A bunch of stuff I can only echo.
The Winter of the World series by Michael Scott Rohan, and Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer quartet.
I found the Torturer series dull and more or less unintelligible. What in gods' names was going on? What happened? Why? And, more importantly, why would I actually care?
The Rohan series had everything going for it. Well written, lots of good ideas (albeit suffering a bit from 'power inflation', which reminds me, can I add "The Saga of Exiles" to my list please?), believable three dimensional bad guys. But it just bored me. I think by the time I read it I'd been reading nothing but sf/f for nearly twenty years and it was fantasy that I was bored with.
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Any series that appears to not have a conclusion or is being kept going indefinitely. This trend as far as I know began with Jordan but contined with The Sword of Truth series and Song of Ice and Fire. All of these authors and series also present a practically infinite amount of characters the better to divide the main story into inumerable sub plots. I joked with a friend once that a 600 page Jordan novel only spend about 50 pages on the main plot. I know this must be a very easy way to keep a story going and continue to get published but if you are going to write hundreds of thousands of pages set in the same world at least divide it up into different stories like Feist or Eddings. It is frustrating to say the least to come to love a story and then have to suffer through hundreds of sub plots and years (or sometimes decades)of waiting to see it play out.
Some comments:
Tolkien: Come on, guys, put it into perspective. He wrote this in the stone-age of fantasy and he´s a linguist. I read it 5+ times, but i started skipping the hobbits after the second time, i have to admit.
Jordan: Plump. Not only one of his favourite adjectives...
Also lots of skipping the second time around, i made it through repeatedly, but it drags, man does it drag...
Anderson changed that a lot btw.
Erikson: Appalling. Not only one of his favourite adjectives...
Some cool characters ( or rather sketches, cool names), but for the rest i wholeheartedly agree with the posters above.
I like LotR, but I've reached the point of skipping the Frodo/Sam/Gollum Angsty-Drama Love Triangle whenever I re-read 'em.
Huh. That's the only part I read!
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Wheel of Time series... started off interesting enough (for me, at least), then steadily descends into what I can only describe as drudgery.
Me too. It felt like his writing was meant to totally paint every aspect of the book for you, not allowing even the slightest bit of room to imagine anything. Too overly detailed. I would get through a couple paragraphs about something the author decided to delve into very deeply for details and by the time I was done I forgot what was going on...couldn't keep the characters straight, couldn't keep locations straight, couldn't follow the story through the thick underbrush of details he wrote. It was mind-numbing.
Revelation Space - Alistair Reynolds. Tried hard to like it. Became a chore at times, even got me to nap once or twice. It did have its moments but I don't think I'll continue with the series.
There were many mid-20th century Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors that were big on ideas but short on writing ability.
I'd have to put everything I've read by Philip K. Dick on that list-- great ideas, hack writing.
Same for the E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman stuff.
I wanted to like Robert Heinlein's works (and I did mostly like Stranger in a Strange Land despite the oh-so-dated hippy-dippy free-love stuff), but just about everything else I've read of his left me cold. Worst offender: the misogyny-disguised-as-praise of I will Fear No Evil.
I liked Dune, but really did not like any of its sequels.
I really tried to get through Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, mainly because of its influence on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but just couldn't get past the third chapter.
Jumping ahead to stuff published within the last 30 years, all of my friends raved about Guy Gavriel Kay's trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry, but despite the superb writing, the lack of any original idea left me cold. It's a trope from every other fantasy novel thrown into a blender, pureed, and poured into beautiful crystal goblets. Pleasant to behold but ultimately unsatisfying.
There are probably more, but these are the ones that jump to mind.
@Haladir
Ditto Fionavar -- but check out his novel, Tigana; original, wonderful story, great characters, fascinating magic... good stuff.
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Revelation Space - Alistair Reynolds. Tried hard to like it. Became a chore at times, even got me to nap once or twice. It did have its moments but I don't think I'll continue with the series.
I read Revelation Space after Chasm City and a couple of his later books, and I agree--it dragged compared to them. His more recent books--The Prefect, Terminal World, and House of Suns--have been much better, IMHO.
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Same for the E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman stuff.
Blasphemy!
Sure it's pulpy space opera, but it's good pulpy space opera!
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What are you speaking about? There weren't more Dune books after Frank Herbert's death. Not even one.
I don't understand. What do you mean Dune books?
Dune was brilliant, but it stood alone. A sequel would have just been silly.
OK, when *I* say 'Dune Books,' I mean:
Dune
Dune Messiah*
Children of Dune*
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
* Sadly, these two are kind of a hard read... should have been a single book. But whatever.
I specifically exclude the steaming load of cr@p that followed Frank Herbert's death... the above six are the ONLY Dune books.
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In the beginning, there were authors of fantasy. Some were good, some were bad. Overall, life was good. Then D&D came, and some of the authors found RPGs. Life was still pretty good. Then some kids who played RPGs became authors. And, unfortunately, their RPG experiences tended to dominate their fantasy books. Ever since, fantasy has has tended to be garbage.
I personally don't read much fantasy anymore. The old fantasy from my youth seems jaded and old. The newer fantasy by those brought up on RPGs (whether pencil and paper or video) seems utterly derivative. Life is no longer good, at least in the realm of fantasy books for me. Oh well. :)
Howie, I think you're just not looking very hard; fair enough, you're disillusioned about fantasy, so naturally you wouldn't. But there's lots of great fantasy still being produced.
Read Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay.
Read Sabriel, by Garth Nix.
Read Orphans of Chaos, by John C. Wright.
To name a few.
But seriously, read Tigana. Poignant, tragic, heroic fantasy, in a unique setting, with fascinating characters and magic; it might restore your faith in the genre.
OK, when *I* say 'Dune Books,' I mean:
I think that was a reference to the fact that a lot of people who like DUNE actually hate Frank Herbert's five sequels, as well as the Anderson Atrocities. I think they're okay (reaching a nadir with GOD-EMPEROR, which was way too long considering almost nothing happens in it).
The newer fantasy by those brought up on RPGs (whether pencil and paper or video) seems utterly derivative.
I'd recommend Steven Erikson, Scott Bakker, Scott Lynch or Joe Abercrombie. All have been influenced by RPGs to some extent, but are hugely different in the types of story they are trying to tell.
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I, too, love Joe Abercrombie, though I haven't read any of those other guys. There's a video kicking around here somewhere of him, Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss and a couple of others I didn't recognize playing D&D at some con. It's like 3 minutes long and amusing to watch.
Anyway, I think there has always been a ratio of well-written books to artless pablum--and of course, half the fun is arguing about which is which. It's the same as in any other genre of literature, including "literature", or, for that matter, any genre of art.
I read a comment somewhere by Michael Moorcock saying that he was grateful to Gary Gygax for doubling his readership. I think what RPGs did was explode the size of our particular niche of geekdom. Also, fantasy/sci-fi books are like heavy metal--there aren't, statistically, a lot of heavy metal fans, but heavy metal fans ARE REALLY INTO heavy metal and buy a disproportionate amount of albums (and with that, I reveal myself as hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-touch).
As for Dune, I read the first three and enjoyed them immensely. There were even times when they were great. But, for whatever reason, at the end of the third one I just decided to call it quits on a relatively high note.
Also, I would like to see more flamewars about Guy Gavriel Kay. Please, for me? Last time this thread was active, I saw some talk about his books and I picked up a bunch at yo olde usede booke store but I haven't read them yet.
What else? Hmm, I haven't read as much as Dick as I should, but the writing didn't strike me as hackish.
I'm going to have to agree with many here - the first book of Jordan's wheel of time is one of the very few books I've ever just given up on and never returned to - I felt like I had read four hundred pages in which the main character barely gets out of bed and crosses his bedroom floor to get to the door.
Painful and pointless, to my mind.
Reggie.
As for Dune, I read the first three and enjoyed them immensely. There were even times when they were great. But, for whatever reason, at the end of the third one I just decided to call it quits on a relatively high note.
Good call! I wish I had quit after the first three (except that I enjoyed reading the first book a second time).
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This seems like an appropriate place to include what has a reasonable chance of actually being a quote from Frank Herbert:
"I'm still against the idea of sequels in principle, because it's
like watering down your wine all the time until you're left with just
water."
(Even as we speak, the person who quoted Herbert on net.sf-lovers, some 27 years ago, is trying to identify where he got it from.)
It's time for some thread necromancy! Over five years after I ranted against Robert E Howard I have a point to add. Here's my rant again, in case you don't feel like clicking on the link:
I remember reading "The Coming of Conan", whose forward by Mark Schultz made Howard to be something godlike. "There is no mistaking a Howard story. No one will ever write Conan... with the ferocity and terrible beauty of Howard." The introduction by Patrice Louinet gave similar praise. Both of those cited several stories, including "Queen of the Black Coast", as examples of his incredible writing skills.
While reading that volume, I came to the conclusion that if Howard's stories had some form of genius that, say, de Camp's stories didn't have, I just can't see it.
In "Queen of the Black Coast", for example, Belit publicly announces that Conan will be her first lover. She shows this by throwing off all her clothes and dancing her "mating dance".
Yeah. That's real high literature, that is.
Belit also callously allows her followers to get killed, figuring that hiring replacements would be easy. You'd think she was playing D&D.
Furthermore, just about all the Howard stories I read began long after the beginning, ended long before the ending, and skipped huge chunks of the middle.
One small part of the problem there is in loosely scattering the stories throughout Conan's life. Howard wrote one story in which someone remembers Conan as "Amra", and then later, he wrote another story in which Conan gets that name. And Howard fans take this as a testament to Howard's genius. BIG DEAL!!! Later "Conan" writers had to worry about WAY more continuity than that!
In fact - and here's something that would make Mark Schultz, Patrice Louinet, and a great many other people hoot at me and call me an illiterate dunce - my favorite Conan writer is, by far, Roy Thomas.
Now THERE was a writer who could give FLESH STORIES OUT and give them DEPTH and MEANING and a sense of CONTINUITY!
Take "Queen of the Black Coast" again. Howard just briefly mentioned Conan refusing to betray his friend and friend's lover. Thomas actually wrote the adventure in which Conan MET those friends, and how they fell in love, so we can actually CARE, and SYMPATHIZE with Conan's plight! Howard skips over Conan's and Belit's adventures together, and cuts right to their final one. Thomas wrote a slew of adventures they had together, so we can actually get to KNOW Belit, and possibly even CARE when she dies!
And years later, Thomas wrote another story in which Conan meets those friends again. In fact, Thomas used those characters in that story in a very clever way. If there's any form of cleverness in Howard's stories, they must be too high a form of genius for me to see.
(I feel compelled to correct myself. Conan met Tara and Yusef again in Conan the Barbarian issue 67, less than one year after we had last seen them in issues 57-58. But that's beside the point.)
Since I wrote that post, I've been working on collecting and reading the Conan the Barbarian comic-book series in order, starting from 1970. I've gotten some of those Conan stories from the Chronicles of Conan trade paperback series. I just finished volume 12, thus finally finishing the whole Belit saga, which started in CtB 58 (or, in a way, 57) and finished in issue 100. (It's been over 20 years since I first started that saga! This is like a monumental event for me! But that's still beside the point.)
Those Chronicles of Conan volumes have personal notes by Roy Thomas. Here's an excerpt from those notes, relating to Belit's callous disregard for her crew's lives, which I mentioned five years ago:
...in Howard's prose story, Belit behaves in a treacherous way toward some of her crew, allowing them to be killed by falling masonry which she had suspected of being booby-trapped by the ancients. In the original story, Conan doesn't remark unfavorably on her behavior... I felt I had to give Belit just the slightest excuse for her abominable behavior, as if she were almost bewitched by these old ruins...
So the same point that bothered me bothered Roy Thomas too! Hah!
Thanks for bumping the thread! It's been a fun re-read and it's especially amusing to note that this is about the time when Doodles decided to read everything I dislike.
Thanks for bumping the thread! It's been a fun re-read and it's especially amusing to note that this is about the time when Doodles decided to read everything I dislike.
Let me just tell you that I'm glad that I'm not alone in my dislike for Douglas Adams. The man simply could not write.
You're dead wrong about Pratchett, though. ;) The "cuteness" complaint only is valid for his first three Discworld books (they are only mediocre).
I don't like Robert Jordan's Books. As for Salvatore his descriptive fight scenes are what I think keep him alive. Artemis could have been a much better character than what he is.
Eh. His physics-breaking fights scenes (along with his endless whining) are specifically what kill it for me. Partly it's having suffered through the carryover into D&D, and the 'scimitar effect.' I understand where people got the impression they cut in 360 degrees (and without any force behind them), but really they're simple single edged blades. If you aren't chopping, you aren't going to accomplish much.
For more recent authors- Rothfuss. Maybe it was just the 'child genius' trope, but -In the Name of the Wind- was tedious and maddening, with insufferable, unlikable characters and a complete lack of anything interesting going on.
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Ooh! Good call!
I think people liked him because he was the Darth Vader of Krynn.
Also, Raistlin sucks!
Darth Vader of Krynn? Ha!
He's the kid brother of the neighbor friend of Darth Vader who think's he's just soooo cool. So this kid finds a bucket, paints it black, puts it on, and then says "Hey, can I play with you too?" When they finally bother to stick this kid in the garbage can, he gets out, cries, grabs his sister's doll, runs over to Dracula, and says, "I got a tragic romance, too, can I play?" And Dracula sticks the doll in the toilet and gives this kid a swirlie, and the kid cries some more and locks himself in the closet to play toy soldiers with himself.
That's Soth.
This set of posts got a lot funnier after _The Force Awakens_ came out.