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The thing that makes me most unhappy about the Wheel of Time series is that it will never be finished. All the time I wasted reading about Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne endlessly squabbling and now I'll never know how the Last Battle turns out.
Its a wheel. It ends where it started.
The good guys imprison the bad guy in a hole in the ground, and enjoy a life of ease and complacency until some idiot digs him up again.
I'm happier not knowing, rather than run the risk of my lame ending turning out to be correct.
My wife and I both LOVED Ludlum's The Bourne Identity -- it's one of both of our all-time favorites -- and we disliked his other books (including the others in that trilogy).Bourne Identity was definitely the best of the lot.
What's even worse is that Robert Ludlum is now a brand, not a person. If you check B&N or Amazon, there are all sorts of books for sale by "Robert LudlumTM."
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo. The first time I read this, I was working too much, and really couldn't concentrate on the book, but slogged through it. Eventually I gave the book away to someone, never to get it back, and wound up buying it again.
Once more, it failed to grip me. I don't know if it was the first-person PoV, or the long, boring exploration of the alien ship, but this book was a slow grind to get through.
And then at the end, we have no idea what happens to the inhabitants of the ship once they get into the harvesters. I'd like to think that they made it to Antioch, but we'll never know...
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Elenion and Tamuli (Eddings): I liked the Belgariad. I liked the Malloreon, though it was a little predictable. I loved Belgarath the Sorcerer. I get to these two trilogies and see no characters I really care that much for in a story that felt familiar. Bleh.
I liked the Elenium, because I liked the church knights. They were a lot of fun in the way they bent the rules almost - but not quite - to breaking point in order to get the job done.
Despite that, I can't finish the Tamuli. In true David Eddings style he just rehashes all the old tropes of his previous series, apart from where he flatly contradicts what he said the first time.
The thing that makes me most unhappy about the Wheel of Time series is that it will never be finished. All the time I wasted reading about Nynaeve, Egwene, and Elayne endlessly squabbling and now I'll never know how the Last Battle turns out.
http://www.dragonmount.com/News/?p=326
Tor Books has announced that Brandon Sanderson has been selected to completeA MEMORY OF LIGHT, the final novel in the Wheel of Time saga.
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Tor Books announced today that A MEMORY OF LIGHT, the 12th and final novel of The Wheel of Time series, will be initially released as three separate volumes. The first volume will be entitled THE GATHERING STORM and will go on sale November 3, 2009.
I will admint I love the WoT series but I can name about 3 books that should have been just cut from the series and it would have made it a lot better. Now Brandon Sanderson is finishing the series and I read the first of the Mistborn series liked it but have yet to finish the seies have to wait for my order to arive. I am hearten by the fact that Jordon kept a lot of notes on how he wanted the ending to happen.
"The Descent" by Jeff Long.
If only the book could have kept up with the sense of raw dread and sheer terror of the first chapter, this book could have been great.
However, excluding the brief respite of the odd "interludes", the story began to spiral downward (literally) into a simplistic, rather meaningless trickle of rambling ideas and disjointed plot points reminiscent of either L. Ron Hubbard or maybe Jules Verne (if he were on LSD).
Finally, the ending was not good at all:
** spoiler omitted **
Have to add my agreement with this one. The first chapter was brilliant. The rest of it...I can't but agree. I have to add the following criticisms:
1. The lack of surnames for some of the characters was frustrating.
2. The way that it resorts to horror movie style 'creatures are invincible just 'cause' stuff.
The most recent book to disappoint me is "Seer's Quest" by Chad Corrie, because there is no editing! Seriously, every single page has some kind of problem--run-on sentences, spaces between paragraphs omitted, punctuation mistakes (esp. annoying: misplaced quotation marks). The story is okay, the characters are okay, but it's a chore to deal with the non-existant editing.
As a person that reads about 150 pages an hour and inhales books at such a prodigious rate that my local library had to change their borrowing rules to deal with me in junior high, this was the only book I never finished.
How do you manage to read so fast?
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Ditto on the Wheel of Time comments in this thread. I stopped after book 6 (I think). The only thing that got me through that many of them was that I think the Forsaken are kinda cool. When I realized that I wanted to Forsaken to win, just to make all the other characters shut the hell up, I decided it was time to give up on the series. I've never hated a story's protagonists so much in my life.
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We've got threads on books you're reading and suggestions for books, but my question is...
What book disappointed you the most?
For me it was Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House.
I loved the other book they wrote together, The Talisman. And consider that one of my favorite books of all time. And after seeing reviews, I was expecting a lot from this book. And the first part of the book delivered. It was suspenseful, terrifying, and very much a page turner. My issues came about at the end...
** spoiler omitted **
As long as I am not the only one to be disapointed in that book.
A Game of Thrones.
Everyone and their mother told me I should read it. Now it holds the dubious distinction of being the only novel ever that I've so thoroughly disliked as to put it down without finishing.
That happens to a lot of people, even I (who loves the series) felt that the first book had a few slow and dry spots that made it a bit of a struggle to get through.
But it is so worth it. Things never slow down after that.
When I recommend (or lend) the book to someone I tell them two things:
Book 1 can be a bit of a struggle in spots but it pays off.
and
Don't get too attached to anyone.
People don't believe that second statment.
Book that disappointed me:
The Grand Crusade (The DragonCrown War Cycle, Book 3) by Michael Stackpole
I loved the series, it was a lot of fun. But it ended with a solid thud. It was like he ran out of ideas, or energy or something. Bleah.
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I desperately attempted to finish "Don't Eat this Book" by Morgran Spurlock. He would hook you with well written chapters on nutrition, and then out of no where start a rhetoric on how all governments are fatting people up because of corruption. Don't get me wrong, I like a crazy conspiracy as much as the next guy, but it didn't fit and usually went too far for even me.
Less recently, Idoru, by William Gibson, made my least favorite list. Great story, with lots of potential, and interwoven plots, for about 9/10ths of the book.
"Hey kids, we're going to Disneyland! [He stops the car somewhere in the middle of Arizona] I changed my mind. Get out of the car. [William Gibson...
I am assuming you read "Virtual Light" and "All Tomorrow's Parties", if not, you didn't get the whole story... Not that I thought "Idoru" was horrible on it's own. Gibson's on a different level then most of the writer's tossed about on this thread.
A complete piece of drivel (and I don't use that term lightly) that I read recently was "Dies the Fire" by SM Stirling. I didn't have any expectations whatsoever for that book (purchased before boarding a flight) and it took quite a bit of will power to get through the whole thing.
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'Da Vinci Code'.
Yeah I'm gonna have to +1 this review. I never understood what the fascination with this book was, I never got past Chapter Three before putting it down. A mish mash of every conspiracy theory surrounding the Catholic Church from the last 500 years, feh. About as exciting as the UFO conspiracy nuts, only churchier.
If you want a really good book dealing with the many streams of Catholic Church-inspired conspiracies I'd reccommend Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum which is a satire on conspiracy theorists of all stripes.
The Original Unearthed Arcana.
Except the bit on Polearms.
:)
The Kama Sutra of Vatsayana.
Given its reputation...
Off the top of my head I would have to say the Dragons of a New Age Dragonlance trilogy by Jean Rabe. Oh, good grief...
Anne Bishop - Daughter of the Blood
What was that!? I still cannot believe I read to the end of it. How can a woman imagine a world ruled by women like a bad carbon copy of the worst patriarchies? And then that rabbit/fawn woman-bunny...
And that's when you thought Anne Rice was weird...
A Game of Thrones
I have tried to read SoIaF twice and I considered it not worth my time halfway through the book.
None of the main characters are remotely interesting or even likeable. The only interesting Person (cannot remember the name, Sanza or something) gets coralled to a side-plot. Major events are described in one sentence or two, but a whole chapter is devoted to a woman climbing a mountain-path.
No idea why some people are so impressed by these novels, only thing that impressed me was what a bore they were.
Ghost, John Ringo. I liked the Prince Roger series and the Earth-Posleen War series, so I give it a shot.
Holy hell, it was just mil-porn and bondage porn glued together. The characters were wafer-thin and the level of jingoism surpassed my tolerance. It's like everything that "Team America" made fun of, times 10, with even less subtlety.
And due to "Legacy of the Force: Invincible", I am never going to buy another SW book that wasn't written by Karen Traviss, James Luceno, or Aaron Allston again. If I find a book by Troy Denning in my house, it is going out in the trash. That wasn't a novel, it was a bad piece of fanfiction that somehow escaped the slushpile.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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The six book Dungeon series, edited by Philip Jose Farmer and each book written by a different author, started slowly in book 1, got very interesting in books 2 & 3, and then proceeded to fall apart. What a waste....
Yeah, no kidding. You knew this series was officially over when Jefferson Airplane became major characters.
The first couple of these books were great. The last two (and perhaps 3 and 4) were AWFUL.
Interesting thread - I see books here that I don't like, and books here that I love - the variety of what people don't like is fascinating!
For me, it's almost anything by Piers Anthony. I really liked the first few Xanth books (when I was 13), but then he got old, fast.
The only book I ever threw against a wall in frustration was one of his. I don't remember the title, but when a married couple developed a morse code based language in an hour or two, and used it to escape from jail I was incredulous. When they soon after used it to instantly develop an ability to communicate with an intelligent bee, I lost it.
This might have been the On a Pale Horse series (one of the later ones, perhaps?). I didn't like that series much either - the first chapter of each book was fantastic, the rest of each was crap. Cynically, I assumed he sold the books based on the first chapter, then dashed the rest off to meet a deadline and collect the paycheck.
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Ghost, John Ringo. I liked the Prince Roger series and the Earth-Posleen War series, so I give it a shot.
Holy hell, it was just mil-porn and bondage porn glued together. The characters were wafer-thin and the level of jingoism surpassed my tolerance. It's like everything that "Team America" made fun of, times 10, with even less subtlety.
Oh yeah, I have never read anything as startling unalike what I was expecting.
The only books I ever read that I cold not get through were Pandora and Armand by Anne Rice. Just so bad I have not picked up a thing by her since.
Funnily enough, I kind of liked Pandora, but Armand isn't even a vampire novel...
I cannot read Anne Rice anymore though. I liked the first volume of the Witch Trilogy, but the story already began to take a nosedive in the second half, the second Volume was hardly readable and the third is not worth mentioning. It deteriorates from a mysterious ghost story to flat soft porn trash... Come to think of it... like everything she ever wrote.
Drizzt typical case where the author doesnt know when to let go of a character and move on to something else.
In fairness to Salvatore, he tried to kill Drizzt off after SIEGE OF DARKNESS and TSR threatened to take the books and the character away from him and give him to another, probably vastly inferior, author, so Salvatore stayed with them.
Interesting to see what WotC would do now if Salvatore tried that again. He's a much, much bigger author now than back then and has much more clout.
I cant say I was inspired by many Forgotten Realm novels especially alot of the newer stuff they were coming out with. The book Darkvision by Bruce Cordell was disappointing to me from a story telling aspect. At times I felt I was the players handbook than reading an actual story.
It seems to be a consistent fact in the game industry that great game designers make for crappy novelists. Gary Gygax and Ed Greenwood were/are excellent designers but their books are heinously bad, approaching unreadable. The chief designer of DRAGON AGE also wrote the tie-in novel, which by all reports is some new level of awfulness as well. Interesting phenomenon.
Ghost, John Ringo. I liked the Prince Roger series and the Earth-Posleen War series, so I give it a shot.
This is a fantastically bad book. Ringo claims he made it so heinously bad on purpose, and was proud when someone wrote a review of the book using the phrase "OH JOHN RINGO NO!" every time they mentioned a plot point that was deviant or disturbing. There were a lot of them.
Now this bit is fine:
A Game of Thrones
I have tried to read SoIaF twice and I considered it not worth my time halfway through the book.
None of the main characters are remotely interesting or even likeable. The only interesting Person (cannot remember the name, Sanza or something) gets coralled to a side-plot. Major events are described in one sentence or two, but a whole chapter is devoted to a woman climbing a mountain-path.
"The book didn't get moving fast enough for me, too much detail, characters didn't work for me, etc", perfectly valid criticism of any book.
What I don't get is:
No idea why some people are so impressed by these novels, only thing that impressed me was what a bore they were.
Extending a criticism of an entire series when you've read less than 15% of it is rather unfair. The books have a slow start, sure, but the story moves like an avalanche. Slow to get moving (which is necessary to establish the characters and background), but once it does the narrative force is unstoppable. If you don't have the patience to stick with it until the story explodes into action in the latter third of the novel, that's perfectly fine, but then you can just say that without implying that other people are somehow in error to like the books.
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Drizzt typical case where the author doesnt know when to let go of a character and move on to something else.
Not an uncommon occurence. Ian Fleming was so tired of being trapped by the success of Bond that he killed off James Bond, in From Russia With Love, but wasn't allowed to move on. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also apparently so sick of Holmes that he killed him off to 'get away from him' as well.
Meanwhile, Orson Scott Card has written some passably good novels that, IMO, would have been *vastly* better if he hadn't dragged Ender Wiggins into them like an increasingly tattered security blanket...
I blame that more on the idea of 'iconic' characters or intellectual properties or 'franchises' making it easier to sell a pre-established character for the eleventy-billionth time than to introduce something fresh and new. Every comic book character in the world suffers from this. Professor Xavier has been 'cured' five times, so far, but every time, circumstances conspire to break his back/legs/ravage his nervous system to put him back in that darned chair, because people expect him to be in the chair. Spiderman changes to a much cooler looking costume, but that's unacceptable because it 'messes with the brand' and so he has to go back to the red-and-blue. Any attempt at lasting change *must* be obliterated, lest it 'damage the brand.' Spider-Man is married? Not any more! Captain America has super-strength from the Power Broker? Not any more! Ms. Marvel has exciting new powers? Not any more! Thor grows a beard? Not any more! A not-bulletproof Wonder Woman starts (sensibly) wearing armor? Back to the bikini, Wonder Cheesecake! Hal Jordan / Barry Allen / Tim Drake is dead? Not any more! Aquaman changes his costume, grows a beard, loses a hand and / or gains new powers? No, no, no and NO, what were you thinking? No character development for you, Fish Whisperer, because we fear change!
It applies to TV as well. Supposedly smart characters (like Chuck) will make the same mistake, episode after episode, time and again, because nobody wants to 'mess with the formula.' Sometimes a show-writer even hangs a lampshade on that, such as in an early season of Buffy where a bad-guy sets up a diversion to get her away from her friends so that he can attack them, which has happened several times before, and then taunts her about how, 'And the best part is, you fall for it *every time!*' Which leaves us with 'heroes' who seem increasingly stupid, as they are chained to a story structure that requires them to fall for the exact same trick over and over, or make the exact same mistake over and over. (See, any character in Heroes, for examples, but with shiny gold stars for repeat dumbassery from Mohinder and Claire.)
Publishers and producers seem to be terrified of anything new. And so we get remakes of remakes (Return to Gilligan's Island!, Clash of the Titans!, Forbidden Planet!), continuations of franchises (Aliens vs. Predators 2, Crow 3, Terminator 4, Saw *7!*) and movies based on video games, because it seems that nobody wants to take a chance on new stories.
Out of morbid curiousity...
...And understand that I'm married to an MDiv who can read greek and hebrew..
I read a couple of the first Left Behind novels.
hehehe
Bear in mind they have a large font and are not quite double spaced. You talk about terrible and trite. Of course, it was what I expected.
I got them at the library as I wouldn't buy them. The shame is the amount of revenue they generate off of people's fear. Makes me want to get a T-Shirt that reads, "I was Left Behind and all I got was this crummy T-Shirt"
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Stephen King's Dark Tower saga. The Gunslinger is probably the best thing he ever wrote, but the original vision just died along the way. The ending was so enormously disappointing that I felt sickened for having waited 15 years to read it. And I'm not talking about the "extra" ending... the whole last book is just turrible. I mean vampires? Srsly? 15 years and it's fraking VAMPIRES!?!
It. The kids f--- their way out of it? Wut? It was like a magical silver bullet straight to the temple of my suspension of disbelief.
I too had to stop reading Wheel of Time in the middle. The core story just got buried underneath a mountain of unrelated subplots in which I totally lost interest. I liked the series at the start, it just got to be too much for itself.
@Dennis Harry: If you didn't like Lord of the Rings, you're probably not going to get 3 pages into the Silmarillion. The style can only be described as biblical. FWIW, the Silmarillion is my favorite book.
I don't care if Ringo personally wrote the words "This book is intentionally dumb" in day-glow orange on the back cover of every copy of the book. The fact is, Ghost was just a simply ghastly wreck that was a huge letdown after his previous work.
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@Dennis Harry: If you didn't like Lord of the Rings, you're probably not going to get 3 pages into the Silmarillion. The style can only be described as biblical. FWIW, the Silmarillion is my favorite book.
The Silmarillion is like reading the Illiad. You'll either love it or find it soul-crushingly boring.
I love that sort of stuff, but most of my friends curl up the floor crying trying to make it through a 25 page Lovecraft short story.
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@Dennis Harry: If you didn't like Lord of the Rings, you're probably not going to get 3 pages into the Silmarillion. The style can only be described as biblical. FWIW, the Silmarillion is my favorite book.The Silmarillion is like reading the Illiad. You'll either love it or find it soul-crushingly boring.
I found it to be both. Read a page, put it down, take a nap, pick the book back up, read a page, etc...
What I don't get is:Quote:
No idea why some people are so impressed by these novels, only thing that impressed me was what a bore they were.Extending a criticism of an entire series when you've read less than 15% of it is rather unfair. The books have a slow start, sure, but the story moves like an avalanche. Slow to get moving (which is necessary to establish the characters and background), but once it does the narrative force is unstoppable. If you don't have the patience to stick with it until the story explodes into action in the latter third of the novel, that's perfectly fine, but then you can just say that without implying that other people are somehow in error to like the books.
Ok, it should read this novel. Still I don't see why I should patiently read 600 boring pages to get to the interesting 300.
To my mind an author has made a big mistake if he isn't able to get my attention on the first 200 pages (and this is already a stretch). I did try to read it TWICE and I hoped to find something in it, but even after patiently putting up with the dull first half of the novel there was no silver lining on the horizon for me.The troubles of a small barony I found described leagues better in Shadowmarch.
And as for epics, Erikson is a far better writer than Martin imo, and he succeeds in getting the readers attention on the first page...
just my 2c
Ok, it should read this novel. Still I don't see why I should patiently read 600 boring pages to get to the interesting 300. To my mind an author has made a big mistake if he isn't able to get my attention on the first 200 pages (and this is already a stretch). I did try to read it TWICE and I hoped to find something in it, but even after patiently putting up with the dull first half of the novel there was no silver lining on the horizon for me.
Fair enough. But obviously that's more to do with your reaction to the novel than any failing of the book itself.
And as for epics, Erikson is a far better writer than Martin imo, and he succeeds in getting the readers attention on the first page...
Erikson started off very well and the second and third books are two of the finest fantasy novels released this decade. The series kind of half-disintegrates after that, the characterisation goes all over the place and the worldbuilding, series timeline and general coherence of the story collapses around Book 8 so nothing actually makes any sense any more, but you can't really fault his ambition. He also has the problem that Scott Bakker came along and said a lot of the same things Erikson wanted to say much more concisely and to the point, although with sadly less humour as well.
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I'm sorta in Simcha's corner when it comes to the Martin books. I read the first three and thought they were OKish, and then waited for the fourth to come out in paperback. I'm sure it's out by now, but I just couldn't care less anymore. The plotline up north is dull, the dragon stuff in the south is dull, and the main action on the mainland is only intermittently interesting. There are too many characters, and they all die whenever you start recognising them; worse, the only one of them that is somewhat interesting is the hunchback. While this might be "realistic", I don't think it makes for particularly good storytelling. At least they are much better than the Wheel Of Time books (who suffer from the same problems). Maybe I'll pick them up again once Martin finishes the series.
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I found it to be both. Read a page, put it down, take a nap, pick the book back up, read a page, etc...@Dennis Harry: If you didn't like Lord of the Rings, you're probably not going to get 3 pages into the Silmarillion. The style can only be described as biblical. FWIW, the Silmarillion is my favorite book.The Silmarillion is like reading the Illiad. You'll either love it or find it soul-crushingly boring.
+1
Interestingly, George RR Martin's first full-length novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT, published in 1977, is probably his most disappointing novel (although still pretty good, with allowances made that it was his debut).
However, it did introduce an alien race called the githyanki. His fellow SF writer Charles Stross liked the name so much he stole it for his D&D campaign, which he then raided for ideas for an entry for the Fiend Folio, which is how AD&D acquired a race called the githyanki (and their cousins, the githzerai, which was a purely Stross invention).
Or to put it another way, George R.R. Martin's most disappointing novel is indirectly responsible for the 'gish' phenomenon currently sweeping the board.
Weird, but true.
A Feast For Crows. The series was already extending itself a little too wilfully for my tastes, but hey ho, still great writing and great characters so no matter. Then we get Feast for Crows. All my favourite characters get side-lined in favour of the all the ones I find interminably dull, and they largely proceed to do nothing of consequence. Maybe it'll all make sense in the big scheme of things, but it read like what I suspect it actually is: 'Oh, and here's what Brienne and Arya et. al. did for the next five years until important things started happening again.'
Meh. All purely subjective personal opinion, of course. Bring on Dances with Dragons. And **** better not actually be dead.
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You won't read his books in public?? Really? Just curious as to why.I love Stephen King, and while I'm reluctant to call him my favorite modern author (I'm also reluctant to read one of his books in public--I'd rather hide it in a Playboy and appear to be gazing at Miss October than caught reading 'Salem's Lot), I do read every book within the first week of publication, and clear my evening schedule for a week to do so.
The Stand is an absolutely amazing book that he obviously enjoyed writing, but then reached a point (about page 900) where is also obviously had no idea what would happen next--so he pulled a Chandler and killed several main characters, sidelined Mother Abigail, and nuked Vegas; closing with a 75-page walk across two states, with no bad guys left to harass, and everything right in the world.
What?!?
I was being facetious.
The Book of the New Sun: obfuscatory and excess verbiage, completely obvious "surprises" - literally saw things coming hundreds of pages in advance, which lead me to believe that the protagonist was mentally challenged, and trippy renditions of classic myths that added very little to the overall story.
i've got a few: sword of shannarah by terry brooks, deryni rising by katherine kurtz, magician apprentice by raymond feist, and (this one surprised me) swords and deviltry by fritz leiber. i was expecting much more from such renowned authors.
and for those who gave up on a game of thrones -- try to hang in there until the end of the book. it's worth it.