I know, this is a fanfiction site, not a straight-up fiction site, and that we tend toward urban fantasy, but humour me. I've recently been on a masochistic kick, and have been looking up the absolute worst fantasy books.

I'm getting a lot of hits for Terry Goodkind, Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Robert Newcomb, and Rob Stanek.

And yes, this is ultimately self-serving, since I had an idea for a straight fantasy and wanted to avoid the worst pitfalls. And yes, it might be redundant, because I've seen this topic in other forums, but I trust this readership more than any other.

So, tell me, DLP: What's the worst fantasy book you've ever read, and why?

 

Those are filthy lies and you should be ashamed of yourself.

That said I can't read Cornelia Funke except for Inkheart. The sequels and her other books I can't stand.

 

I think it goes without saying, but might as well get it out up front.

Twilight.

Perfect books to learn how not to write.

 

If Nuhuh's deconstructionist The Stalking Blood Sack is any indication, then Laurel Hamilton's Anita Blake has to be on this list.

And for old school, the hit-you-over-the-head-with-Christ of C.S. Lewis gets my vote.

 

Hey, what little of Brooks I've read, I remember enjoying. These are just the names that keep coming up the most when I go searching.

 

God.. Terry Goodkind. He's such a dick.

When I was younger I enjoyed his books for the fantasy element. Later on I realized how much philosophical bullshit filled the books. Pages of just straight lecturing on it. I still like Faith of the Fallen, but I can't bring myself to enjoy the series like I used to.

 

Terry Goodkind's first six books are good, some would call them even great and some damn excellent works of fantasy. After that, however... yeah, after Faith of the Fallen, everything else he's written has been shit.

If we're dipping outside of full A-List fantasy and sci-fi, let's get a few authors out of the way right now.

-Everything Troy Denning has ever written connected to the Star Wars Expanded Universe is pure and utter shit, and insulting to the greater Star Wars mythos. You want to find the books that turned Anakin's Solo's old friend Tahiri into a pedophile, look no further than Troy-Fucking-Denning

-Jean Rabe did more to ruin the Dragonlance Fifth Age setting than any other author I know, so much so they had to bring in Weis and Hickman with the greatest Author Saving Throw of ALL TIME to save it (some will debate on how much the saving throw was effective - I'd say it had mixed results, most for the worse, but after what Rabe did, you could only recover so much)

-This author is exceptionally hit-and-miss, but Kevin J. Anderson has done a lot of sci-fi work for both Star Wars and Dune that has ranged from the passable to the god-fucking-awful. While I actually quite liked the Dune House prequels (well paced, interesting and fun to read, nothing on the original Dune, but even Frank Herbert's sequels weren't on that regard), his Star Wars stuff has been pretty bad, and I'll just leave this PA strip explaining my problems with the Butlerian Jihad trilogy.

Will find more, back to writing now.

 

I'll second Kevin J. Anderson's nomination. I think I was in 3rd or 4th grade when the Timothy Zahn trilogy started to come out - and got me completely hooked on Star Wars fiction. However, even as an elementary school student, I realized that Kevin J. Anderson's trilogy utterly sucked in comparison. And don't get me started on the Young Jedi series he wrote that my little brother bought.

Tangent! Did the Young Jedi series ever get retconned into canon for the Star Wars EU? I only ask, because I can't recall Mara Jade being married to Luke in that series - and for some reason I believe she was at that time when I scanned wookiepedia for her page. Not that it matters - beyond the the Timothy Zahn trilogy and the first 4 X-Wing series books I pretty much ignore all other Star Wars literature.

 

This. I cannot stress the above example enough.

Also, Anne Rice.

The authoress is an attention seeking whore; "Wah wah, fan fiction is a plague, wah wah, gay vampires uber! Wah wah, 'fucx you Amaz0n reviewerz!', wah wah, exiting organized religion, wah wah."

Bitch needs to get laid.

 

Yes, it did get retconned into canon, thanks entirely to Troy Denning's inclusion of, well, nearly all of it in Star By Star and the Dark Nest trilogy (just another reason I can tell the bastard to go fuck himself).

And btw, you'd probably be served well by checking out the remaining X-Wing books. Considering the usual SW authors, Aaron Allston's one of the best, and all three books are very solid stories in their own right.

 

Terry Goodkind is definitely among the worst. A lot of people seemed to like his first few books, but I thought they were terrible right from the start. Writing was crap, thin characterization, melodramatic dialogue, zero subtlety.

The Anita Blake series was actually pretty decent through the first few. Unfortunately, the main character degenerated into a very blatant mary sue and her sexual escapades eclipsed the thin plots.

A couple weeks ago I tried reading "The Fixer" by John Merz. Book was terrible. The main character was literally a vampire ninja, and the author couldn't come close to pulling it off. I've read fanfiction that was better.

 

How about this guy. Pretty turrible.

 

Wut? I enjoyed both the JA trilogy and Young Jedi Knights. If you want to look at someone who wrote some pretty bad Star Wars EU, look at Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star, of which I remember next to nothing but am told is one of the worst in the EU.

But yeah, I tend to avoid badly written sci-fi/fantasy. One thing I have a few gripes with, though, is the Star Trek EU. Some of it is damn fucking good (Articles of the Federation, the entire DS9 relaunch), but others range from below average (most of the Voyager relaunch) to terrible (The Genesis Wave) to just plain insane (Before Dishonor, where a Borg cube eats Pluto).

 

You forgot pretty much every Star Trek novel written by Shatner.

Also, every fucking single one of you should thumbs-up my last post. You know it's true.

 

To be fair, it's not like they ate a planet, or anything.

 

Actually...

Oh, and after it's destroyed:

And yeah, the Shatnerverse... ugh. I read one book. That was enough.

 

He gets a lot of shit because the first novel of his most famous series (Shannara) is very similar (omfg its a RIPOFF!!!1!2!) to The Lord of the Rings. So Tolkienatics usually read that, hate it and spread the word.

I'm biased because The Sword of Shannara is the very first book I read on my own, but I think he's a good fantasy author. He creates a very vivid world, very interesting characters and exciting plot lines and twists. He makes a large use of clichées but he implements them well. His writing style (Italian translation) is non-intrusive and very simple and yet he manages to give it an emotionally gripping and epic feel.

He dabbles in different themes, settings and tones, and I think he's excellent with some of them and 'only' decent with others, but I can't really say if that impression is because of his predisposition as a writer or mine as a reader.

Seeing as you're looking for classic fantasy, you should probably go past his Word & Void series (urban fantasy) decide for yourself if you consider Landover classic enough, and then just read Shannara.

Seeing as you're looking for the worst classic fantasy, though, you shouldn't read Terry Brooks at all.

Uncle Stojil

 

The Elminster Series by Ed Greenwood.

 

I haven't read either of his full-length novels, but I'll tell you that I loved the first Horror, Humor and Heroes.