Looking for BAD fantasy

[Kazz Wylde]

This is just something that I am interested in. It seems to me that at least a few people like (or love) authors that many others consider "bad." I have seen how a large portion of this forum reviles Terry Goodkind, and yet he has his own little sub-forum, and I have encountered a more than a few Goodkind fans.

I am also interested in why you consider some work of fantasy bad. Again drawing on my experiences, most criticism seems to be directed at the writing style, but yet again we can never seem to agree whose writing styles are clumsy, or wordy, or overly pretentious.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that books overall are very hard to give a definitive opinion. What would satisfy me most is if someone does mention a book, or author, or series that they personally dislike, and this book is not defended at all. I would be fascinated by a fantasy book that is universally reviled.

Hey Grey Mantle, that really cracked me up-Looking for Bad fantasy, but I gotta tell you, you had a pretty interesting reason why.

 

[Zsinj]

Gods! Where do I begin?!!

The Symphony of Ages Trilogy by Elizabeth Haydon; By far the WORST fantasy I have ever read! Chock full of overly mushy bastardized romantic fluff! The over-emotion almost made me want to puke! The time I wasted reading the abysmal second installment is a week I can never get back! The second book was so bad, I didn't even bother reading the last one. I can't believe the late Mario Puzo gave Haydon kudos for this trash!

The Belgariad by David Eddings; Sorry, Eddings fans! This is a series that wasted about three weeks of my life. The characters to me were all morons. I wanted to absolutely kill Polgara, C'Nedra, and that immature brat Garion! The last battle was like something out of the Power Rangers, and the world building was absolutely God-awful.

The Dark Tower by Stephen King; I'm gonna probably get egged for this, I know, but book VII of King's Dark Tower Series was an absolute dissapointment. In this final volume, he seems to abandon all the great western flavor and magic/mysticism that made the preceding books so great. I was so disgusted with this book, I only made it halfway through and chucked it. I read the ending summary on Wikipedia and it was worse than I ever could have imagined!

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson; I'm probably gonna get egged for this too. But this has got to be the most boring fantasy series I've ever tried to read. I didn't believe others when they said it was boring before I read it because I thought they were overreacting, but boy were they right! What can I say about it that hasn't been said before; the whole half Lord Foul's Bane that I read (I could only manage to get that far) was about ol' Tommy whining about his ailments. Also, Donaldson goes into insane detail describing things, you guys think Tolkien went overboard, his passages are a breeze compared to Donaldson! By the time I decided to quit this book, I had such a migraine I thought my head was gonna explode!

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs; I loved his first two Tarzan books, and I thought I was gonna love his Mars books, but I only got halfway through this very short first volume in the series. Burroughs' writing in this has to be some of the driest stuff I've ever read.

Star of the Guardians by Weis & Hickman; Normally, I love Weis & Hickman's stuff, but this was an obvious ripoff of Star Wars. I could tolerate the Guardians being like the Jedi, even enjoyed the whole idea a bit, but as soon as they started talking about the Brotherhood of the Dark Lightning (obvious ripoff of the Sith) I slammed the book shut and chucked it. I don't think I'll try any more of Weis & Hickman's science-fantasy stuff. I'm better off sticking with their works of pure fantasy.

 

[Stevenator]

Some of you have probably read Austin's essay "Quality in Epic Fantasy", but I just stumbled upon it for the first time. It does an excellent job of disecting our genre in literary terms. Of course its all subjective, but it might help answer some questions about what makes a book "good" or "bad". Here's a few highlights from http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020624/epic_fantasy.shtml:

"Two of the most common complaints about epic fantasy are that it is dominated by series, and that most of those series are formulaic and of low quality. As a longtime reader of the genre, I cannot argue either point. Most of the fantasy series I've read over the course of my life have ranged from mediocre to downright wretched. And yet the few excellent books I found were sufficient to keep me sifting through an endless morass of Tolkien clones and gaming-derived fiction, wondering all the while why so much of what I found was so awful.

The traditional response to why much epic fantasy is bad is that the genre is exhausted, with each new book or series drawing on the same patterns as its commercially successful predecessors. But while there is more than a grain of truth in that complaint, the explanation is insufficient. After all, Tolkien drew extensively on Celtic and Norse mythology as well as the patterns found in the works of authors like Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison when he wrote The Lord of the Rings, and writers have rehashed the legends of Camelot and King Arthur for centuries. Modern works as such as Sean Stewart's Nobody's Son and George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire are only further evidence that nothing is inherently wrong with stories that use magic swords, dragons, and other elements from fairy tales and folklore. Ultimately, the problems which plague many epic fantasies are not a result of the exhaustion of the traditional elements of fantasy as much as a symptom of the inexcusably crude manner in which they are used on the page.

All fiction requires a balance between elements of the strange and the familiar. But where strangeness in a contemporary novel may be restricted to personal idiosyncrasies on the part of the characters, in a fantasy it must be more pronounced, as evinced by significant differences between the world of the story and that of contemporary reality. Over years of commercial exploitation, however, many elements of strangeness in fantasy have been used so badly they have come to seem mundane, and where once readers thrilled to tales of knights and dragons, they yawn at cover copy promising thrilling quests and look for something less tedious to read about.

The question of what makes an epic fantasy bad is a misleading one, as it implies that the criteria for quality in epic fantasy are separate from those of any other realm of literature. There is nothing more harmful to the literary health of a genre than the belief that its works are subject to special standards of evaluation. Though, as John Gardner says in The Art of Fiction, every work of literature "must be judged primarily, though not exclusively, by its own laws," this is not the same as saying that the author of an adventure story is relieved of the obligation to portray emotionally convincing characters because characterization is not the main focus of their work. Epic fantasy can reasonably be expected to possess a distinctive setting, realistic characters, and a coherent and interesting narrative structure. This list is far from exhaustive or complete, but an examination of much of the epic fantasy on bookstore shelves will show that it fails to satisfactorily fulfill at least one, if not all, of the criteria listed above.

There are two primary ways in which authors can misuse language in epic fantasy. The first is to have the narrative voice slip into a tone inappropriate to the subject being discussed. The second is to have the characters speak in a way that is inappropriate to their character and circumstances.

Even if an author manages to keep anachronisms and ichor from drenching their prose, they still must depict a world that is not only distinct from the generic fantasyland of much recent fiction, but also emotionally and logically convincing. Once again, the tone an author is striving for is crucial. A high fantasy with an elevated tone and clear moral distinctions between the protagonists and their opponents will call for a dramatically different backdrop than a story of ambiguous morality and realistic social concerns. The first will lie closer to the idealized world of fairy tales than the latter, which calls for a world more like the historical middle ages, mired in excrement, violence, and poverty. The works of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis's Narnia books are high fantasy, for example, while the works of Sean Stewart and George R. R. Martin are not.

No matter how fascinating the world a story is set in may be, if the characters it concerns are uninteresting or underdeveloped, the story will be a failure. Even more than sloppy world creation and the misuse of language, failures of characterization plague the epic fantasy novel.

What is often referred to as a story's "plot" is an extremely abstracted description of a story's narrative structure, telling the person who hears it little to nothing about the actual arrangement of fictive elements that form the text. This is why though two stories may be share essentially the same "plot," they may vary widely in their actual texts and the quality thereof. It is all but impossible to generalize about successful narrative structures, since any time a novel demonstrates how one may be used to good effect, another one will come along and use a similar or identical structure very badly.

because of the current publishing climate, it is rare that a work of epic fantasy will be complete within two covers, or that it will escape unsequeled, as authors and publishers attempt to build up profitable franchises. While there is nothing wrong with the multi-volume fantasy if all the volumes function independently or were planned as part of a single work, I submit that the pursuit of fantasy franchises is one of the greatest enemies of quality in the genre, because the influence of market forces often results in having a popular novel or series of novels rehashed ad nauseum, with plot arcs suspended indefinitely by the neck until dead.

I will refer to the two easiest means of extending a fantasy series beyond its natural lifespan as the Jordan method and the Eddings method, though neither method is exclusive to or was originated by the writer I have named it for. The Jordan method involves the maintenance of the status quo from book to book in the same way a television series aiming for syndication maintains the status quo: putting the characters through a combination of trivial events that change nothing, or a series of "important" events which cancel each other out, changing nothing and advancing the story only minutely. The Eddings method involves a repetition of story structure from book to book or series to series, so that even if the characters involved in a book or series are different from those in the author's previous work, the reader can immediately recognize them and their situation as parallel to that of the work they enjoyed last time. Both methods are reassuring to the reader, promising them more of what they enjoyed before, which accounts for their appeal. Both methods also undermine the literary and emotional power of the stories they tell, because they rely upon the robotic repetition of story structure. And since these methods are the easiest methods of continuing a successful series, their fruits requiring less thought to produce than books with original narrative structures or genuine conclusions, they have all but drowned the few sequels or connected works of value on the shelves.

Le Guin argues in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" that the products of such assembly-line literary production are not fantasy because their authors "use all the trappings of fantasy without ever actually imagining anything." Sadly, the day that such a definitional argument might have had any power is gone, as the works of Jordan, Brooks, Goodkind, et. al. are already marked as fantasy on their spines. Genre critics must content themselves with the observation that they are bad fantasy, not only because they fail as literature, but because instead of making the commonplace strange and wondrous again, they turn the rich ore of myth, folklore, and magic into mundane lead.

What, then, are the sources of quality in epic fantasy? An unwillingness on the part of an author to settle for work that is shoddy, incoherent, clichéd, or otherwise trivial or superficial, joined to a commitment to the research and invention necessary to make an imagined world come to life on its own terms. This requires an awareness not only of the field's current state but of its history and original sources, in order to be aware of which elements of the genre have been abused and overused, and know how one might make readers see them as new again. It requires diligence, taste, and craft. It requires, in short, writing as seriously and as well as possible. . . "

 

[Lilly]

J.R.R Tolkien


























No, just kidding. But that sure got your attention, didn't it?

I tried reading Swell Foop by Piers Anthony once, and hated it so much I couldn't finish. It read as if it were supposed to be humorous, and yet it had no discernible trace of humor in it. Or at least, no deliberate humor. The book was about centaurs, and it seemed one of the key plot points was that female centaurs are quite comfortable prancing around with no shirts on. How sexy is that? It's pretty hard to improve upon naked mythic boobies, but Piers outdid himself by pointing out that, since centaurs don't walk smoothly but rather cantor, these were no ordinary naked mythic boobies. These were bouncing naked mythic boobies.

It actually gets worse than that, but I'm not going to elaborate for fear of rousing the ire of the forum moderators. Suffice it to say, Swell Foop is like a cross between humorless comedy and really, really nerdy porn. As such, if you are looking for a "so bad it's good" sort of tale, I cannot recommend Swell Foop highly enough.

 

[Eagleashcroft]

I Agree with Nightsorrow that JK Rowling is bad

Actually Rowling's Potter series is not all that great as past writers have written in a simular style, but what turns heads is something real original that no one else has ever thought of. The trouble with so many authors is they get inspired from other author's works when what makes a greater writer is coming up with something so different that nothing comes close. When an author can put his or hers character in the book and live the events as if you were one of the characters then you can create your own outcome apart from any other story and not have to copy some one else's ideas. Nightsorrow has the eye to see this difference which sets this person apart in seeing the whole picture,

 

[Spiral]

Ok so I think most people here can agree that brooks Eddings and Goodkind can be very bad, but might i also recommend Guy Gavriel Kay's first book The Summer tree. Am i the only one that found the characters casual acceptance of being taken into another world as stupid?

 

[sick-boy]

I don't care much for RA Salvatore actually. His books are descent when read all by themselves, but when I tried to read them all in a row, I noticed A LOT of recycled analogies and similies, as well as every Drizzt fight scene sounding the same after a while.
So now I try to just read one, and then read some other stuff before picking up the next book in the series.

 

[DavidS]

THE DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES (Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman) tops my list of bad. THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY (Guy Gavriel Kay) is the worst except for DL CHRONICLES.

THE BOOK OF WORDS (J.V. Jones) can't quite be called bad. It's readable, if unoriginal and cliche-ish with a stock plot and thin characterization.

I expect the flaws in THE BOOK OF WORDS and THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY have a common cause: they were both early efforts by their respective authors, for both of whom their later work is said to be much superior.

 

[bearhat]

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs; I loved his first two Tarzan books, and I thought I was gonna love his Mars books, but I only got halfway through this very short first volume in the series. Burroughs' writing in this has to be some of the driest stuff I've ever read.

I totally agree with Zsinj about Burroughs Mars books - dull. I think I tried several of them, and read The Chessmen of Mars in full. The Pellucidar stuff was mildly better, if I recall. Mildly.

Also, Terry Brooks, Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold was pretty atrocious, and its sequels. Oh and L. E. Modesitt, Jr. ugh... And Don't get me started on Dragonlance Chronicles [shudder].

Thanks to many warnings, I have the (mis)fortune not to have read Goodkind or Wurts so can't comment on either.

 

[Elehzya]

I agree on Eddings and Brooks.

I think that if you want real bad fantasy, go to:
Trudi Canavan
Karen Miller
and (hides from murderers)
Anne McCaffrey's Pern books.

Very ugh.

 

[DavidS]

I totally agree with Zsinj about Burroughs Mars books - dull. I think I tried several of them, and read The Chessmen of Mars in full. The Pellucidar stuff was mildly better, if I recall. Mildly.

Also, Terry Brooks, Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold was pretty atrocious, and its sequels. Oh and L. E. Modesitt, Jr. ugh... And Don't get me started on Dragonlance Chronicles [shudder].

Thanks to many warnings, I have the (mis)fortune not to have read Goodkind or Wurts so can't comment on either.

I liked L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s RECLUCE SAGA. Most of those stories are good in a workmanlike way. There's a persistent bit of trouble with occasional confusion of place names or units of measurement. I remember once "Recluce" appeared in the text where "Fairhaven" would have been proper - and Recluce was an especially improper place to get Fairhaven confused with because the two regions were having a Cold War of sorts. Candar and Recluce are switched a few times. And once (I forget which book) a kay (probably a kilometer) is used where a cubit (probably 1.5 feet) would be more reasonable as an estimate of distance (the width of a river). The stories needed closer attention by an editor, but the stories themselves were pretty good.

I agree with you, on the other hand, about The Dragonlance Chronicles. Man they were bad.

I liked David Eddings fairly well, but let us keep our perspective. He's good, but he's not as good as Robin Hobb or Jack Vance. I'd put Eddings on a par with Modesitt: workmanlike, dependable for a pleasant read, but not right at the leading edge of the top rung of the fantasy ladder.

 

[Gildor]

THE BOOK OF WORDS (J.V. Jones) can't quite be called bad. It's readable, if unoriginal and cliche-ish with a stock plot and thin characterization.

Yar, I agree with the Book of Words comments, it really wasn't that bad, it was just well .. dull.

 

[LauraT]

I didn't finish The Kingless Land by Ed Greenwood. I was excited about the Band of Four books, because I thought that Ed Greenwood should be able to put out a great fantasy book. Wrong. I ordered the first three Band of Four books, positive I would love them. Wrong. I read the first chapter in The Kingless Land three times and gave up. I never even opened the other two.

 

[Zsinj]

I forgot to mention a big stinker; Eragon! What a massive oversight on my part! I don't dare mention my feelings about it in my house, knowing that my sister is a huge fan and she will probably knock my block off for it, but I thought the book was absolutely abysmal! I didn't even make it 1/4 of the way into it it was so bad! Basically, I felt what many of the folks here have expressed when they read it; that it was basically a ripoff of Dragonlance, LOTR, and Star Wars, with most of the ripoff being from Dragonlance, imo with the dragonriders and whatnot. Now normally, I've enjoyed the traditional fantasies that I've read, but this one was, well like I said, just plain abysmal! The reviewer in the magazine Realms of Fantasy even said that he would be very surprised if George Lucas and Tolkien Estates didn't sue Paolini!
I watched the movie too, by the way, and I just thought "Meh." The only things I liked about it were the scenes where Eragon battled those mummy-like things and Durza on his giant bat-demon creature with his dragon Saphira. Other than that, I didn't care much for it, in fact I almost fell asleep during the first half of it in the theatre! But, out of morbid curiosity, I'll probably go see the second and third film adaptations, but don't expect me to be excited about them like I was about the movie 300 or will be about Spiderman 3 or Pirates 3!


Edit: I also remember another bad one; Adrian Cole's "Omaran Saga". I shudder everytime I think of it! I almost made it through the first book, but I got so disgusted with it that I just chucked it. It was chock full of paper-thin characters, stereotypical plot cliched beyond belief, the worst, most pathetic world-building I've ever seen, and just plain abysmal writing.

 

[GreyMantle]

That's a lot of exclamation points.
Well, I think I'm now going to read some Newcombe and Goodkind, if just to see how bad they are.

 

[Avi_stetto]

Probably one of the worst books is Ian Irvine's A Shadow on the Glass. I couldn't get through it to save my life. Another one I couldn't get through was Dusk by Tim Lebbon. His style didn't work with me, and the plot seemed pretty rehashed, extra gore added.

 

[Skylark]

J.R.R Tolkien

No, just kidding. But that sure got your attention, didn't it?

Why is it when someone mentions Tolkien as a bad writer, they are automatically in defensive mode?

I personally don't think Tolkien is that great of a writer. He is an unbelievable world-builder, if you are into that sort of thing, but his writing is quite dry and his characters one-dimensional. I found it hard to connect with any of them except for Sam. I also thought the series was too long. It should have gone straight from The Fellowship of the Ring to The Return of the King, skipping the tedious and unnecessary Two Towers.

LOTR was the first fantasy I ever read. If I had used that example in my decision-making to read other works of the genre, I would never have read any other fantasy authors. I would have missed out on a lot.

 

[catsrule1]

I totally agree with Zsinj about Burroughs Mars books - dull. I think I tried several of them, and read The Chessmen of Mars in full. The Pellucidar stuff was mildly better, if I recall. Mildly.

I think a lot of the enjoyment with reading ERB's books, and probably most of the writers of the early to mid 20th century, would depend on the readers perspective. I tried rereading Burroughs, Kline, John Campbell, and E.E.Doc Smith several years ago - and just couldn't make it through them. And, I am afraid I have to add Jack Vance to the group. While they may be great writers (or not) when it comes to imagination, style of prose, alliteration, imagery, and word choice - the story line and settings are just not that 'new', and no longer capture my attention.

And, even though Rimworlder hates to hear the word, I think the writing is just 'dated'. The ideas have been written about thousands of times SINCE they wrote, and the later (last 20-30 years) writers have matured in style and plot development beyond them. And the stories are just not 'novel' anymore, even though at one time they were the cutting edge of literature. The same way as when I first played a Star Trek computer game 35 years ago - just simple dots and "v's" on the screen. Then it was the best, now it would look like my computer just froze up.

I must admit, though, when I read them 40 years ago, they were exciting and like nothing else I had read before. Their place in literature is for current reading, yes, but mainly in the history of scifi and fantasy. They were the pioneers, and their writings are the stuff of legend and awe, along with many of the other earlier writers. They started what we now read and enjoy as SCIFI/FANTASY and compare them to. I wonder if your children, and my grandchildren, will feel the same way about Hamilton, Erikson, Hobb and all of the rest of the modern bestsellers? Probably - and ERB and the rest I enjoyed as a child will be relegated to the stature of Poe and Wells, as we think of them today. What a great, and evolving, field of literature.

 

[Irrelevant]

Hobb, Erikson, and Martin being cliched by the time I introduce my grand-children-possibly great-great-grandchildren at the rate of technological advancement-to fantasy as being cliched? Sadly it could be true. You know the rich guy/girl falling in love with the common guy/girl plot? Tolstoy and Jane Austen invented that plot so long ago. It makes me shudder to think about it.

There's plenty of 'bad fantasy' out there to be sure, but fantasy as a literary genre is a lot like action as a film genre. Bad story and bad characters can be saved by "hi-octane action sequences." That's where I put the works of Salvatore.

However, there are moves like Boondock Saints, which combine action with great storytelling. That's where I place Erikson and Martin. It takes a long time to get to the action, but by the time you get to it, it really means something to the reader.

Salvatore is still fun though.

 

[Alex]

Dear god in heaven... How can I be the first one to mention David Drake and his Lord of the isles on page 3 (!!!) in a thread about bad fantasy??

Shocked...