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

[Storm Raven]

What if I read the first two chapters and say I couldn't stand the prose, the writer's style, it turned me off. Do I really have to read the whole book just to see that amazingly, the author doesn't completely change his style?

No, you have to read the whole book to have an opinion on the quality of the book. After reading the first two chapters, your opinion is on the quality of the first two chapters, and not much good for anything else.

 

[The_Universe]

No, it doesn't. A bad start makes a bad start. A spade is a spade. Calling it a bulldozer doesn't make it so.

See, what's happening is that we're both seeing a spade - I know it's not a bulldozer, but can you at least recognize that it is a shovel?

God bless, buddy! I shall speak no more (on this subject)!

 

[EricNoah]

That book is my curse.

I've been reading it for four years now. I really have to take my time when I read it, because otherwise I'll just skim over the text and stop reading soon thereafter (it's my third try). But I find myself only rarely returning to it, so I'm still at page 130 or so.

It's one of my goals in life - finishing it

LOL. I discovered to my joy that it was a good "conspiracy" novel, and even better it was, thematically, the twin of one of my favorite books, The Name of the Rose (also by Eco).

I, however, am still not able to get my teeth into The Island of the Day Before. That's one I may be saving for retirement.

 

[Dakkareth]

That book is my curse.

I've been reading it for four years now. I really have to take my time when I read it, because otherwise I'll just skim over the text and stop reading soon thereafter (it's my third try). But I find myself only rarely returning to it, so I'm still at page 130 or so.

It's one of my goals in life - finishing it

I've heard from several people I know, that they somehow couldn't finish it, so you're not alone .

FWIW I rather liked it, but I'm sure, there's something eluding me - I see all the neat 'small picture' stuff, but I can't shake the feeling, that there's a 'bigger picture' in there somewhere. Though maybe that's just because people say it's hard to read, and I didn't notice

 

[Rackhir]

The Oathbound - It's been a while, but IIRC, every last male character of significance in this book was LITTERALLY a child-molesting rapist, aside from a pacifist old monk (read non-sexual/non-threatening). I don't think Mercedes Lackey has come in for enough nearly enough drubbing over books like this. As far as I'm concerned, this is the female equivalent of GOR novels. I like strong female characters, but strong female does not require that all men are child molesting scum.

The Sword of Shanara - I've not read those Iron Tower trillogy books that people say were rippoffs of LotR, but I can't imagine that they are any worse or more blatant than this was. I still cannot imagine how he didn't get sued for plagurisim by the Tolkien Estate. He must have sat down, written a detailed outline of LotR and then written in his own dialogue. The clinchers for me were the hobbits (I mean what ever the hell he called them) running into a ringwraith (I mean Skull whatever he called them) just outside the shire. And later on Gandalf (I mean the Druid What's his name) engaging the Balrog (...) in combat in Moria (...) and falling into the... Oh you get the idea.

Any Movie/RPG/TV series novels - It's the literary equivalent of prostitution. It might feel good at first or for a little while, but eventually your pimp/publisher cuts your face up, it gives you VD or AIDS and kills your soul.

The Cornelius Chronicles - I love Moorcock's stuff, I've read nearly everything he's written, but this was simply an incoherent steaming pile of dung. It started out as another installment in the Eternal Champion saga and then just sort of wandered off into a drug trip. It became a series of unconnected page or two chapters with no consistency, discernable plot or meaning to anything. I suspect he was simply trying to see how long he could string along readers by writing random paragraphs that happened to use the same names for unrelated characters and events.

 

[Ry]

I'd probably have to say some of those Dragonlance trilogy books. The first ones.

Oh, you have no idea. It got a lot worse than that; insofar as my youth was wasted, it was wasted reading Dragonlance. Meetings sextet... preludes... villains series... just terrible.

 

[RedShirtNo5]

Hey, this reminds me of a recent disccusion in 10 Forward. Guinan was saying that there were some books by a former captain of the Enterprise that were just horrible. Then Barclay commented that he recently got a holodeck program featuring this ex-captain in some lawyer-simulation.

Well, Worf said that he had started that holoprogram, but hated it so much he decided to kill the lawyers with a batleth! Wow, you should have seen the argument that started between Data and Troi!

Deana was arguing that the whole reason for holoprograms was to learn from the interaction of the simulated characters, and you couldn't really evaluate a holoprogram until you had run it five or six times to understand who the characters were and how the plot developed. Data said that what he wanted in a hologrom was attention to detail in the simulation, and he could calculate with 97.64% accuracy the likelihood that he would enjoy a holoprogram after just three minutes. Honestly, I wasn't sure who I agreed with.

But then we got trapped in a temporal loop, and I had to listen to the same argument AND get killed in a warp core breach SIX TIMES! Finally that was fixed, and I was going to mention that Iron Tower really was worse than Sword of Shanara, and that the Death Gate series was pretty bad, but that no bad book was really on par with the pain inflicted by those flying pizza slices from Deneva. But I never got to a chance to speak, since I got turned into a styrofoam dodecahedron and crushed into powder by some dudes from the Andromeda galaxy. Just my luck.

-RedShirt

 

[Berandor]

You, sir, should be promoted to ensign No.5 right now!

 

[RedShirtNo5]

You, sir, should be promoted to ensign No.5 right now!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I remember what happened to ensign Sito! The senior officers are the only ones who get dealt the get out of jail, do not get blown up, card.

I think in part I just don't remember the bad books. I'm sure I've read lots of stinkers. Stuff I don't want to keep permanently on my bookshelf gets donated to the local library and forgotten. The ones I remember are ones where I had expecations that weren't met.

-RedShirt

 

[Pants]

Back on topic (though the image of Worf slicing through legions of lawyers with a batleth is a pleasant one...)

I remember Modessit's First Recluse Book being incredibly hard to read... AND boring. I believe there was a part where the protaganist made a chair and then BAM chaos attacked order! ZING! ZOINKS! BURN! DWOP!

Man... the sound effects text was annoying... BOOM.