SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

J.R.R. Tolkien himself said:

"The Lord of the Rings
Is one of those things.
If you like it, you do;
If you don't, then you boo!"

:)

All of which is to say tastes differ, and all the more reason on a topic like this to give some indication of why you disliked a book, so as not to scare off readers who otherwise might enjoy it.

Well, Tolkien was a Brit. Margaret, and therefore it's not surprising that he expects you to adore him. But in my opinion he's one of the few Brits that was entitled to feel that way.

No, that's not what he meant. If you read it in context (in the volume of his Letters, say) you realize it's more of a "Some people really like it, some people really don't. *shrug*"

I stand corrected.

Julie wrote: "Maybe other genres have this problem, too, but I see some of the worst covers on the scifi and fantasy books when I browse at the used bookstore."

Case in point: Good Show Sir: Only The Worst Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Covers. User ratings, comments, ability to submit your own cover scans, etc.

I wonder how many good books never made it out into a large readership merely because the cover art was poor.

One of my sons is a linguist and he loves The Lord of the Rings. All those places where Tolkien stops action to explore the elfen language (or whatever), that puts me to sleep, keeps my son awake. LOL.

The Lord of the Rings inspired modern-day epic fantasy. Modern day writers are better at telling a story; however, some praise must go to Tolkien for establishing the genre.

I liked the movies better.

I love little linguistic details. I love history. I love detailed explanations of history and backstory and all that stuff. I love long, intricate books. I love fantasy. I intentionally searched out the 1960s paperback edition because I liked the idea of the cover art that flows across all three of the books to form one image.

I just don't like LOTR.

I do not like it in a box.

I do not like it with a fox.

I do not like it in my chair.

I do not like it anywhere.

(and unlike the fellow of indeterminate species in the children's book, actually tasting this hasn't helped at all. And before somebody starts ... yes, I've seen the movies. Didn't like those either. Just paste a "curmudgeon" sticker over my name and be done with me ...)

;)

Craig wrote: "I wonder how many good books never made it out into a large readership merely because the cover art was poor."

Agreed. I'll be put-off by cover art if and only if the book is by an author I haven't read before. If it is by an author I've read and liked, I don't care what the cover art looks like:


The covers need work but I'd give anything by Silverberg, Anderson or Sturgeon a try!

And then there are the covers that draw you in:

Well, draws me in, at least.

And then there are the titles need work:
Question and Answer by Poul Anderson, a science fiction novel. Really? Question and Answer? Sheesh!

Terence wrote: "Lyndon Hardy's Master of the Five Magics.

I have a sentimental attachment to Quag Keep because of my D&D phase, though I'll readily admit it's not one of Norton's b..."

I play D&D too, and that's one of the reasons I thought I might like it. But it just took too long for the story to go anywhere for me.

Apparently I need to check out this "Return to Quag Keep"... maybe it would make me like "Quag Keep" hahah!

I still reread the other McCaffrey series despite the soap opera plots and Hollywood characters (the Pegasus/Tower Prime books, Planet Pirates, and some at least of the Ship Who series), but Pern I can't stomach anymore. The terrible characters absolutely turn me off. I did buy the series as a teen, but didn't like any of the characters even then. Too bad, because the world was rather exciting. I guess they are sort of YA without the label.

Whoever had bad experiences with Quag Keep and etc., I would say to please don't let it turn you off Andre Norton altogether. She wrote so many books, and they vary. I think the good ones make up for the headachy ones.

Another bad, bad, bad book I could only hate even as an adolescent: Ariel: A Book of the Change. World makes zero sense, main character is loathsome.

Huh. I read Ariel a couple years ago and didn't think it was that incoherent. Though I admit the main character had a bit of a Gary Stu aura.

I did recently re-read Darkover Landfall and Two to Conquer and ... wow. I had forgotten how many wallbanger moments those books had. Another pair for the 1 star pile. (Though there are some Darkover books I quite enjoy.)

I couldn't get into LeGuin very much either. I read most of the Earthsea trilogy but didn't really get what drew people into it.

I have to agree on Naked Empire - that is easily the worst of the Sword of Truth series. However, I did enjoy the first several books and the last trilogy, and I'm looking forward to the new one out soon. (I don't consider The Law of Nines to be a Sword of Truth book even though there are some connections. Terrible book, not up to the standard even of Naked Empire, which is saying a lot. I was highly disappointed in him for publishing that.)

David Eddings can get repetitive but it doesn't mean his original story was bad. I definitely wouldn't put him on a "worst" list. Same with Terry Brooks.

If a book is bad enough to rate one or two stars, I usually don't even finish it rather than try to slog through it. Even if a book is good on some external scale and other people like it, if it doesn't grab me enough, I won't finish it. There are too many truly interesting things to read.

Great thread. Some thoughts:

Interesting points re Piers Anthony. I gave up on him quite a while ago, as he churns out so much dreck (and, on occasion, seriously perverted stuff). That said, some of his novels are really (or at the least when written were) original and interesting - the first incarnations book, the first adept books, battle circle, etc. Not planning on going back to him though.

Absolutely hilarious re the Belgariad. I read the first series as a young teen and loved it. Some years later I read what I assume was the second series - and thought "WTF? This is the exact same plot/stories, just with different character names."

Simon Green - yeah, doesn't work for me either.

Ariel: A Book of the Change - REALLY? I thought it was great! And I was thrilled that, 20 years later, a sequel came out: Elegy Beach Actually bought it in hardcover, which I never do. And holy jesus it sucked. Truly awful.

So anyway: Here is, without question, the best, laugh out loud, review of a book along these lines that you'll ever read (including the author's subsequent response in the comments): http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753... I'll give you a hint: OH JOHN RINGO NO!

And my vote for all time worst? Hand's down, David Weber's Out of the Dark. As another reviewer put it: "On page 330 [of a 380-page novel] a crime is committed against narrative justice and the book drops to below one star." Crime, however, is an understatement. We're talking a Hague Convention war crime here. A capital punishment level crime. See the (excellent) review (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) for more; N.B. SPOILERS (which is a good thing if they save you from reading the book and as a direct result considering suicide).

Close runner up? Daniel Suarez's Daemon. Initially self-published, it really should have stayed that way.

Chip wrote: "Great thread. Some thoughts:

Interesting points re Piers Anthony. I gave up on him quite a while ago, as he churns out so much dreck (and, on occasion, seriously perverted stuff). That said, so..."

Thanks for posting No John Ringo No again. I think that is so hilarious, and the fact Ringo responded to it and agreed is great...his working title was actually "The Wanker Piece" lolol

I posted OH JOHN RINGO NO in the beginning of the thread, but it is always worth reposting. :D

Valerie wrote: "I posted OH JOHN RINGO NO in the beginning of the thread, but it is always worth reposting. :D"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCrME...

I had never actually read the whole of OH JOHN RINGO NO. I had read some excerpts somewhere I think, maybe on GR. I read the first two books of another series of his and despite some good ideas, it made me wish I could throw up brain cells to get rid of the memory. I forget what the first title was but the second was Emerald Sea (The Council Wars, #2). Luckily, they were library books. On second thought, do things like that need to be in libraries... unsupervised?

The weird thing about the Xanth series ... the first three books are pretty much straight epic fantasy, IIRC. A little bit of perviness, but no puns (or very few) at all. Though it was over ten years ago that I read them so I may be completely wrong.

At one time (when I also owned the Pern books) I owned the entire Incarnations of Immortality and probably about the first ten Xanth. I just got tired of the constant atmosphere of child molestation. I don't find little girls' underpants to be a proper object of a high fantasy quest!! :P It's funny, but it is also pretty sicko.

See, I think the first Incarnations book has a really cool premise, but I'm afraid to touch anything Piers Anthony's done because of his reputation. :(

Valerie wrote: "See, I think the first Incarnations book has a really cool premise, but I'm afraid to touch anything Piers Anthony's done because of his reputation. :("

Wear gloves and use purel.

Deedee wrote: "One of my sons is a linguist and he loves The Lord of the Rings. All those places where Tolkien stops action to explore the elfen language (or whatever), that puts me to sleep, keeps my ..."

Though each to his own, I totally disagree with this. I think Tolkien's prose is exquisite and I oft read parts out loud. The plots are perfect, IMO and the characters well developed. I've not found a modern writer that comes close, though I have enjoyed many modern authors.

I don't like Terry Goodkind whatsoever. I think he enjoys inflicting pain on his characters simply for the sake of pain. I felt the same way about the Stephen Donaldson series where the 'hero' had leprosy. Which is not to say that I detest all 'dark' sorts of books. Joe Abercrombie is one of my favorite authors, and his heros are not angels. Far from it. But he leavens his narrative with humor and care.

Valerie wrote: "See, I think the first Incarnations book has a really cool premise, but I'm afraid to touch anything Piers Anthony's done because of his reputation. :("

yes, what Stormhawk said upthread is utterly, utterly true: it all starts out good, then gets rather crappy later on in the series. i can't handle dealing with xanth or most of the rest of it now, but by jeebus, i have a huge soft spot in m'heart for 'incarnations', and still have all my copies on the shelf in hardback (tho, we shall all agree to pretend that the most recent one, Under a Velvet Cloak, was NEVER even though of...and if you like, we'll mentally delete the awful one about god, too). yes, there's a handful of pervy crap going on here & there (oh, hell, more than a handful, perhaps, but most of 'em are of age & consenting), but i still love that series.

I liked most of the Incarnation books too...like Michelle said, the God one kind of lost me, and I didnt bother with this 'new' one, as the whole premise seemed off.

I'll probably be stoned as a heretic, but I found Asimov incredibly dull. Of course, I was young when I read him, but it put me off his stuff for a lifetime...

My general reaction to readers who bounce off works or authors that are more or less regarded as classics is that the author in question is simply not writing about something the reader wants to read about. In Asimov's case, for instance, I'd hazard that if you're a reader who reads primarily for characters, you may not find much.

I love character driven stories but i still like Asimov even though that's not his forte, there is a richness to his writing and he knows how to create a good plot.

There are no universal books, really. I'm constantly reading posts lauding things I hate, and deriding things I love. We're all wired differently.

This has been a very interesting thread for me. A lot of series that I love have been held up as examples of poor writing and at first I was a little dismissive. Kind of a "to each his own" mentality, which is true to a degree. But when thinking further on it, I realized that some of these authors/series could really be poorly written but that I couldn't tell. I've realized that I'm a slave to the story and not to the written word.

As long as an author creates a world or a story or a character that peaks my interest and imagination, then all they have to do is write well enough for me to "get it". So there is probably some truly remarkable writing out there that I despise and some truly awful writing out there that I adore.

So, basically, I can be very forgiving if I am entertained. And when extrapolated to the grand majority, how nicely that explains the state of society and the entertainment industry, eh?

True, Jen, but then reading is a solitary sport after all, made to be utilized by people for entertainment purposes...some people like a denser read because they want to keep their brains "on", or because they want to use them! Others can like a lighter read for all their own reason...quality is what you like!

Yep. If you use entertainment value as your main criteria for a "bad" book, then I've certainly read some stinkers. I've read good books that make me work for it and books that let me coast through. I'm just glad that I don't have to sift through a slush pile, because I can tell that I'd be horrible at it!

Not a big Piers Anthony fan and I always thought the Xanth novels were pretty unreadable. "LOOK! Xanth looks just like FLORIDA! Har! Har! Har!"

Yeah whatever. Worst of all-time? Probably not. But pretty tedious nonetheless.

I loved the Xanth books when I was in grade school, but grew out of them. You'd have to pay me a considerable sum to read them now.

Brad wrote: "Not a big Piers Anthony fan and I always thought the Xanth novels were pretty unreadable. "LOOK! Xanth looks just like FLORIDA! Har! Har! Har!"..."

Probably because Xanth is SFF's answer to Finnegans Wake...

Reginac1 wrote: "I don't like Terry Goodkind whatsoever. I think he enjoys inflicting pain on his characters simply for the sake of pain. I felt the same way about the Stephen Donaldson series where the 'hero' had..."

I absolutely cannot stand Goodkind. I enjoy Abercrombie as well, but the important difference I think is that he's actually a good writer.

Kernos wrote: "Brad wrote: "Not a big Piers Anthony fan and I always thought the Xanth novels were pretty unreadable. "LOOK! Xanth looks just like FLORIDA! Har! Har! Har!"..."

Probably because Xanth is SFF's ans..."

I enjoyed the first couple of Xanth novels, but the idea well ran dry, I think. they became very tedious. this often happens and is pleasant surrise when it does not. The Pern series for example..

Kevin wrote: "Machavelli wrote: "The Naked Empire by Goodkind is bad really bad, if there is one book that should have been burnt before publishing, it is this one."

I guess most people don't like or care for I guess most people don't like or care for the political undertone of the book. "

Undertone? You mean rambling long paragraphs of Mr. I'm Always Right lecturing the secondary characters in the book over and over again is "undertone"? I felt like I was being bludgeoned to death by political beliefs.

Ruby wrote: "At one time (when I also owned the Pern books) I owned the entire Incarnations of Immortality and probably about the first ten Xanth. I just got tired of the constant atmosphere of child molestation. I don't find little girls' underpants to be a proper object of a high fantasy quest!! :P It's funny, but it is also pretty sicko."

But if you consider the audience is 12 year old boys, then the quest being a girl's underpants is completely age appropriate.

I read Xanth in elementary/junior high and found it mostly funny. Though some of his other series had me wanting to throw up during certain scenes.

Tamara wrote: "Runelords by David Farland. Worst ever published epic fantasy (well, that i've had the misfortune to read.) A mediocrity in all things combined with the most offensive (lack of) morality i've ever ..."

...I have that book... O_o

I don't think it was posted til now but I'm SURE it's is the WORST book ever made.Panzer Spirit I will just describe the plot to you...

A old nazi JaggedPAnzer was found in the woods in germany, it was intact, and was sent to EUA to further investigations with one specialist... but then they realize that the tank was alive and wasn't made of iron, but of MITRIL and it was being possessed by an spirit of a dead nazi elf.

It was so BAD so BAD that it has become one passage rite with my friends and myself, you only can be called a man after reading it.

Other one is Lythande I can't even start to write about it... I hated The Mists of Avalon for so many years then some one give this book to me... and I realize she (Marion Z. B) actualy can do worst than the mists... I was impressed ...


And the War With the Newts I know the importance of Karel Čapek but... seriously.... it was terrible.

Dwarf wrote: "I don't think it was posted til now but I'm SURE it's is the WORST book ever made.Panzer Spirit I will just describe the plot to you...

A old nazi JaggedPAnzer was found in the wood..."

And next up, Mitril by Dead Nazi Elf. They're coming to town in August, get your tickets now before they sell out!

I just went to the page of the book at the goodreads... and belive me, there is some crazy guy who actualy liked the book and want it to be a movie!!!!!! my respect for humankind diminished a little after that.

I can't help wondering if often people's opinions of books are influenced by at what point in their life they read them and what similar books they had read at the time.

I read Wizard of Earthsea for the first time very recently, based on how many people I had seen rave about it. However I found it completely and unerringly dull - I kept reading through the whole series wondering if it gets better at some point to justify the raves but it never did for me.

I can accept however that back at the time it was written it was perceived as something more compelling - and it is possible that people promoting it have fond childhood memories of reading it. Certainly there are books I read and re-read growing up which I thought were wonderful at the time. However I am almost fearful of revisiting them now, having read so many more books since then.

I also read the Swords of Shannara trilogy a few years ago, and despite it being many years since I last read LOTR I couldn't help but feel grumpy while reading it about how the author had so blatantly just substituted a few characters. Had I read it before LOTR however, I undoubtedly might have enjoyed it far more.

But we all know one person's trash is another person's treasure - you only have to see how pretty much any book attracts its share of 1-star and 5-star reviews. You either have to find someone you trust who has very similar tastes, or just read them for yourself to find out... :)

While certainly not the worst fantasy book ever, Catherine Asaro's The Charmed Sphere is stunningly awful, especially given the author's credentials.

The book's protagonists' names are Chime Headwind and Muller Dawnfield and they live in a happy, happy little kingdom where magic is only used to help people--except, that is, when it's used to create supersoldiers to slaughter the enemy. *head desk*

I admit, thus far, I haven't been blown away by anything Asaro has written. But The Charmed Sphere feels like something the author found in an old high school folder, the edges of the pages covered in unicorns, hearts, and doodles that read "I love Scott Baio." It's that bad.

Dwarf wrote: "I don't think it was posted til now but I'm SURE it's is the WORST book ever made.Panzer Spirit I will just describe the plot to you...

A old nazi JaggedPAnzer was found in the wood..."

I rather enjoyed Lythande. Of course, it was a series of short stories that was thrown together to make a book.

P. wrote: "While certainly not the worst fantasy book ever, Catherine Asaro's The Charmed Sphere is stunningly awful, especially given the author's credentials.

The book's protagonists' names are Chime Headw..."

I just bought a book by Catherine Asaro...

ETA: At least I thought I did. I can't locate it...

Lara Amber wrote: "Kevin wrote: "Machavelli wrote: "The Naked Empire by Goodkind is bad really bad, if there is one book that should have been burnt before publishing, it is this one."

I guess most people don't like..."

What, Goodkind was just telling his views on the start of the wars in the middle east. Plus part of the reason I may have loved Naked Empire is because I agree with his view on wars, which he to me expressed through Richard so beautifully. It gave me a way to explain how wars are needed to others.