What's the worst fantasy novel ever IYO?

Honestly, the worst fantasy novel I've ever read was Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. The first four chapters all revolve around the hate festering inside this one particular man. It is the most repetitive, drawn out, gratuitous yawn I have ever read. It's the only novel I've read by Stephen King, and let me assure you, I will never even touch another one. It was awful.
 
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Interesting that someone else fund Robert Jordan's work boring (I did, but only read the first one).

In all honesty the worst writing I see is people who pretend to be Terry Pratchett but aren't poignant and certainly aren't funny.

They end up absolutely abominable writings.

Some examples of that are written by Matt Forbeck. They were so atrocious I was inspired to write a book in the same genre myself. So I did.
 
NickeeCoco said:
Honestly, the worst fantasy novel I've ever read was Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. The first four chapters all revolve around the hate festering inside this one particular man. It is the most repetitive, drawn out, gratuitous yawn I have ever read. It's the only novel I've read by Stephen King, and let me assure you, I will never even touch another one. It was awful.
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I enjoyed Eyes of the dragon of course I read it when I was young, I would give King another chance. He has some terrible books I won't deny that but when he is on it is some of the best literature out there. Long Walk and Needful Things spring to mind as great examples of his work.
 
DurzoBlint said:
I enjoyed Eyes of the dragon of course I read it when I was young, I would give King another chance. He has some terrible books I won't deny that but when he is on it is some of the best literature out there. Long Walk and Needful Things spring to mind as great examples of his work.
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I dunno. I found Eyes of the Dragon to be utterly dreadful, and it's going to take more than that to convince me to read something else by him. He really ruined it.
 
Eyes of the Dragon was King outside of his normal millieu. He's much better writing in a contemporary setting.
 
Like I said I read Eyes of the Dragon in school which as well over 20 years ago so I can't really speak to how dreadful it is. I was young and I remember I enjoyed it as a kid.

As an adult, you may have a difference of opinion. But his other novels are quite good. There is a reason why he is the master of horror novels. but even some of those are hit or miss.
 
DurzoBlint said:
As an adult, you may have a difference of opinion. But his other novels are quite good. There is a reason why he is the master of horror novels. but even some of those are hit or miss.
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I know. It's just hard to pick up a book by an author that's disappointed you in the past. I don't think I'll intentionally go out and pick one of his books up. If I'm given one, or see one laying about, I would most likely read it, if I didn't have anything else on the go.
 
I have to second everyone else with Faith of the Fallen. I didn't want to go on after that, but I forced myself through to Pillars of Creation. Mfriend managed to make it to Confessor, and called me telling me she couldn't believe she had wasted so much time with the worst series out there.
 
This thread was really helpful in showing me what fantasy to avoid, but unfortunately I didn't stumble across it soon enough to save myself from the agony of beginning Wizard's First Rule. I was ready to burn it at page 100, but continued on to page 200 before I threw it down in disgust. From what I've read on here, Goodkind's drivel only gets worse. I'm going to have to throw an honorable mention to Storm Front, the first and only Dresden File book I had the displeasure of reading as well.
 
Haven't read the whole thread but easily the worst fantasy novel EVER written beyond any doubt at all is The Spell of Rosette by Kim Falconer.

Oh my God. There are no words.

And I FINISHED the damned thing. I don't even care that I wasted money on it. But I'll never get the time back...
 
Eyes of the dragon

I agree with durzo - I remembered that book- Eyes of the dragon . Not bad book for childeren but 500pgs of fairytale?
 
NickeeCoco said:
Honestly, the worst fantasy novel I've ever read was Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. The first four chapters all revolve around the hate festering inside this one particular man. It is the most repetitive, drawn out, gratuitous yawn I have ever read. It's the only novel I've read by Stephen King, and let me assure you, I will never even touch another one. It was awful.
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If Eyes of the Dragon is the worst fantasy novel you have ever read your very lucky.

I read it as a teen and loved it - as an adult it did not hold up so well but I still think of it favourably on par with the Chronicles of Prydain maybe.

I have read a fair bit of King and the first several Dark Tower novels are awesome.
 
I read it when I was young, too. Still didn't get into it. But then again, I was into Terry Brooks at the time. (Nowadays, I've tried to re-read Terry Brooks and had to put it down after two chapters. BLECH.)

And yeah, maybe I am lucky, 'cos that's the only book that really pops out in my mind as utterly horrible. I usually always research books before I read them, maybe that helps to keep the flimflam away.
 
LeStat said:
I agree with durzo - I remembered that book- Eyes of the dragon . Not bad book for childeren but 500pgs of fairytale?
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Oh, and I have nothing against five hundred pages of fairy tale, if its done well.
 
burnsai said:
I know these are old threads but this would be hard to top.. Gygax going broke from pokemon?
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Hahah DUDE YOU WIN - I thought that was a parody and started laughing :)

Ultra super dragonball GT s**t - powerlelve 2000000000000000000000000000000 BUAAAHAHAHA ! Noooo I will power up even more 300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000! end of the univesum!
 
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Bremon said:
I'm inclined to agree. I haven't even read a book by Gygax...just the excerpts here, and, honestly, it just blows all my stuff out of the water.
halfway through the excerpts i honestly started to think "Is this a joke or an actual book?"

I normally like most books...but one book that I could not read was....
oh, crap, i forgot what it was called....but it was by Gene Wolfe, i think...some series that went "the warrior" "The wizard" etcetera

and what's with all this dissing of goodkind and salvatore? they are gods among men... of course, they were some of my early reads, so...

and, actually, i liked Webmage (and the consecutive books) Kelly McCullough is a good author and i look forward to reading more of his books.
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guys whatever you might say i'll give this gygax guy a go- hahahah - that is some crazy funny misunderstood parody s**t! Maybe if we look at it that way it could be funny as hell! - Gyags wins - gene wolfe BTW. is great writter, a bit crazy...
 
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I just finished the first book in the Thomas Covenant series and I found it to be horrible, to the point where I almost gave up reading it. Character development/descriptions was insufficient, the plot was rather boring and confusing, imagery left much to be desired, and the story as a whole was uninteresting. I didn't really like the style of writing either.

I'm so disappointed in this book, especially after having read many positive reviews from people on several different websites.
 
FirePrincess said:
Let there be no hating on Thomas Covenenant! Ahhh - stick with them, it all pays off.
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It pained me to say it, especially after reading how good the Covenant series is. I had trouble making it through the first book and I'm not sure how I'd make it through the second unless the story and writing gets ALOT better. I just read the Harry Potter series for the first time last month and I looked forward to every chance I got to sit down and read those books; With Covenant it felt more like a chore.
 
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I mistakenly gave my husband the Covenant books to introduce him to fantasy. Woops. He found Thomas Covenant himself so repellant that he only got about five chapters into it before he stopped and told me fantasy sucked and he was never reading any more. Woops again.

He's just tried again with Perdido Street Station and is now a `convert'. We just saw the sixth Harry Potter movie and he really wants to read that whole series as well. I keep telling him to - they're amazing.

But I don't see him trying Donaldson again.

My eldest brother likes Donaldson so much that he had the Gap series as his special subject when he was a contestant on The Einstein Factor (Australian quiz show).
 
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