Worst fantasy books ever written ?

[lawrence.whitaker]

Not strictly fantasy, but 'Scarecrow' by Mark Riley. Why?

Appallingly written.
Cliched plot.
Blatant Star Wars homage/rip-off so crassly done its an insult to the intelligence.
Characters that aren't really characters but simply a collection of every, single, action-genre Hollywood cliche its possible to find and mould together.

The book rounds itself off with an 'interview' with the author that is so clearly himself interviewing himself, and crowing over what a masterpiece he's created, you seriously want to track this idiot down and brain him with his own Boba Fett helmet.

A novel that is, truly, truly, gut wrenchingly awfully, appallingly bad and should be burned from the face of the planet.

[seneschal]

The problem with "Sword of Shanarra" was the writing. Broke every rule you learned in creative writing class, especially "show, don't tell." Nice Hildebrandt Brothers cover painting, drek inside. Don't know why it was such a seller, unless fantasy addicts were desperate for anything else once they'd finished Tolkien.

Elizabeth Moon's "The Deed of Paksinarion" triology. Paks and her world are interesting, and there is a good story buried somewhere in the series, but it was clearly padded out in the extreme to make the required 3 novels. If Moon's editor had had any guts, he'd have taken a chainsaw to the mess and could have pulled a diamond out of this coal mine.

[lawrence.whitaker]

Sorry, my last diatribe should read Matthew Riley and not Mark Riley.

I'm sure that any author named Mark Riley writes incredibly good books and does not need to be confused with Matthew Riley who ought to be burned at the stake for crimes against literature.

[lawrence.whitaker]

I also concur with the thoughts on Lovecraft. Some of his prose is god awful to read; some of it is okay.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Simlasa

I think you're gonna have to justify that comment somehow...

Do I? Really?

Personal taste is the main reason. I just didn't like any of them and I re-read his collected works twice just in case I'd read them on a bad day. Nope, they were rubbish.

He writes in a dull fashion. All his stories are the same. You can't visualise what he is talking about and have no empathy at all with the characters. As horror stories, they are not scary, which defeats the object. If you compare with someone like EA Poe, Lovecraft's novels come off a very poor second best and Poe isn't fantastic either, but he's a lot better than Lovecraft.

The idea of seeing something that breaks your mind because it is so different was fine in the 1920s when new theories such as Relativity, Quantum Theory and the Expansion of the Universe were changing how people thought about the world and shattered what people thought about how things worked. But, nowadays with films and TV Shows, we see aliens left, right and centre, we have graphic horror films that leave nothing to the imagination and we have been desensitised to a lot of things. So, seeing some half-fish creature isn't going to break my mind and send me to the loony bin.

But, I know that a lot of people like his stuff. There's a game designed around it as well, I think, that is/was fairly popular.

This thread is about people's opinions. I believe, not an absolute measure of how bad books are. So, my opinion stands.

Originally Posted by Simlasa

I think most of Lovecraft's stuff stands as a fairly decent 'homage' to Dunsany... which I much prefer to all the Tolkienesque Eurofantasy that litters the shelves.

An homage to Dunsany? Sorry, I didn't study Comparitive Literature at University and I'm not a book critic. What do I care about homages? I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, mainly because I haven't heard of him before. I'd have preferred something original rather than an homage.

[CthulhuFnord]

Lord Dunsany is a early and pretty good weird fantasy Author. His short stories run the gambit from Fantasy, Horror and Hashish. He wrote stories about elven princesess many years before Tolkien.

As far as good ole H.P.L. I hear where you are coming from. His writing style and stories are definatly not for everyone. I'm a pretty big fan of Lovecraft and the writers he befriended in the jaz age. Right now I'm on a Robert E. Howard binge, very different from H.P.L. I feel Howard's stories have less of the issues you mentioned.

AS far as Fantasy I've read but disliked.... well I've got a love/hate relationship with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I loved the initial first four or five books. After a while I got pretty pissed that he was ignoring the main characters and to a degree the main plot.

[Aycorn]

Originally Posted by CthulhuFnord

AS far as Fantasy I've read but disliked.... well I've got a love/hate relationship with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I loved the initial first four or five books. After a while I got pretty pissed that he was ignoring the main characters and to a degree the main plot.

Well, I guess Jordan got HIS didn't he?
I read the first of these, and found it enjoyable even though it is schematically painfully similar to "Fellowship of the Ring."

[CthulhuFnord]

He did write some decent Conan stories. I was pissed about the Wheel of Time, but not that pissed. I simply did the sensible thing and stopped buying his books. Too bad he was a good author, the story just seemed to move out of his control.

[drohem]

Too much braid pulling and hair tugging

[Simlasa]

The idea of seeing something that breaks your mind because it is so different was fine in the 1920s when new theories such as Relativity, Quantum Theory and the Expansion of the Universe were changing how people thought about the world and shattered what people thought about how things worked. But, nowadays with films and TV Shows, we see aliens left, right and centre, we have graphic horror films that leave nothing to the imagination and we have been desensitised to a lot of things. So, seeing some half-fish creature isn't going to break my mind and send me to the loony bin.

I've seen lots of people say this and I still think it's a load of crap.
Soldiers come home all the time mentally unhinged because of what they've experienced at war. They see things that are completely outside of normal experience and I really doubt watching several hours of war movies before setting out would have spared them.
Seeing a rubber/cgi monster on some SciFi Channel crapfest is NOT going to put your mind at ease when you come across a deep one rooting through your garbage at 3am. Maybe you won't go insane... but it will sure as hell shake you up.

Lovecraft's style isn't to everyone's taste, no... but then neither is Henry James or Stephen King or JK Rowling or James Joyce. I was talking to a high school kid the other day who was complaining how 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is complete garbage...
So by those loose guidelines it's ALL bad in somebody's opinion.
Whatever, there's a reason Lovecraft keeps getting republished... and people keep imitating him.
I kinda doubt there's gonna be a lot of JK Rowling stuff on the shelves 80 years from now.