What's the worst fantasy novel ever IYO?

[Horsip]

Worst fantasy: Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker, esp. the 3rd book.

(Tehanu - the only book I could not read in the Earthsea series, it is torturously slow and boring).

I did like her liveship books however. You are spot on about "Tehanu".

 

[TheEvilKing]

Blood of Elves by Andrez Sapowski or whatever he's called. It's like reading an RPG written by 12 year-olds who want to write a "mature and dark" story... but they're twelve.

 

[Werthead]

Blood of Elves by Andrez Sapowski or whatever he's called. It's like reading an RPG written by 12 year-olds who want to write a "mature and dark" story... but they're twelve.

That appears to be down to a dubious translation. The bilingual Polish fans of Sapkowski seem to be very annoyed with the English translation of his books and I suspect that's probably got something to do with the lengthy delays on the translations of the other books.

 

[TheEvilKing]

That appears to be down to a dubious translation. The bilingual Polish fans of Sapkowski seem to be very annoyed with the English translation of his books and I suspect that's probably got something to do with the lengthy delays on the translations of the other books.

I think that may well be so, as I've heard nothing but good things about the original and translations into other languages, such as Spanish.

 

[UnaDormienda]

Worst book even

I don't know for sure, but if you ask me to name the "Worst Fantasy Novel That I've Read All The Way Through" there's only one contender:

Blue Moon Rising aka Darkwood
by Simon Green aka Simon R Green

(I think the R was added to the name along the line somewhere, perhaps he's working up to adding another R to sound even more classy? I've included this info to make it easier for everybody to avoid.)

I bought this on a recommendation from Interzone Magazine, shortly after it was published, in 1980 so you can tell what a fossil I am. After reading it I cancelled my subscription.

The author can't plot, he can't do characters or dialogue, his fantasy world is thinner than cellophane and as full of holes as St Sebastian.

He's also lazy. He can't even be bothered to make up fantasy names for his places and people - yes, eye-splitting celtic jumbles of letters are not de rigeur for fantasy, but he could have been more original than "the Forest Kingdom", surely.

But, oh dear, he can tell a story; or at least he has the knack of making you wonder what is going to happen next. He has that in spades. He even appears to use the advanced technique of making you believe that this must all make sense in the end because otherwise it would never have been published.

So I dragged my sorry brain to the last sentence of the last page before throwing it across the room in incredulity and disgust. Then in a fit of altruism I wrapped it in brown paper and put it in the bin. I wasn't going to give it house-space, but I couldn't in all humanity send it to charity, and I'd have felt dishonest selling it. It was better that no-one else was harmed.

At least it taught me that the ability to write a compelling story was not the be-all and end-all, (even in fantasy, where publishers seem to think that the buyers have a low literary threshold). For me, story telling is absolutely neccessary, but it really isn't anywhere near sufficient. From then on I learned to spot the signs. "Bin before you get sucked in".

 

[jbooks]

Wow, someone else backs up my choice. Those excerpts are priceless, btw...

I would have to agree with both of you!

I am surprised more people have not named this one! Although i have not read through all 20 pages of the thread...

 

[Johnny B]

I just read "Dies the Fire" by S.M. Stirling and it was an utter piece of crap.

For those who have never read/heard the plot: Taking place in our world, some unknown force suddenly renders anything electrical or any type of explosive weapon inoperable. Within a week everyone in the US either died, degenerated into savage cannibals, or decided it would be a good idea to make medieval weapons and armor and live like it was the middle ages.

The plot was completely unbelievable from beginning to end with waaaay to many coincidences happening to drive the plot. Seriously, how many people do you know can make bows and swords? Well, every other person that our main cast ran into just happened to have this or some other bizarre skill needed to survive.

This first one left me no desire to plod on with the rest of this series which has now become "Emberverse" or something like that.

 

[Loerwyn]

Anything by Tolkien that isn't the Hobbit (or maybe LotR).

I'm sorry all Tolkien fans, but The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin are the most boring, confusing dribble I've ever read. I gave up with both after just a few pages. The first bit of CoH could easily be done as a family tree and made much, much less confusing.

 

[mshnd06]

What a useful thread. As I suffer from OCD I actually cannot abort once I've started, so I am rather grateful that I've been given the heads up regarding Newcomb and Stanek - gifts presently taking up residence on my shelves.

I find it amusing that so many have been nearly inspired to careers as hack writers by the truly heinous. For me it was Terry Goodkind, Dan Brown and, yes, Ayn Rand...How the hell do they top bestseller lists, modern library reader polls, etc...

I'm a piss-poor writer but even I could pen some of that dross.

SF but any discussion of worst ever needs at least a passing mention of my all-time fav...Unicorn Riders of the Orb!

 

[Canaris]

Lord of the Isles & Runelords.
By far the very worst ever

Then, close callers:
And all the WOT dribbles after book 4.

The Thomas Covenant books made me feel depressed and horribel.

( and now some will fall over me)
A Cavern of Black Ice I thought was extremely boring.

 

[Canaris]

Magician by Raymond Feist

Absolutely absurd. The corniest crap I've just about ever read.

"I AM POWER!!!!"

Bwhawhahahahhahahaha

Everyone the right to his opinion but this is nothing short of Blasphemia!!

 

[Alex]

Everyone the right to his opinion but this is nothing short of Blasphemia!!

A Cavern of Black Ice I thought was extremely boring

One of my best reads of the decade=) I'm also somewhat surprised to see people choosing "assaissins apprentice" as their worst fantasy. That's also one of my all time favourites.

Worst books for me so far are (so bad that I couldn't finish em),

Wanderers Tale by David Bilsborough
Stormcaller - Tom Lloyd
David Drake - Lord of the Isles

and hold on to your hats....

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

I just found this novell to be so mindnumbingly boring. I have yet to find a slower-paced book than this and I remember thinking "when will it become good" and "it'll prolly pick up the pace in the next 100 pages or so" the whole time while reading it.

 

[chokipokilo]

"Redemption of Althalus" is definitely the worst book I've read in any genre. There was nothing good about it. "Lord Foul's Bane" was pretty bad as well.

I read these books back to back when I first started reading fantasy, and they almost made me quit the genre all together. Luckily I found out about Sanderson, Martin, Bakker, Lynch, Ruthfuss, etc.

 

[Seegee]

"Redemption of Althalus" is definitely the worst book I've read in any genre. There was nothing good about it. "Lord Foul's Bane" was pretty bad as well.

I read these books back to back when I first started reading fantasy, and they almost made me quit the genre all together. Luckily I found out about Sanderson, Martin, Bakker, Lynch, Ruthfuss, etc.

I'd have to agree with Althalus. That was dreadful. Then again once you'd read one Eddings you'd pretty much read them all.

 

[NYCfan]

Sword of Shanara
Wanderer's Tale
Anything after the first Lord of the Isles book ( I got halfway into the fourth)
Someone mentioned Vellum which I think was a failure, but not horrible in the sense of most of the stuff on this thread. The writing is excellent, it's an ambitious effort; he just bit off more than he could chew and the whole thing collapses into an incoherent mess. But plenty of points for effort and talent.

 

[Sang de poulpe]

I really didn't like the Farseer trilogy, I have read it until the first half of the third book and I couldn't get no more of it. With the same theme (assassins etc...) I really do prefer the night angel trilogy.

 

[Johnny B]

I really didn't like the Farseer trilogy, I have read it until the first half of the third book and I couldn't get no more of it.......

But does it really deserve the title of the "worst fantasy novel ever"? There are so many bad books and something as well written as the Farseer doesn't deserve that moniker even if it isn't your cup of tea. That's my opinion anyway.

 

[Obtuse]

Agreed, JB. There are a lot of fantasy books/series I don't like, but an author has to go above and beyond to produce something worth calling the worst ever. I can certainly understand some folks not liking the Farseer books, but I don't buy for a second that they are the worst fantasy ever written. If you are going to stand by that claim, Sang, I'm think you need to give us some justification for it.

 

[Sang de poulpe]

I agree with you. I didn't meant the worst ever written (I can't possibly juge that) just the worst I ever read. I do not doubt there is worse elsewhere...

Why I didn't like them?

Mostly because I couldn't get no more of this childish main character and the turn of the story in the third book was really something I didn't like, so I stopped.

 

[quajack]

I think this thread turned into "Books I don't particularly care for" a few pages ago. For example, I can say that both Dr Strange & Mr. Norelland Lord Foul's Bane are two of my least liked books, but I would never deign to call them the worst books ever. Just not my cup of tea is all.

I would say that Terry Goodkind's last 3 Sword of Truth novels are the worst. Take your pick. They're all equi-bad.