To discuss:
What are the most teeth-wrenchingly bad novels you've ever read? Your angry rants and reviews are welcome here.

- Drome​

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First off, let me start with an apology. I love the series "Mother of Learning" and I really wish that I new my way around computers and forums in general to know where to post this, I hate the fact that I am writing this here. A LOT!!!!!!!!!! That being said, this will basically be me ranting about a chinese novel I read. You are free to remove this post if you want.

The novel is called "God and Devil World" rating M/NC-17. This is the description from baka-updates manga:

[In an instant it was the end of the world. Zombies, and variation of monsters rampage through the world, in which the humans struggle for survival. Yue Zhong in these last days of hard struggle, it is very difficult to survive. When Yue Zhong and his team went through so many ordeals of dealing with zombies and monsters was able to regain the country, before he suddenly discovered that he only got over the first hurdle.

World full of nuclear radiation, mutants, mutated beast, extreme shortage of supplies in the world after a nuclear explosion, rampaging dinosaurs, the dinosaurs has develop intelligents and occupied the world, and powerful races appeared that was 10 times stronger than humans. Normal bullets cannot penetrate their body. The orcs ruler has eslaved humans. Placing in him such an absolute vunerable world, Yue struggle towards evolution.

*The world has now turn into a game. A game by a strange God, or is it the Devil? Everyone now have stats and level. Even monsters are dropping items, skills, and weapons.]

Okay, that was the description.

My problems with the novel? I HATE THE MC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He got super MC lucky at the beginning of the series and that's basically the only reason he managed to survive for so long. And yet despite that, when he gets stronger he just bullies everyone that disagrees with him and NEVER puts himself in the other person's shoes. I am pretty sure the author hates women; they are treated horribly, even by the MC. Despite that, for some reason, the MC gets a harem (in my mind they are all gold-diggers). Whenever someone says something about morals to the MC, they get a slap with the back of the hand strong enough to make them loose their teeth at least. And yet the MC punishes everyone that goes against his morals with death or labor camps (think USSR), even if those people had very little choice.

Moved this out of the Mother of Learning thread. Srsly OP, dafuck was it doing there? Also - NO WAREZ TALK ~Ched

 

I'm not done with it, but Infinite Jest. There's a hypothetical torture method wherein you lock someone in a room where the walls stay still, but the floor is a constantly-oving abrasive surface, i.e, sandpaper, making it impossible to sleep or whatever. This book is the equivalent of doing that to my brain, while also administrating water torture in the form of lemon juice.
I admire the artistry and effort put into it, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

 

The Queen of the Orcs.

Never in my life have I encountered so much misandry. The MC is taken away from her family and sold as a woman slave into the camps by her stepmother while her father just looks on. There she is branded as a woman-slave of the orcs, who turn out to be peaceful peoples before man came and manipulated them into being warbeasts. And they are 100% reliant on their women. EVERY SINGLE WORD and name in their language is based off of the word 'mother'.

Can't really remember how it ends, but one scene sticks in my memory. A soldier got one of the camp women pregnant and kept her around in case she bore him a son. When the daughter is born, he promises the mother to give her a home with a greengrocer in the nearby city. On his way there he gets to the bridge, chucks the infant into the river like a football, and then continues on riding, contemplating what he will have for breakfast.

 

I feel like I may be the only person on this forum who didn't really like Name of the Wind all that much, lol. I finished that one, and am on hiatus with the second installment. I stopped when they started fapping over which hue of green his eyes were, and what it meant about how he was feeling.

Kvothe was too obnoxious to carry on with.

 

Heart of Darkness. I had it in high school, had a class where the teacher was going to be doing a QnA session. I 'read' the entire thing in the 15 minute break before class, still not sure how. Left me with a vague understanding of the events and an enduring hatred for the book.

 

In fairness to Heart of Darkness (Which I do rather like), I've found that just about any book becomes far less enjoyable when you have to read it for school/work instead of just reading it for pleasure.

 

If we're allowed to mention books we had to read in high school...

The House of Mirth, a book about a American socialite in the Victorian era as she... does... stuff. I mostly forget. I'm pretty sure it had to do with her trying to get a husband and her eventually becoming a total social outcast after being the belle of the ball at the start... I think for having like two affairs with married men?

And then she right as she was just getting ready to turn her life around she accidentally overdoses on her sleeping pills and dies.

It could've been an interesting book fraught with tense social conflict in the seemingly-prudish Victorian era, were it not so dry I'm surprised it didn't spontaneously combust in my hands. I've never had a book that was such a chore to read, it was exhausting.

 

Are we allowed to mention books we read in primary school?

I wanted a different one. But noo. Read this one, my teacher insisted. A Bean Birthday, or something like that.

It was fucking awful. Teeth-wrenchingly awful. This book rambled on and on and on about all these fucking children in the Bean family and how their names were all various assorted bean puns. I hated every single one of them by the end. There was no point, no plot, no pacing - I wanted to punch the author's lights out for wasting my precious seven year old time.

This book has stuck in my mind for years. I'm still mad. But at least it taught me a valuable lesson - not all books are equal.

 

The Wheel of Time books. I tried, I really did, read maybe 5 or 6 of them, I honestly don't remember how far I got, but I have six volumes lying in my room but I do know at some point I just said fuck this and quit.

Just, the female characters were handled so poorly, I can't even. I have since read up on the subject, and a few analysis essays on Robert Jordan, but, yeah, for me, it didn't work at all. It was infuriating. All of them were annoying, whiny, ungrateful, abrasive, rude and obnoxious and I honestly can't tell if he tried to be a progressive writer on that front and simply failed whilst trying to make a point or if he just has some weird perception of women.

Who really pissed me off was the Aes Sedai who took Gandalf's place in this journey, only imagine Gandalf throwing an immense bitchfest every single time anyone in the party asked what they were doing right now, like, what this ring was that Frodo carried, or who this Sauron dude was. Every. Single. Time. They know nothing, typical farm boys/girls and every time they try to understand what's going on, the Aes Sedai lashes out as if they had pissed on her mothers grave right in front of her eyes.

So, that's half of the main cast being rather unlikeable, (although I was somewhat fond of the healer girl, her attitude, at least, I could somewhat understand and respect) then we get the male main characters. Rand al'thor was a bizarre mixture of astoundingly bland and being just as whiny, obnoxious as the rest. He lacked any and all charisma and interesting character features except being a main character. That might change, granted, still a few thousand pages to go and all, but if the main character failed to get interesting in 5 thick books, yeah, not worth it.

Matt was enjoyable, really the one with charisma, with some spirit in him, who had a bit of fun and a sense of life and joy. Who didn't bitch or complain.

The third guy, forgot his name, was meh and he had this weird abusive relationship with a girl going on, I think, that soured him as well. Honestly don't remember.

So yeah, Wheel of Time, huge disappointment, especially since it is supposed to be one of the big fantasy series and I just couldn't get into it at all.

It had its strengths, I suppose, and I actually liked the idea of Ta'varen, the Aes Sedai and a lot of other things, but the characters, pretty much all of them, male and female (although I do think he dropped the ball particularly on the girls) were really terribly handled.

That said, story elements, after 3 years or so, I don't remember much about them, so on top of all the flaws, its story also was meh.

 

I'm a picky reader. I usually research what I'm going to read long before picking up a copy. I have an extensive to-do list including books I intend to read sometime. In determining what goes on that list, I usually read at least five reviews on various sites, and I prefer to have a personal recommendation from someone whose judgement I trust. All of this means I've almost never read a novel that I really disliked. Almost all of them had something about them that was worth reading.

That said, I've had to read some stuff for school and uni that I didn't really enjoy. The Crucible and To Kill a Mockingbird both rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't see the value of them to me as an Australian. Actually I felt they were subversive texts, and I disliked the themes they were pushing. It's not that they were poorly written, I just didn't like their contents. Most novels with an overt sociopolitical agenda irritate me in that way.

I realise that almost any story will reflect the author's values and beliefs in some ways. That's fine as long as it's not the central theme. You may as well just write an essay if that's all your writing is good for.

Probably the reason that I like fantasy and sci-fi above all other genres is that politics and social themes tend to take a back seat to pure escapism, imagination, and entertainment. I can fully understand why Tolkien was annoyed by people trying to over-analyse his books and find political meaning in them.

 

I love the Wheel of Time series, but pretty much everything Nemrut said about them is true. The female characters are ridiculously whiny and entitled, and the portrayal of the entire male/female philosophy of... I want to say Saldea? is hilariously sexist.

Rand is a decent enough character, he gets more interesting in the later books but it's a slog to get there. Perrin is bland as fuck, and just as annoying. Mat is boss, but he gets way too little screentime. I can think of maybe five female characters who were done well, and pretty much all of them were villains.

To make things worse, the middle of the series is so ridiculously slow it's a pain to get through it. 5th book to about 10th kind of blurs together in my mind as it's basically just more and more setup, it doesn't help that annoying characters like Egwene, Perrin and Elayne get more and more screentime at the expense of characters and subplots that were actually really interesting (Mat, Demandred, Logain, to name a few).

I read it a long time ago, and I still count it as one of my favourite series simply because of how expansive and wonderful the world is, but dear god is it a pain to slog through.

Side note: the last few books aren't nearly as bad. Part of that may have been that they were the ending, so they were wrapping up plot points that the previous books had left hanging, but I think part of it is also that Jordan ended up rambling for a bit and started to lose focus after he set up too many subplots to follow, and Sanderson managed to keep everything a lot tighter.

 

After a thoroughly enjoyable game of Civ5 on a recent sick day, playing on easy and bringing the glory of Rome to the entirety of the planet with aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons, I decided I'd try some alternate history novels.

Hopped on to Wikipedia, looked around for current-era Roman world novels, and found Romanitas. I didn't look too deeply into the information, but a quick scan of the early paragraphs and the sidebar made it look interesting, and Amazon marketplace had it going for about £4 including postage, so I picked it up.

The story starts quite well, setting the stage as the current Emperor's brother dies. We see the Emperor's nephew, now heir to the empire, and his dislike of the plebs' false mourning.

Then we cut away to a slave boy, who misses his twin sister who was seperated from him at about age 5. He has magical biokinetic powers! And then we find his sister is a super telepath! And they're both slaves on the run from the EVUL EMPIRE because they both have death warrants.

And I put the book down.

It reads like a young adult novel. Which is fine, but it isn't marked as such. Then we get long lost twins with magical powers that nobody else has, long travel sequences in which fucking nothing happens, and dry narrative that is an effort to slog through.

 

Co-opting the 'good novels, but I hated them' movement: Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I'm perfectly capable of recognising Hemingway's style as something very intriguing, but it was just so... bland, in a way. It was at a time I was pretty enthused with fantasy, sweeping language, and so on, so that probably didn't help either. I should probably re-read it, and see if it's not my memories that're playing tricks on me.

Sort of bonus contender (not awful, just overrated, and definitely worthy of at least scorn on my end): R&J by Shakespeare. There. I said it.

 

The Malazan series by Steven Erikson. I tried to read them for the first time years ago and couldnt make it past the first one, and then this summer I was stuck with a lot of time to read and no access to books other than what was on already my kindle so I forced myself to try and push through. I'm now about halfway through the second last one.

It's just the least rewarding reading experience I've ever had. Only about 10-20% of the POV characters are at all interesting to read about, and every time they do something interesting it cuts away for them for like three entire books. Every character spends all their time going on like 10 page internal monologues about pointless philosophy on the nature of humanity, war and religion. And this happens like every chapter. You could cut out about 85% of each book and not lose a single bit of anything actually happening. It's like the author either had no editor who could actually tell him to cut stuff out or he just refused to listen to him. There are just hundreds of pages in a row where nothing happens.

Have you read any other Hemmingway? I'd agree that The Sun Also Rises is probably the worst of his books that I've read. If you're looking for a better example of his style I'd reccommend The Old Man and The Sea or A Farewell To Arms.

 

There are tons of less than fantastic books out there but if I had to give it to one that generally people look at positively it'd be between The Mill on the Floss or Faulk's Birdsong. Considering the fact that TMotF is so boring I can barely remember what happened I'd have to give it to Birdsong, which frustrated me so much that I can remember the story very thoroughly.

1) The main character is thoroughly repugnant and unlikeable. He's a creepy, horrible man who's selfish and self-absorbed. I remember reading his point of view on things like his parent's having sex and how he eats better than the poor workers in the french factory he's come to supervise. I remember him diddling his host's wife and then daughter at a later point and just thinking 'you're disgusting'.

2) It's disgusting. It's kinda' interesting because I don't dislike the wheel of time series - where Jordon goes into detail on everything. Well Faulk's style is similar, his naturalistic writing means he records every detail all the way through at the expense of pace, dialogue and impact. When Stephen's visiting whore houses, looking down his parent's tops etc. etc. you get to enjoy incredibly detailed imagery and thoughts. And I feel like I should clarify - if Joe wrote someone hooking up with mother and daughter at some point or visiting a whore house etc. it'd be a riot, but seeing it through the lense of Stephen's perception, how he thinks about it and what he focuses on - that's what's disgusting.

3) Symbolism, themes everywhere. It's a first world war novel, and as such, it's not unusual for it to emphasize the trivial effort with which a life full of experience and potential can be destroyed - how war became industrialised and efficient. The parts where Stephen is surrounded by slaughter and the horror of the Somme are genuinely interesting events (helped by my hope he'd die) but this positive is absolutely hard-work to get to. Years of pre-war bullshit, interspersed with the 'modern day' plot of a retrospective reporter getting an emotional obsession with listening to old tapes of the war she's discovered kill all tension and interest as you have to slog through it. Then after the Somme it's back to Stephen's bullshit for the remainder of the novel.

There's so much he's tried to pack into the novel, so much social commentary that it makes the story itself shit, and it would be way more enjoyable if we'd have been left to reflect on it ourselves.

Oh and it ends with some excellently bullshit children are the future - I was just glad it wasn't from any of the main character's PoV.

So yeah, thinking about it. Would not recommend. Most infuriating is the fact that most people who read it feel bound to say it's very deep and that this makes it interesting in and of itself. A shit story is a shit story.

 

I couldn't get more than halfway through the book. I bought it based on the high praise it constantly receives which turned out to be a mistake. Kvothe isn't just obnoxious, he's poorly written.

 

If we can stretch 'hate' to encompass 'disappoint' I'd say Words of Radiance.

I like Sanderson, at least the Mistborn series. And I made it through the Way of Kings by skipping the flashback chapters, finding the world to be interesting and strange and wonderful.

Getting through the second book was like walking upstream. Maybe it was the increased focus on Shallan, who I did not enjoy as a character, maybe it was the sudden and unexpected deaths of several characters that seemed forced, maybe it was the odd convenience of falling in with just the right con artist at just the right time after the shipwreck. I don't know, but I put the book down after Part 1 and never picked it up again.

I also couldn't get through Steelheart. I know it was designed as a YA book, but sweet merciful jeebus it was clunky. And obvious. And predictable. Honestly, it was beneath him as a writer.

As for Name of the Wind, maybe I'm just off fantasy right now, but I never even made it to the flashbacks. The 'present' story just didn't hook me.

 

Out of the Dark by David Weber is an overwhelmingly stupid book. I have never fucking hated a book like I hated this one after I finished reading it.

Let's look at a couple reviews off Amazon and GR.