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...
Without him the book was much more scary. The idea of a territories hopping, child killing, cannibal was much scarier than Rita Repulsa's flunkie.
Seeing if this makes the bug spit my post out.
Bad bug.
Seeing if this makes the bug spit my post out.
Bad bug.
Munch,crunch... er... sorry.
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I don't know about most disappointing, but the Dark Sword trilogy by Weiss and Hickman was a big let-down. The ending is just...blarf. I was losing interest in the books as I read, but held on in the hopes that all would be made clear and that the ending would pull it all together and carry off the story. Nope.
Being a huge R.A. Salvatore fan I have grown less and less enthralled with his continued series. The Transition Series: The Orc King being the latest. He might be a victim of his own success. I mean how many more opponents can there be for the unbeatable Drizzt Du Urden? Here's hoping he can come up with an unexpected twist in his next book,The Pirate King, to get me to buy back in.
Bandit of LV
Speaking of Salvatore - while they are a bit up and down, I generally enjoyed his first books (I prefer the Legacy of the drow series). And then I read the Cleric's quintet omnibus.... Awful, horrible, terrible, not very good books.
I'd have to agree on that. I wasn't expecting Drizzt level Salvatore...but jeez. The series had some interesting and fun characters...but otherwise.
A poor read was the book The Ruins. Recently a movie of the same name. I read the book and consequently was warning people not to see the movie. The book strung you along, being just at the readable level, until the end. At the end you find out the whole stupid hill was essentially a giant carnivorous vine plant. There was no chance for the people to survive from the beginning! The end. I actually had to do a double-take at the book and say "Wha...?"
While the book was excellent, I have to say that there is a moment in The Scar that was so disappointing it made me want to punch China Mieville in the face. It probably only made me so mad because the rest of the book is so good.
Anyone ever read a book called Sounder? It was required 6th grade summer reading in balmy 1988 along with Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men..... oh the horrors of Catholic school. I vaguely remember the main character's dog getting blasted by a shotgun and then limping around the rest of the book. I seem to recall a series of scenes where the wounded, beloved pet crawled under the porch to die. Then the poor kid's dad dies while logging....I've blacked out most of that gem. It severely turned me off to any sort of recreational reading until I discovered Dragons of Autumn Twilight a year or so later.
THE MESSENGER by Douglas Niles was one of the worst books I've ever read in my life. I have never picked up another by him, and in fact it was years before I'd even buy another gaming-related novel (that one happened to be one of the first I'd tried).
Very disappointing.
For me, it was another Stephen King book - It. Over a thousand pages of good, scary stuff, with one of the worst endings I've ever read. It was as if he took a spin on the "Wheel o' Random Tripped-out Story Endings" because he couldn't decide how else to do it ...
I'll second this one. Other bad reads come to mind, (Eragon by Paolini, and Eye of the World by Jordan), but "It" was the most disappointing by quite a margin.
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Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon. It might have really good ideas in it, but God was it a boring read. I should have known to avoid it as his previous book, the Last and First Man, was equally dry as a textbook without any decent characters (probably because it spans several MILLENNIA and so you can't follow any characters through). Didn't even manage to finish Starmaker and that's the first book where that's happened.
I love China Mieville's Bas Lag stuff, but I couldn't make it through King Rat. I couldn't shake the feeling that Neil Gaiman had already written this book. There are also some fairly overt points where he injects his own interests into the characters (the main character's dad is a staunch socialist, rhythym and drum music is a big theme). I just found it annoying.
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"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:
2. Everybody dies except that... nun (I hated her) and Ike (could have been major badass, but Jeff Long dropped the ball).
3. Retarded humans ended up destroying an ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, an ENTIRE WORLD, and their final response was much akin to "oops, sorry" (as opposed to "oh God what have I done, I can't live with myself).
One of those things would have been tolerable at best, but all three? It f~**ing ruined the book.
Wow, here's Stephen King again...
For me, it was Insomnia. I've read very little Stephen King, but the first novel of his I decided to try was Insomnia. It started out interestingly enough, and seemed slow-paced, but in a way that allowed me to get to accept the main character more gradually.
But after 400 pages into it, with only almost intentionally sluggish pacing seemingly dragging out the story, I had enough. I've never got so deep into a book, and just felt like I couldn't read any more of it.
Interestingly, although I read a lot of literature in school for my major, one I should have gone back to was Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. This was a novel I hated in high school, but have always been told to go back to. (The first serious work of literature I loved was Dante's The Inferno.)
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I couldn't stand the Forgotten Realms novel Council of Blades in the Nobles series. I'm certainly not saying that all of the FR books are good, but this one was horrible. I've read most of them, but couldn't get past page 100 or so - which makes it the only book I've started that I never finished. Thankfully, I have blocked most of my memory of the book, but I recall that the 2 biggest problems I had with it were that a) nothing really seemed to happen, and b) it didn't at all correspond to D&D or the Forgotten Realms setting in any way other than actually having nobles.
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Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Started out enjoying it, but by book 7 I was wondering when he was going to call it quits. Something about everything in the universe falling down on the two main characters. I just don't accept that everything earthshaking involves the same two people. Time to move on to new characters and events.
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Started out enjoying it, but by book 7 I was wondering when he was going to call it quits. Something about everything in the universe falling down on the two main characters. I just don't accept that everything earthshaking involves the same two people. Time to move on to new characters and events.
Meh, I didn't even make it more than half way through the first one. Thought it stank ;)
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Started out enjoying it, but by book 7 I was wondering when he was going to call it quits. Something about everything in the universe falling down on the two main characters. I just don't accept that everything earthshaking involves the same two people. Time to move on to new characters and events.Meh, I didn't even make it more than half way through the first one. Thought it stank ;)
Never read the series, but I did read recently that a TV series version is coming out soon. Forget what station it will be on though.
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite bored me to death and ended up in the trashcan.Tartuffe by Moliere had to read it in college and hated every moment it kept me away from some thing better,like poking my eye out whith a rusty spoon.
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Meh, I didn't even make it more than half way through the first one. Thought it stank ;)
I didn't say they were great, just that I enjoyed them. 8P Definately what I would call light reading. I did like the book where his main character moved to a stagnant socialist land and pretty much dismantled the government with hard work. I think it was Fallen Empire.
James Clavell's Gai Jin.
Tai Pan and Noble House were two of my all-time favorites, and then he writes this piece of dog meat as a "mid-quel." Lame.
Also, Raymond Feist's "video game" trilogy. It sucked. Big time. In fact, I think someone else wrote it.
Another one: Frank Herbert's last Dune book. Heretics was probably my favorite of the whole series, then comes Chapterhouse, in which, apparently, nothing happens for 300 pages and then we find out that God is a face dancer. Really weak effort there.
One I was really disappointed with was Michail Chritons Andromeda Strain. Most of the book was pretty good, it was just the ending that really annoyed me.
One I was really disappointed with was Michail Chritons Andromeda Strain.
Another one: Crichton's State of Fear -- just really weak thinking. No matter what side of the global warming debate you're on
One I was really disappointed with was Michail Chritons Andromeda Strain. Most of the book was pretty good, it was just the ending that really annoyed me.
** spoiler omitted **
I always figured the ending was a shout out to HG Wells.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I always figured the ending was a shout out to HG Wells.One I was really disappointed with was Michail Chritons Andromeda Strain. Most of the book was pretty good, it was just the ending that really annoyed me.
** spoiler omitted **
That or the moral of the story is science can only do so much to nature. I find the endings of both ironic to me.
The two books I was very disappointed with:
David & Leigh Eddings' "Polgara the Sorceress"
I loved everything in the previous 11 books, The Belgariad, The Mallorian, and Belgarath the Sorcerer. I didn't enjoy the tone of the book, nor the personality of Polgara as expressed in it.
and:
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
I did not like this book. Not because of the Death of Dumbledore at the end, it was inevitable in the story and you should have seen that a mile ahead, but it was the 500+ pages that came before. I found myself reading the whole book in one day, turning page after page thinking "Okay... something interesting's gotta happen soon," only to find out that it doesn't.
The book should have been called Harry Potter Cheats at Potions and Nobody Cares (Except Hermione).
But I'll expound.
Book Five ended with the words "And now the War Begins." I was excited! Finally, the war will begin! Now we can see how the Hogwarts teachers can really prepare these young students! Now we can see what Voldermort can do now that he's not hiding! Finally people will believe Harry Potter when he says something's wrong!
Then you read Book Six. No war. No preparing for war. Harry keeps telling people that something's wrong, but nobody believes him. Oh, and he cheats at potions.
Dumbledore offers some "special" training that amounts to nothing more than looking into the pensieve to see things that really don't matter anymore. Blah!
Oh well.
Sorry about that. It's still a sore subject with me, even over the past few years.
I did see the trailer to the next movie, and it seems like they may actually be able to make this into something worthwile to watch. It shouldn't be hard to keep the movie short... there is a LOT of crap you can simply cut out and condense and it won't change a single thing.
"Theros Ironfeld" is a book about the blacksmith with the magic arm who made the Dragonlances in Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance series. Anyways, I never played the modules, so I was excited when this book came out because I wanted to know HOW he acquired the magic arm. We all know he got it chopped off by draconians in "Dragons of Autumn Twilight." Then in Book 2 or 3, he shows up with a magic arm, says, "I'll tell you how I got it some day," and never does.
So I read the Theros Ironfeld book, which begins in his childhood and leads up to...wait for it....wait for it....his arm getting chopped off. The end.
I was so pissed.
I stopped reading Dragonlance books after that.
But I guess now they're writing a series of books to fill in the gaps.
Too little, too late.
I just don't care anymore.
The two books I was very disappointed with:
David & Leigh Eddings' "Polgara the Sorceress"
I loved everything in the previous 11 books, The Belgariad, The Mallorian, and Belgarath the Sorcerer. I didn't enjoy the tone of the book, nor the personality of Polgara as expressed in it.and:
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
I did not like this book. Not because of the Death of Dumbledore at the end, it was inevitable in the story and you should have seen that a mile ahead, but it was the 500+ pages that came before. I found myself reading the whole book in one day, turning page after page thinking "Okay... something interesting's gotta happen soon," only to find out that it doesn't.The book should have been called Harry Potter Cheats at Potions and Nobody Cares (Except Hermione).
But I'll expound.
Book Five ended with the words "And now the War Begins." I was excited! Finally, the war will begin! Now we can see how the Hogwarts teachers can really prepare these young students! Now we can see what Voldermort can do now that he's not hiding! Finally people will believe Harry Potter when he says something's wrong!
Then you read Book Six. No war. No preparing for war. Harry keeps telling people that something's wrong, but nobody believes him. Oh, and he cheats at potions.
Dumbledore offers some "special" training that amounts to nothing more than looking into the pensieve to see things that really don't matter anymore. Blah!
Oh well.
Sorry about that. It's still a sore subject with me, even over the past few years.
I did see the trailer to the next movie, and it seems like they may actually be able to make this into something worthwile to watch. It shouldn't be hard to keep the movie short... there is a LOT of crap you can simply cut out and condense and it won't change a single thing.
I thought the final Harry Potter was a bit lame. All they did was camp in a tent for 9 months because, in the Potterverse, major climatic events can only occur during the last week of school at Hogwarts, even if you quit school or already graduated or whatever.
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I wanted to know HOW he acquired the magic arm
I'm glad Steve Brust finally told us what happened to Vlad's finger, in Jhegaala. I'm even more pleased that it bore absolutely no relation to Frodo's experience. Overall, that's one book that did NOT disappoint.
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....
Just about everything that takes place during the Clone Wars, with the possible exception of Outland Flight, and the worst part is I keep buying them books. Just got the new book based on the cartoon. I'm about two chapters into that and its better then I hoped, so I still hoping.
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The game of Thrones along with the wheel of time. I hate it when authors use way to many characters to tell a story and you are left reading the books for two-hundred pages to find out what happened to a character just to have the damn book end. Also I really hate feeling the need to reread the previous 5 books just to remember what is going on.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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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....
I read those when they came out, so it's been a while, but I liked book 1 a lot, and while I agree that the last book was a bit weaker than the rest, and that overall the series was sometimes a bit disjointed due to the author switch each book, I still overall liked the series as a whole.
Shards of a Broken Crown by Raymond Feist was a bad ending to what was otherwise my favorite series done by him.
Ditto.
I have all of his books, and two of my favorites are the 2nd/3rd in that particular quartet. And the worse thing was that the 3rd book would have been a great place to end it.
The 4th book could have been a good starting point for a new trilogy, but it essentially is anti-climatic after the 3rd book and just sets us up for the next arc.
Actually, in retrospect, if the book was "solo" novel like Princes of the Blood or The Kings Bucaneer (essentially designed to bridge the gap between generations in Midkemia) I would have liked it much more.
* I can't wait for the next in the series of other authors writing in Midkemia (Tales of the Riftwar?). Its SM Stirling (currently one of my favorite authors) doing a Jimmy the Hand story in Krondor. Hopefully much better than the videogame novelization Krondor series which someone else commented on in this thread.
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What book disappointed you the most?
It would be difficult to state the most disappointed in a book I have ever been in without stating how I got there.
NOT the most dissapointing book (by a long shot): Robert Lynn Asprin's Myth Adventures. I can't recall rolling in bed having laugh-out-loud moments like that! What a fantastic romp! Oh - that was so good - I need more ... Hmmm - this is supposed to be hilarious ...
MOST Dissapointing book (ten, in fact): L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth decology. I don't know HOW I got the idea that this drek was going to be amusing. I blame the book jackets and the encouraging nods of the store staff. I read THREE whole volumes (of the complete 10 I purchased) grimacing in shear agony, continuing on in absolute single-mindedness, until I realized at the end of book 3 that the joke was on me all along.
Honorable Mention for Most Disappointing: Robert Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls. Another trudge-fest through what ... 200 pages of character introduction only to end on a WTF!! cliffhanger! Who fought who?? What happened?? Where's the damned cat??? Pah. Its a good thing authors don't have to wait around for me to read, because someone would have gotten a good punch in the nose for that one.
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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?!?
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.
The extra-long "director's cut" version didn't help anything; I seem to remember that the extra 400 pages added nothing but an extra 4 hours of reading time.
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I just read a book this weekend that wins the honor of the first book ever I finished and threw straight in the trash.
Wraith, by Phaedra something-or-other. The main character starts every single chapter in some awful predicament that she got herself into by making a rookie mistake, complaining a little bit about how unfair her life is, getting out of it by dint of the bad-guys basically letting her go, getting some random people killed and / or maimed, being told *exactly* what she needs to do (or, more importantly, must NOT do, under any circumstances), forgetting that immediately after squeeing over her hot boyfriend (whom she also gets maimed and / or killed), doing *exactly* what she wasn't supposed to do (or failing to do the one thing she was told that she had to do by one of the six powerful and wise advisors she consults, endangers and promptly ignores throughout the book), getting captured and beat up again and then whining about how unfair her life is.
I want this character to be real, so that I can track her down and explain to her what a flipping idiot she is and how many people she got hurt and / or killed in the process of bumbling around and doing the exact opposite of what she was told to do by the omiscient plot-fairies who kept holding her hand and saving her bacon.
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. And then all of it 'just went away,' like Mad Martigan's love for Sorscha, and I can only presume that the author lost interest and just ended it, abandoning the plot threads and just saying, basically, 'All of that stuff from the first half of the book? Didn't mean anything. Pretend it didn't happen and marvel at this new and utterly meaningless ending I've pulled out of my backside.'
"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 speeds away, check in hand]"
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While the book was excellent, I have to say that there is a moment in The Scar that was so disappointing it made me want to punch China Mieville in the face. It probably only made me so mad because the rest of the book is so good.
Dude, Uther Doul has the Possible Sword. He literally cannot be beaten. That fight only lasted long enough for the Brucolac's body to hit the floor once Uther chops his legs off - probably all of two seconds. Actually, that's one thing I really like about Mieville - he knew the showdown would be completely one-sided and meaningless, so why bother with describing it?
As for disappointing books, I'll throw in James Ellroy's Silent Scream. Now, this is not a bad book as such - it is just that compared to his best work (The Black Dahlia, the Dudley Smith Trillogy, American Tabloid and The Cold 6000), it is just a huge, big letdown. At least he admits as much himself...
As for disappointing books, I'll throw in James Ellroy's Silent Scream. Now, this is not a bad book as such - it is just that compared to his best work (The Black Dahlia, the Dudley Smith Trilogy, American Tabloid and The Cold 6000), it is just a huge, big letdown. At least he admits as much himself...
Dudley was one bad bastard! And if you haven't read Clandestine, it's every bit as good as White Jazz (I really didn't care that much for Because the Night, though, speaking of big disappointments -- it was nowhere near as good as Blood on the Moon).