What's the worst fantasy novel ever IYO?

Hands down (and I mean way down) to Anselm Audley's first book, Heresy.

Sigh. It looks like Simon & Schuster, taking a one up from Knopf Books (publisher of Christopher Paolini's Eragon), decided to manufacture a teenage fantasy writer of their very own.

And as expected, his book reads like a teenage creative effort--something that should be locked into a truck and shoved into a deep, dark basement so as never to see the light of day. Why this travesty was actually published is confounding.

The book is exactly what the title proposes it to be: An act of Heresy upon the English language. It's gramamtically unsound, ravishingly banal, putrefyingly boring--an indelible denigration of the novel form.

Its got a plot held together by toothpicks, a story so boring it would put a dead man to sleep, and characters about as interesting as a George Bush speech.

Shuffle over Robert Stanek, move over Robert Newcomb, make some space Terry Goodkind, Audrian Hudley is here to join your ranks as one of the worst fantasy writers ever.
 
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George Bush speeches are often funny ("I know how hard it is to put food on your family", "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully" "Rarely is the question asked 'Is our children learning'" etc) - if it's the worst fantasy novel ever, I doubt that it'd be funny
 
alison said:
Fwiw: I think Tehanu an incredibly beautiful and thoughtful book, Le Guin at her stripped lyrical best; the account, in particular, of the love between Ged and Tenar is very moving and true. Though maybe you have to be old and sad to see how beautiful it really is. (And I don't see how being feminist is a problem; but I would say that Tehanu is no more feminist than the earlier books are masculinist). The Other Wind was good, but not a patch on Tehanu.
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Tehanu is cool. It's my favourite Earthsea book by a long way. My favourite part was Tenar's line "so who's bed are you sleeping in tonight Ged? Mine, or the childs?" (that sounds a bit dodgy but anyone whose read the book will understand).
 
Extremely Well Put!

AZNdragon said:
I absoultely loved The Wayfarer Redemption series, but i hated the runelords... i think that the worst series ever written is probably david eddings. i liked it when i was younger, but now it's just sooo immature. i mean, garion's just a bumbling farmboy, ce'nedra's a spoiled brat, all of the races are just generalized... look at the tolnedrans, they all love money, alorns are berserking drunk people... i read a very interesting e-mail i found which i'll copy here now:

THE BELGARIAD. A great big quintology about a farm boy who learns
that he is really the heir to the throne and possesses tremendous
magical power. Naturally, he must claim the throne, start a war, and
quest across the country to stop a dark lord from doing bad stuff. He
is accompanied by many colorful companions from various countries,
most of whom are stereotyped examples of their cultures: ie, all
Tolnedrans are savvy and greedy, all Ulgos are fanatically religious,
all the horse-nomad people are austere and bloodthirsty in a noble
way, etc.

THE MALLOREAN. A time loop causes the events of the Belgariad to occur
all over again, to mostly the same people. This is not my sarcastic
way of implying that THE MALLOREAN is a scene-by-scene retread of THE
BELGARIAD. It is actually explained in the text that this is what's
going on. The audacity of this excuse to write the same quintology
twice leaves me breathless.

Eddings has written other books, which I have avoided like the plague
I suspect them to be. My comments below refer only to the quintologies
mentioned above.

When people refer to "extruded fantasy product," this is the sort of
thing they're talking about. It doesn't mean that it's utterly without
redeeming value, but that it is mostly or entirely unoriginal and
inspired by the work of others (usually Tolkien); that it possesses
many stereotyped and cliched characters, occurrances, and themes; and
that it has a (subjective, of course) cranked-out feel to it.

I will credit Eddings for telling a lively story, which captivated me
when I was sixteen and less critical. However, the flaws in his
writing make him unreadable to me now.

1. The majority of the characters possess a truly stunning stupidity
and/or lack of emotional maturity. The farmboy Garion is a blockhead.
His girlfriend Ce'Nedra is a spoiled brat. The two five thousand year
old wizards who are looking after him, Belgarath and Polgara, behave
like a pair of bossy teenagers, and repeatedly conceal information
from him that he, and their own cause, would have been better off had
they revealed it. There are not one, but two, dunderheaded knights.
Even the gods are idiots who require a good talking-to. (What did they
THINK would happen to the people who were created without a god to
guide them?) Everyone ponders totally unmysterious prophecies, and
never figures them out. When a man described as "the man with two
lives" is killed, everyone howls melodramatically. Gee, think he'll be
resurrected?

This makes the only character who isn't a moron, the rat-faced little
man, Silk, steal the show. He drinks! He wisecracks! He gambles! He
tells Garion useful things! He's a spy! He's a prince! He's tragically
and secretly in love with his married aunt! He has another tragic
secret involving his mother! The rat-faced little man is by far the
most fun character in the entire canon, no doubt about it. Which
brings me to...

2. The terrible, repetitive writing style. Silk is described as "a
rat-faced little man" about once for every year Belgarath has been
alive. No can just say anything without an adjective attached: he said
slyly, she said sheepishly, they bellowed loudly. Most horribly,
Eddings is overly fond of weasel words such as "like," "sort of" and
"kind of." They are kind of scattered across every page, sort of like
confetti, and once you, like, notice this, you will never be able to
read Eddings again.

I'm not even going to get into the stunningly immature treatment of
sex: "Baby!" "Chair!" "Baby!" Those who have read will understand, and
shudder in appalled memory.

Rachel
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I believe that trying to nominate a single worst book is impossible when certain authors give you so many to choose between. Unfortunately you also have a fair selection of authors fighting for this honour as well. My top two contenders would be David Eddings and Terry Brooks, both guilty of preying on the weak and gullible for profit.

I will accept that their individual books may not be quite as hideous as some of the solo offerings out there. However I would contend that the cumulative effect gets them the prize handsdown. Every time I walk into a bookshop and see yet another 'new' book by one of these two I shake my head in disbelief!
 
Wow, wonder if my tastes run so low that I actually am the only one unfortunate enough to have read this book, or if I'm just an oddball, but Katherine Kerr's Daggerspell caused brain hemorrhaging. I can normally kludge through a book, but omg...and I even sorta liked the first few Goodkinds and sorta enjoyed Jordan until last few anyway. I still keep it on the shelf to remind me, now and again, of what a truly terrible book is like. :cool:
 
lordnarvinye said:
Wow, wonder if (...) I actually am the only one unfortunate enough to have read this book, or if I'm just an oddball
(...)
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Well, the first part of your sentence can't be true, since I read Daggerspell as well. As for the second part - hey, maybe we're both oddballs? If so, I claim to be a bigger oddball than you, since I remember enjoying the book. So there :p !
 
I thought Elizabeth Haydon's "Symphony of the Ages Trilogy" was pretty bad. Since Luis Royo did the covers, I thought the series would be a lot more action-packed and gritty, but what I got were three books full of mushy soap opera feminist fluff. It was so bad, I didn't even bother reading the third book! True, it did have a couple of good characters and races, such as the Dhracians, Firbolg, and the demonic F'dor, and Achmed and Grunthor, but the plot was so obscenely simplified and overshadowed by all the feminist overly-romantic mush. I turned out to be very dissapointed in this trilogy. :mad:
 
I too stopped a quarter into the second book for those reasons. It's simply boredom. I'll finish the trilogy off eventually, but not with more exciting Erikson on offer.
 
I havent read much fantasy but did find Terry Goodkind's Naked Empire a waste of my life!!!
 
i read the first chapter of Haydon and gave up.......
but a book thats even worse, is this series called the Dragon King Saga by Stephen Lawson or some thing like that.....
it has no detail watsoever.....reads like a 10 year old wrote it
 
The plot was so obscenely simplified and overshadowed by all the feminist overly-romantic mush.
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Er - I know I'm in danger of turning into the Germaine Greer of the message boards. But mushy romantic fluff doesn't sound remotely feminist to me. It does sound rather like the stuff that feminism often argues against, tho. ;)
 
I was thinking of a Mortal Love purchase, an intelligent if not challenging read I hear . . .
 
Zsinj said:
I thought Elizabeth Haydon's "Symphony of the Ages Trilogy" was pretty bad. Since Luis Royo did the covers, I thought the series would be a lot more action-packed and gritty, but what I got were three books full of mushy soap opera feminist fluff. It was so bad, I didn't even bother reading the third book! True, it did have a couple of good characters and races, such as the Dhracians, Firbolg, and the demonic F'dor, and Achmed and Grunthor, but the plot was so obscenely simplified and overshadowed by all the feminist overly-romantic mush. I turned out to be very dissapointed in this trilogy. :mad:
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If you are talking about the books with Rhapsody as the protagonist, then I agree that it was a terrible series focusing on romance in a heavy handed, clunky manner. However, like Alison, I must point out that romance does not equal feminism. Some romance novels quite clearly veer away from the feminist perspective alarmingly. However this series, other than the descent into the tree in the first book was trite and clumsy, and would not in my opinion constitute good writing, feminism, romance or action.
 
This isnt a stab at robert jordans work in general but "Crossroads of twilight" is sooo bad. I m still reading it and its so difficult to finish. I read Flight of the Nighthawks which i finished in about 2 days. It was fantastic.

I just read the synopsis for "knife of dreams" and im again dissapointed.Its the same old stuff with seanchan treaties and the far too delayed tarmon gaidon. Also Jordan uses a lot of dialogue to describe what horses are doing. Totally pointless.
 
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Jordan's work has been repetive for some time now. Starting around book 6/7/8, his work has slowly gone downhill.
 
I havent read alot of crappy fantasy books luckily. Though two series I hate are Terry Goodkinds Sot, Eragon (and eldest).
 
Give paolini a break. He started writing ERagon at 15! One can only hope that his writing dose mature though in the future.
 
Nightsorrow said:
Give paolini a break. He started writing ERagon at 15! One can only hope that his writing dose mature though in the future.
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So did Robert Howard and Michael Moorcock (well, they started in their mid-teens as well, I don't know whether it was exactly at 15) - and they were still a lot better writers. Someone shouldn't get published because they're young, they should get published because they deserve to be.
 
The thing to remember is that Paolini's books were originally targeted at children. The storyline is pretty juvenile. My nieces are 9 and 11 and love them.

I know that Rowling and CS Lewis wrote for children, too, and their books are equally loved by adults. I think very few authors have the ability to make a children/adult crossover that really works.

Seems to me that Paolini was a child writing for children. He's 21 now and finishing a storyline that was mapped out as he was hitting puberty. I bet his next story (not the 3rd Inheritence book) will be much better.

I wish I could have written that well at 15.
 
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