Ha, I read like 60 pages of Sword of Shannara and then ragequit, so I couldn't say if it gets better or not.

 

...uh, no.

I will always acknowledge that this series is overrated by the folks who can't get off the dick of Forgotten Realms, but in terms of actual literary content, it's not actually bad. The first book and the fourth book (Elminster: Making of a Mage and Elminster In Hell respectively) remain some of the best of the Forgotten Realms period, simply because the writing and atmosphere is several steps above, well, nearly everything else. They're certainly better than everything Salvatore wrote after Passage To Dawn (in this case, a pretensious writing style and a 'grim 'n gritty' story sucked pretty much all of the life and happiness from the series in one fell swoop, because Salvatore went down the Terry Goodkind path of loading his novels with philosophy and satire).

So yeah, don't rip on Ed Greenwood. He's not the greatest writer in fantasy, but without his contributions, we wouldn't have Forgotten Realms. And Elminster is a fucking pimp.

 

Honestly, Fantasy books are like Fanfiction in whats good and what's not. When you first start reading fanfiction, the stuff we cannot read right now can be amazing. For example, ages ago I read Bobmins Sunrise/Sunset which I thought was amazing at the time. Now I can't stand it at all.

Same goes, initially when foraying into fantasy, I loved David Eddings, Terry Goodkind and many other books that now seem questionable. Granted, they are quite as bad as I think Sunrise/Sunset are to me now, but they definitely aren't anywhere as good as I thought they were when I first enjoyed them.

My advice would be to not waste possible enjoyment by listening to people's opinions here, just like my advice to a new-coming fanfiction reader would be all the best DLP has to offer right now. I'd advise them to go through some of the older classics which we find to be bad these days, and let them go through the same progression that we did, in order to maximize the amount of enjoyment possible for what is available. And like Fanfiction, there is a lot of Fantasy fiction out there that's available, yet by veterans standard, there is very little that is actually exceptional.

Terry Goodkind is well worth reading if you enjoy the style he writes in, I remember loving them to bits when I was a kid. All of David Edding's old stuff can be a great read, ie the Belgariad and the Mallorean. The Elenium and the Tamuli. Probably my favorite of David Eddings was The Redemption of Althalus though. I reread it lately actually, and didn't find it absolutely unreadable. Yet nowhere does it come close to the quality of what Patrick Rothfuss writes.

 

I completely agree. When the Eragon series was recommended to me by a friend, I saw the dragon artwork on the cover and figured it would be somewhat decent. Reality check: It was not. But I realize that if I had read the series years before I read LOTR and any of the better fantasy novels I've read, I probably would have liked it.

As it was, Eragon a felt like a massive "Hey Gary Stu, stalked any elves recently?"

Man, I raged once in Borders because a clerk rec'd it to me on the grounds that "it was written by a 16 year old and is amazing!"

 

I realise it might be blasphemy, as it seems to be quite well regarded, but I only got about 100 pages into the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant before throwing it across the room in rage and disgust.

 

I rather enjoyed the Chronicles of Amber, but this was years ago, so don't take my word on it.

 

LMFAO. Do read Penis for the Ferryman. There is no surer way to prove Jbern doesn't have the slightest fucking clue about how to write a book of his own.

The characters are just terrible. Cheap, contrived romance and drama between Mike, Jenny, and her cousin Candace. Also know as god damned fucking CANDY. No lie. He actually has her using shitty southern drawl and calling herself CANDY.

“Okay, I’m Officer McKenna, which one of you is the psychic? C’mon, I ain’t got all day! So, let’s just cut through all this horse…Wait a second! You look familiar. Where do I know you from?” She said in an overly cute southern accent as she pointed at Jenny.


The plot could have been interesting, but he just fucking mangled it. OH LOOK, EDGAR ALLAN POE WAS INSANE CAUSE HE COULD SEE GHOSTS. And guess who one of the main characters just happens to be related to.


CIVIL WAR GHOSTS WITH CIVIL WAR GHOST SWORDS.

Mike spends time bitching about how his mom has no money and how much of a douchebag his father was and how he will never be like him. Except that he is and only helps out as an afterthought to soothe his conscience.

There was literally not a single likable or realistic character in the entire thing. What humor is added is blatantly forced.

Jesus Christ, I want my $20 back. :|

 

It's all relative. A lot people criticise Goodkind and say Jordan is better (me included, but I won't go into that debate), but like Ellisande said, had I picked up his Sword of Truth series first, I don't think I would've been that quick to judge him. Also, unlike many folks, I didn't quite enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire that much. It was too brutal, many time just for the sake of being brutal. My next stop is Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn which I picked up after reading this review by GL.

 

The Corwin books were an awesome guilty pleasure. The Merlin books....were never good.

 

I would hardly call the Corwin books a guilty pleasure. However, he shot himself in the foot when he switched to Merlin. For the record, Wicked by George Maguire is a guilty pleasure... Dear god, the sheer amount of weak writing in that story is shocking. *Note if you want to read a great book, read Lord of Light by Zelazny- it is excellent.

In defense of Thomas Covenant: It has not aged well at all. When it came out, it was rather shocking. Now, the genre has grown beyond what the series was commenting on, leaving it in a rather awkward position.

Some bad fantasy:

Dreadnought- Cherie Priest wrote an excellent book, Boneshaker, and then wrote this failure. It literally took 200 pages before the main character managed to come into contact with something resembling a plot.

The Last Rune series by Mark Anthony- The first book is readable, but not exceptionally enticing. The second is a train wreck, which is so painful to read it should be used as a torture device. The third book is mediocre. The fourth book is what made me light all six books on fire.

Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card- If you thought Lewis was preachy... By all that is unholy, do not read this series. It's crap, but it is preachy crap on a whole new level. Lewis could at least spin a good enough story you could read it ignoring the blatant religious overtones, but Card's story is literally indecipherable unless you've studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

 

I read the Merlin series by TA Barron way back in the day, and it was one of my favorites. I tried reading them again last year, and I couldn't even bear it. I also read the first 4 books of the Elminster series when Elminster in Hell just came out, and I enjoyed those as well, but since that was in a time where I probably couldn't grasp the idea that a book was bad, so I don't know.

 

If you're going to write original fiction fantasy, I recommend Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which details (and lampoons) the worst tropes of fantasy literature.

 

Chronicles of Amber are still fantastic. Just read them again last year, really enjoyed them. Honestly, while the Merlin saga isn't as great, it's still certainly readable in my mind.

 

I tried to get into the Belgariad, I really did. I enjoyed the first book, but the novel about Polgara bored me stupid for some reason. One day I just put it down and never picked it back up again. That's not a slight against David Eddings, I just didn't like the way that series went.

 

Why would you read Polgara the Sorceress before reading... the second book in the fucking Belgariad?

 

Out of fantasy that I've read recently (which isn't much), Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy is by far the worst. It started out pretty good, but his characters never developed much and started pissing me off by the second book. Then he gave up all pretense and completely ripped off Wheel of Time for the third (and parts of the second as well). I did finish, but man...I should have put them down when I read the author's note at the end of the first that said he had struggled with not imitating Jordan in the past, but he finally thought he'd gotten past that. Guy was lying through his teeth. Granted, I probably wouldn't rate it so poorly if I hadn't read WoT, but even if you haven't, it gets pretty cliched at the end.

 

Only because I've read worse, I didn't think The Way of Shadows was terrible, but it definitely wasn't great and I've heard nothing to make me want to read the rest of the series.

David Eddings is terrible. I mean, not even in an entertaining way that makes it fun to mock him: he just writes dull, derivative doorstoppers with flat dialog and plots that couldn't be any more predictable if you mounted them on railroad tracks.

But I can't believe no one has mentioned Piers Anthony or John Norman yet.

 

I beg to differ, but that can be argued elsewhere.
I recently read something that was somewhere between humor, fantasy and fairy-tale whimsically called "Geek Fantasy Novel". The single worst thing I have read since Fountainhead. The writing is poor the gimmick is stupid, the plot is derivative at besy and nonexistent the majority of the time.

 

The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett. Forced myself to read a quarter into the book before giving up in disgust. Terrible writing mixed with whiny and retarded main characters thoroughly ruined a somewhat interesting premise.

Haven't read any of his other works so can't comment if he's just a shit author or this was a bad egg, either way I don't care to find out.

 

He doesn't have any other works except for the sequel, The Desert Spear. For a first novel, I wasn't too annoyed with The Painted Man.