Yeah, I've read worse as well, but they were so long ago and so eminently forgettable that I can't remember the titles or who wrote them. Of the Night Angel Trilogy, Way of Shadows was the best; I actually enjoyed it a little. However, they went steadily downhill. You didn't miss anything by skipping the rest of the series

The one Eddings book that I've read wasn't particularly good, but I don't remember enough of it to say why I didn't like it.

Haven't read any Piers Anthony or John Norman.

 

Oh God, I'd forgotten/mind-bleached Piers Anthony.

Although to be fair, reading 'The Colour of her Panties' aloud to some friends on a bus was quite funny. Seriously, it's a godawful book, bettered only by his blog, which went into some detail about his sex life and bowel movements.

I hear he's a bestseller, or was. This depresses me, if true...

 

Oh dear lord, not even Twilight has had such a hugely negative influence on the culture as Gor has. And Twilight caused a fan to accuse the Wolfman remake of being ripping off of said series.

Goreans are just fucking creepy.

 

And to be fair, about twenty years ago Piers Anthony wasn't a burned out piece of shit, and could actually write competently. His series about some guy stepping in for Death was actually quite good.

 

I love all of Hobb's works... except that one. Haven't even finished reading the second book and the third is somewhere collecting dust. Dragon Keeper is a bit weak, but overall Robin Hobb she's a very decent author so I wouldn't put her on that list.

 

I agree with Link. The Assassin's trilogy was pretty much gold, maybe slowing down at the end, but fun none the less. I couldn't finish the Soldier's Son.

For my money (or not money I suppose), I would caution against Terry Goodkind's later works like many others and Gail Z Martin's The Summoner and sequels. Martin's works are really just entirely too cliche at some points for my own tastes. The writing wasn't terrible as the characters were likeable enough, but the entire story was transparent and unoriginal.

 

Terry Brooks' first book Sword of Shannara was fucking terrible. It was a blatant rip-off of LoTR that iirc started the rip-off genre. And his books still carry the stain of it if that Ilse Witch series is any indication.

I don't mind Denning that much, probably because I started out with Legacy of the Force, and he was overshadowed by Karen Traviss and never reached the levels she could. Jesus Christ, Traviss makes this list easy, in fact, Star Wars fans have taken to calling her works "Travissties".

Her crimes include creating:
-(according to more than one internet expert whatever that counts for)a retarded language

-Godmode!Sue mandalorians who are the bestest Jedi hunting machines in the galaxy and can somehow

Spoiler

resist a Force-trick that took down MARA FUCKING JADE

.

-Completely hijacking Jacen Solo -a decades old beloved (not so much after the NJO) character- to tell the story of Boba Fett and his family- ever heard of them? No? That's cause nobody gives a shit who Boba Fett's family is.


-Basically criminalising being a Jedi, and having characters go on rants about how evil they are in front of a Jedi, Jaina Solo of all people and have her literally do nothing, even when she's called a sheltered spoiled princess. This is Jaina fucking Solo we're talking about here. Then she gets her ass kicked by a Force-blind Mando and crawls into the fetal position and whimpers.Yes, The Sword of the Jedi.Oh did I mention the reason she was on Mandalore on the first place was to learn how to kill her brother...from Fett? Because he's the all time master of killing Sith. Somehow-probably because it fits with Traviss' "Non-jedi ways are better" theme. And Luke Skywalker is obviously busy... o wai-. Nope. And what does Luke do once he finds this out, knowing he could be a much better teacher? Jack Shit.

-Totally derailing a nine-book series just to get her pro-Mando anti-Jedi message out.

Wheeww, that's been brewing for a while. Glad I could let it out.

Desert Spear by Peter Brett. The Warded Man was awesome, what followed was a piece of shit that pushed out two of the three main characters to further boost a Mary Sue, and then develop a villain (from a thinly veiled Middle-Eastern culture), which would have been fine, if he hadn't brought together the Mary Sue and the villain together in a clash of craptastic proportions.

Spoiler

Leesha (the Sue) somehow gets it in her mind that it's a good idea to follow the villain back to the city he conquered (and then raped all their women) and pretend to consider his offer of marriage while she spends her time spreading feminism by...I'm not quite sure how, shouting at a religious zealot I guess?, scouting his forces.

While the more interesting characters like the Warded Man himself are left in the dust, and the final character in the triumvirate spends his time pining over Leesha, who has seemingly lost her mind to the point that she considers giving the man who was going to rape her anti-viagra a violation. Then taking advice from her bitch of a mother who was fucking another man in the same house as her father.

Fuck it, I'm missing an important one but fuck it, it'll come back to me.

 

I enjoyed the first couple of Gor books, but quite literally on book 3 or 4 they went from ok to downright shit. I took the time to glance through and skim some of the later ones not that long ago, Norman couldn't even keep the rough time period equivalent setting he'd originally chosen. He also couldn't come up with new characters, every book has the same half dozen or so main characters, just with different names.

 

To be fair to Traviss, I would rather read about Boba Fett's family than the utter balls up they did with Jacen in Legacy. Not so much character derailment as character destruction.

 

Most of the character derailment took place in the NJO, and Traitor kind of mitigated that by giving us an awesome Jacen, and setting him up to be the hero. I didn't complete Dark Nest but it seemed to me that DN!Jacen was perfectly compatible with LotF Jacen.

The problem lies in overcrowding. The series never focused on Jacen's fall particularly well, choosing instead to focus on the canon war-rehash. Now both storylines could have worked, if the space dedicated to the fucking Mandos was cut out. Instead they tried to squeeze the aforementioned plots into one story, plus that crazy Twi'lekk bitch whatshername, plus Ben's journey down the dark road. So it left little space for anything else.We had to wait till Sacifice to see Jacen do the deed, so to speak and cross the moral event horizon.

The time spent in Revelation pimping the Mandos and supposedly "training" Jaina could have been used so much better. The time spent on Mandos in general could have been better spent exploring Jacen's feelings.

But yeah, Traviss is not completely blameless, every author decided that they wanted to do the CIS vs. The Republic all over again instead of focusing on the main problem.

Still doesn't excuse her blatant fandalorian wank and her ridiculous need to write and preach in a fandom that loves the Jedi. It's like a wizard-bashing fanfiction writer writing the sequel to DH or doing the official Marauders book.

 

Okay, I know I started this, but I've got to ask: anyone here ever read Gloria Tesch?

 

After googling her, I feel much better about not having ever heard of her. The blurbs make Eragon seem original.

 

They sound shit...

 

Looked her up and checked out "Maradonia and the Seven Bridges" on Amazon.com

2 five stars
22 one stars

Everyone else begged for it to die.

Self-publishing badly written stories by your children really ought to stop. Paying off two people to give it a good review won't help her get any better.

In high school, people went insane over Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' Hawksong series. I read the first book just to know what they were talking about, and would have burned it had it been my own.

Urk. I disliked Thomas Covenant as well.

 

Why am I not surprised. Why would you publish a fourteen year old? I don't care how smart or mature they are, I can't imagine that someone that young has enough life experience to produce a thought provoking novel, let alone one with an original plot or intriguing, widely appealing characters. When I was fourteen I found that god-forsaken, Mormon propaganda appealing, for fucks sake.

 

At first I was loling then I began to feel sorry for the fuck who had to write those summaries.

And on another note, G.R.R. Martin has forever tainted my view of brother-sister rulers:

aSoIaF fans: try to tell me your minds didn't go to a bad place.

 

But China Miéville loved Strange Evil.