a writer of characters. His characters usually strike me as quite believable, and good characters will hold my attention even if the plot is wobbly.

Dark Tower covers a lot of ground, and I've enjoyed some books more than others, but none made it close to "worst ever". That honor has to go to... oh I dunno, what was that Darth Maul novel called? I tend to agree with Barsoomcore and Mr. Sturgeon; 90% of all fantasy and sci-fi is crap. But that goes for all genres. I thought the DaVinci Code was pretty useless as a novel, especially given the premise and material he Dan Brown drew on.

 

[Sado]

The Jackal of Nar by Jon Marco and its sequels. This was a lousy series that tried to be both heroic saga and military fantasy and failed at both. I can't believe I read the whole trilogy, but I hate not finishing something.

The writing style is clumsy and disjointed. It also feels railroaded, as if he wrote it backwards, starting with a specific ending and forcing every plot turn to lead toward it, no matter how illogical.

The actions, thoughts, and reactions of most characters are simplistic, inappropriate, and at times a bit irrational. I can't imagine real people having the reactions some of his characters did. At times it seemed like a kid trying to write a grown-up novel.

It is obvious that the characters are all stereotypes (the noble warrior lord, the silent mysterious foreign sidekick, the beautiful princess in distress, the devious scheming enemy leader and his ruthless general, etc), which is not a problem in and of itself, but these were all taken to the extreme and turned into almost ridiculous caricatures of these archtypes.

In addition, in the battle scenes the armies seem incredibly small. Most of the "grand" battles had no more than a few hundred men. Richius held the Dring Valley for years with 200 men. I believe the largest force assembled at one time was the Imperial Legion with 1000 men.

 

[Fast Learner]

I'd managed to blot The DaVinci Code from my mind. Man, talk about poor writing. It really stunned me that it became so popular. That dude just can not write.

 

[Mystery Man]

This is almost to embarassing to admit openly.

Phule's Paradise left me wondering why I read it all the way through.

 

[Villano]

Off-hand I can think of (in no particular order):

The Howling , by Gary Brander. Thankfully nothing from the novel made it into the movie. Actually, if you want to see a faithful adaption of this book, rent Howling IV: The Original Nightmare. It should have been called Howling IV: Y'know Howling II And III Really Weren't That Bad In Retrospect.

Red Sonja: The Ring of Ikribu and Red Sonja: Demon Night, the first two Red Sonja novels, by David C. Smith & Richard L. Tierney. Thrill as Sonja sits and does nothing for the last half of the stories! Be amazed as the villains are killed by supporting characters! Throw down the books in disgust as Sonja saves absolutely no one from anything!

The Bride Of Frankenstein, by Carl Dreadstone. A pretty terrible adaption of the movie, written in the '70s. I got it at a used book store for a dime and still felt ripped off.

The Devil's Brood, by David Jacobs. Some time ago, Universal decided to try to revived their classic monster line in novel form. First was the excellent Return Of The Wolfman, by Jeff Rovin. I gave up on this book, however, in 24 pages.

Moon Dance, by S.P. Somtow. The concept of Eastern European werewolves conflicting with Native American werewolves in pre or post Civil War America sounded pretty cool. I never could actually bring myself to finish it.

 

[Fast Learner]

I quite liked Moon Dance. Somtow has a certain style that, admittedly, if you dig it then you dig it, and if you don't then you don't.