What's the worst fantasy novel ever IYO?

Really, Robert Jordan? I'm more than halfway through Eye of the World right now and so far I've loved every second of it.

Anyway, I'm gonna have to point the finger at the Inheritance Cycle for being the worst series of fantasy books out there today. Sure, you can excuse Eragon if you like, he did start the book when he was around 16, but that is absolutely no excuse for the plot, which is so painfully unoriginal that I don't think there was a moment in it where I didn't know what was coming. And while it was marketed at children, it certainly contains the content of an adult novel (pile of corpses in that one little village, anyone?). I don't know for sure, but I think that Paolini didn't originally intend for it to be a child's book, it was just so damn juvenile that it didn't make sense in any other category. The blame for this probably lies mostly on the characters, which are all lackluster, childish, and two dimensional. Eragon himself has the mental capacity of a carrot, and the emotional ranges of all of Paolini's characters are shallow to a fault.


His newest book, Brisingr, is the worst of the three, and he was in his twenties when he wrote that particular pile of refuse, so no get out of jail free card there. His descriptions are awful and repetive. He also tells us that half of his characters smell like juniper trees, but hey, I guess that is a pretty word, possibly even pretty enough to warrant the hundred+ times he put it in his book.

This is one series that no one should waste their time and money on.
 
MElliott said:
Really, Robert Jordan? I'm more than halfway through Eye of the World right now and so far I've loved every second of it.
Click to expand...

I loved that one too. Just wait till you get to the third book in the series when there are about 3 pages on Rand. How does a series move forward when the main part of the plot is hardly mentioned?

I still love them and I plan to read all of them again when the last one comes out, but I understand the contempt some have.
 
The Runelords series as previously mentioned.

I actually read the first 3 or 4 books to complete the first storyline, I've seen that he's written more but I won't even touch them.

I thought he had some novel and interesting ideas, such as the branding and giving of attributes by vassals to their lords, as well as the idea of how being out of proportion with attributes could be detrimental, but the plot was terrible and predictable, the good ideas and elements just weren't utilized well. His characters were also one dimensional, boring, and unbelieveable.

I felt he had enough interesting ideas with which he could have made a great world and a great story, but I was constantly dissapointed in the followthrough. I kept reading the story arc (Got them all from the library, not one purchase), hoping that it would get better, instead, it just kept getting worse and worse.
 
Eldanuumea said:
(Irrelevant, I took care of your double-post.)

I don't know if I consider my self a "Martinista," but I must say that's a surprising pick for WORST fantasy. I was spellbound with the first chapter, myself.
Click to expand...

I didn't even get to the first chapter. The opening scene in the intro did it for me. Something about the methodic, cold, and utterly inhuman killing by the Others chilled me and made me think "ooooo, these are some bad bad monsters."
 
Wait a sec. You're quitting on a book from the first page. Many people think this is the best fantasy series of all time, and you're not even giving the thing a chance. At least read 100 pages before you make a decision that you don't like a series.

And if you really don't like the Others, I'll inform you that they only show up 3 or 4 times in the entire first 4 books. They don't seem to play that big a part early on, (but I suspect they'll be back.)

Worst book of all time for me....I'm not really sure. There was a couple I couldn't get through, like The Knight by Gene Wolfe and The Jaguar Knights by Dave Duncan, but that may have just been my mindset at the time. Most of the fantasy books I read are suggested by a lot of people on this forum, so I end up with pretty good books.

Also, I don't really find too many books bad from any genre because I tend to look for the things people like about them that cause them to get published. The Old Man and the Sea is the exception. Boring, boring book.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Althax was saying that it was the Prologue that got Althax addicted to the story and wanting to read more.
 
Well Seak, if that's true about Rand hardly being in the third one, I can see myself having some trouble reading it. I mean, it seems to me like he's the Dragon after all so, shouldn't he be a central character? He's probably my favorite POV character out of all of them. I can't stand Egwene though. A character like her doesn't belong in such an otherwise good book.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I'm just gonna repeat what I said before. Anything by Paolini is trash.
 
Seak's got the idea.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my statement but Eldanuuma's post about being hooked in chapter one, made me smile because I was hooked before I even got to chapter 1. That opening scene just got it's teeth into me.

No book I've ever read before or since has grabbed my attention so well.
 
Last edited:
MElliott said:
Really, Robert Jordan? I'm more than halfway through Eye of the World right now and so far I've loved every second of it.
Click to expand...

Maybe you last a bit longer before you start hoping that all the female characters in the books die horribly.
 
The Sword of Shannara. Having come so soon after Tolkien is no excuse for that horribly inept and aggressively blatant ripoff. Total POS.
 
oh, and any novel featuring a girl whose father had no sons or whatever and so raised her as a boy and so she can ride a horse and fight with a sword as good as any of the boys in the village etc.
 
The Redemption of Althalus, hands down worst ever.

If Eddings had vomited on his writing paper and let it dry it would have been a better read than this horrible 'book'. I hate the smug, self-righteous super hero characters, the flat writing style, and above all, the cutesy banter between Althalus and the cat-goddess. I wish this 'book' was a person so I could kick it in the a$$.
 
Agreed with the above. Althalus is the single most lamentable piece of awfulness the fantasy genre has ever ejaculated onto a bookshelf. To think, a tree had to die for this :(

On the plus-side, it pretty much convinced me that I could be a writer, and then Ian Irvine's "Shadow of the Glass" cemented my conviction.
 
Hm, I actually enjoyed the Shadow on the Glass series, but I ended up utterly hating Irvine's Well of Echoes series. Gah! I still feel sick thinking about what a total ordeal it was to get through that: problem being, I actually liked the first book. But after that it just got more and more annoying, the characters increasingly unlikeable and the plot steadily slow and pointless.

I'll agree as well with those that mentioned the Runelords series. I actually thought the concept behind it was a great idea, but after about 100 pages of book one, I gave up. I just couldn't stand it any more. I don't think Runelords is one of the worst fantasy books ever written though, it was just a book that I didn't like.

One title that I do think was poorly written was Salvatore's Demon Awakens. Gah. I'd been preasured into reading this title by some friends who were keen fans of the author, but I just couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I thought that the characters seemed very weak, (and I didn't care in the slightest about what happened to them) the pacing utterly awful and the plot fairly predictable.
 
Last edited:
Althax said:
I didn't even get to the first chapter. The opening scene in the intro did it for me. Something about the methodic, cold, and utterly inhuman killing by the Others chilled me and made me think "ooooo, these are some bad bad monsters."
Click to expand...

Shame then that the prologue is a giant red herring.
 
I actually hated the Wheel of Time after the first 2 books.. I ended up hating Rand... it was the most drawn out boring waste of a time of a series that i have ever read. The only books worse are the books after time of the twins. They milked those dragonlance chronicles for all they were worth..... horrible. The Wheel of Time by Jordan is like making love without climaxing.. ever.
 
Memnoch said:
This is easy...Dance of Demons without a shadow of a doubt. And they say bad things about Ed Greenwood...wait till you see this one.

Let me tell you - Gary Gygax definitely created the uber-munchkin concept with the culmination of his central character, Gord the Rogue, first introduced in Saga of Old City and Artifact of Ultimate Evil (I'll skip the descriptives for Gord and his cohorts as I'm assuming that if you've managed to get this far you know who they all are). Elminster seriously looks like a shrimp compared to this guy. At this stage of the saga (I think there are seven books ahead of it) Gord's still human (using that term very loosely), but he's got about a zillion innate powers and godlike abilities.

In one sequence he kills about two THOUSAND demons (I kid you NOT) by himself, while his partner (also human) kills another two thousand. All this happens in one encounter.

In another one he faces off with the Reaper, Nerull, Lord of Hades, also known as Infestix, also known as the supreme leader of the yugoloths (daemons) and kicks his ass.

Did I say that Gord, at this stage, is not even thirty years old?

Dance of Demons has to be the WORST book I've ever read - Gary, who is rightly regarded as the father of D&D, must've gone completely dry on ideas and penned this for the money. His former narrative brilliance, so much in evidence in Saga of Old City and Artifact of Ultimate Evil, raised hopes that he was one of the few D&D writers who could stand among the contemporary fantasy crowd (or to a young - at the time - muppet like myself, he seemed like one, anyway). But this book is a shocker. No suspense, no twists, nothing but Super-Gord cutting a swathe through every single thing. It's D&D munchkinism at its absolute worst.

Gord is now the Champion of Balance (Good and Evil are BOTH undesirable) and is IMPERVIOUS to defeat and demon lords like Graz'zt, Demogorgon, Mandrillagon and Orcus, as well as daemonkings like Anthraxus and Infestix, and the Dukes Infernal (Asmodeus and Co.) quail before his relentless onslaught. And YES, as I said before, he's still human.

And just what exactly can Super-Gord do? (Don't worry, these aren't spoilers as they are revealed in the first five pages of the book.) Well, he can communicate by telepathy. He can move to any place with a thought. He can drop off other wizards' radar and do the stealth bomber thing. His armor is lighter than air. He has a magic ring which when worn makes it impossible for anyone to hurt him either physically or magically. Since he supposed to be a thief, he has these special gloves which allow him to fall any distance and land like a cat (ie fly downwards). Oh, and he wields Courflamme, the Mighty Sword of Neutrality, which has the ability to kill thousands of demons with a thought.

Here are some excerpts of one of his battles in the Abyss that will have you rolling on the floor.

"Gord raised the diamond-bright part of Courflamme, aiming at the demon's outthrust head. The sword's tip suddenly spat forth a black bolt of force. The crackling ebon dart sheared off the top of the fiend's head, and the impact of it actually flipped the demon's massive body over in a somersault.

Without pausing to view his work, Gord turned and faced his next foe, now aiming the long blade as if it were a wand. Again the inky core of the weapon sent forth a blast of dark power, and another of the charging demons died. It became almost mechanical thereafter: Gord pointed the blade, willed destruction, and again another monstrous beast crashed down dead. Again, again, yet again. Soon a half-circle of twitching demon corpses formed a barrier in front of him, a wall so great that the young champion could see nothing but its stinking height."

And if that's not enough for you, Gellor, his sidekick, has certainly grown from being that raspcallion guardian of Gord's from the first couple of books. Here's an example of what he's like in combat with demons:

"Gellor brought forth his ivory kanteel, adjusted one of the golden pegs, and gently stroked the silver strings of the little harp. A ripple of beautiful notes washed outward, and the demon-beasts reacted as if they had been struck by a tidal wave.

When the sounds from the enchanted strings of the instrument struck, fully a dozen of the massive monsters were bowled over, while a half-hundred of the lesser scavengers were blown away, some actually torn to pieces in the process."

And here's a final excerpt to blow you away (literally):

"Side by side, the two heroes strode across the endless leagues of the foul layer that was the entry to the Abyss. In a short time, thanks to their innate force, they came to the towering bluffs that housed the gateways to the next twenty tiers of the agglomeration of planes that formed the depth of evil called demonrealm, the Abyss. A few hundred lesser demons were there to contest their entry, prevent them from going on, but those malign guards died in vain, swiftly and without great effort from the pair. A clear and bright melody from the kanteel, some dark and deadly lightnings from the rejoined sword, Courflamme, and none stood to oppose them."

The lobotomy is complementary, of course.

Oh, and a special note to Gary's lawyers should they decide to chase me - this is just an opinion!
Click to expand...



I know these are old threads but this would be hard to top.. Gygax going broke from pokemon?
 
*SIGH* And I really wanted to like WoT, too. Just started the second book in the series, and I have to say that whenever Moiraine is the POV character I feel a very strong compulsion to skip ahead to Rand. The book is incredibly slow-paced, which is something I hated in Tolkien and equally loathe here. I enjoyed the characters in the first one: Mat Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Lan and all the others, but it's just so hard to get into the book. The Blade Itself, on the other hand, is an incredible read and I haven't wanted to put it down since I started reading it. I guess i'll just try the WoT again at a later date.

Oh, by the way, another horrible book (or series of books, rather) that deserve mention in this thread if they haven't been already, is RA Salvatore's Saga of Drizzt nonsense. Fight scenes that last ten pages, two-dimensional characters that never change at all, and just about everything else offensive and cliched that you could possible dredge up in the genre. Wish I hadn't wasted my time reading it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Sponsors


We try to keep the forum as free of ads as possible, please consider supporting SFFWorld on Patreon


Your ad here.
Back
Top