Recent poor reads

[MinDonner]

I'll second that - though it fills me with gall to recommend Simmons after the atrocity that was Ilium, not to mention his recent racist outpourings, Hyperion is superb, and he did use to be one of my favourite authors. Sigh.

[Xray the Enforcer]

I'll second that - though it fills me with gall to recommend Simmons after the atrocity that was Ilium,

and Ilium was about 50X better than Olympos. (I mean, the central premise of re-enacting the Trojan War is pretty fucking awesome. But then the rest of the book got in the way. :sick:

[beniowa]

You haven't read Hyperion? I think we gotta revoke yer mod card, buddy.

Hey, be nice Xray, I haven't read Hyperion yet either. I've had the book for years, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. And I will. Eventually...

[Errant Bard]

You haven't read Hyperion?

[...]

So what I am saying is: read the books already!

I'll third (fourth, fifth? ) that. Hyperion is so far from being intolerant that I have trouble believing the author wrote anti-muslim stuff after. Made me read Keats, too, back then.

forget who wrote it, just read it.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Hey, be nice Xray, I haven't read Hyperion yet either. I've had the book for years, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. And I will. Eventually...

[beniowa]

Guess I should probably get around to reading it then.

[naz]

The Celestine Prophecy, on a recommendation and a whim, cause I was in between books.... Lord, it sucked. It took me 2 weeks to get through 300 pages, but I make it a point to at least try and finish everything.

How the hell did it get so damn popular way back when? The writing is god-awful... and the preaching.. ah well, I should've known better.

[Lord O' Bones]

Inversions by Iain M. Banks.

I've enjoyed everything I've read to date from this author. Even The Business, that essentially went nowhere slow. Complicity and Use of Weapons are a couple of my favorite books.

But damn, the ending of this book pissed me off. I can't really explain what Iain did to the ending, because I believe what pissed me off so much was exactly what the author was trying to do and I don't want to ruin it for someone yet to read it who might enjoy it.

Anyone else feel this way, or at least know what I'm talking about?

I enjoyed the book just fine until the ending by the way.

[Calibandar]

People are way overreacting about any anti-islam message in Ilium, that's just an oversensivity to these things that some people have ( probably inspired by a fear to say anything bad about Muslims in general). I also thought his April message wasn't as horrible as some people here make it out to be. Simmons was just posing what he thought was a possible scenario for the future if things continued the way they do. I guess the extent to which you can empathize with him depends partially on where you live.

[MinDonner]

I didn't actually notice much of an anti-Islam message in Ilium (I've heard that that mostly comes in Olympos, but have no intention of reading it) - I just thought the book was shit.

Regarding Inversions, I actually liked the ending. My dad gave up reading it halfway through because he thought he could guess where the story was going; if only he'd read to the end...

[Xray the Enforcer]

People are way overreacting about any anti-islam message in Ilium, that's just an oversensivity to these things that some people have

As MinDonner said, most of it was in Olympos. And no, it isn't "oversensitivity," it's awareness. Now, whether you give a shit or not, I guess is the question.

[Kalbear]

Olympos was a shit book, regardless of the anti-muslim idiocy that he espouses in it. It was just a poorly-constructed book which has bad answers to the cool questions in Ilium.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

In The Eye of Heaven by David Keck and Dusk by Tim Lebbon were recent, memorably horrible books I've read.

that's the book I couldn't get past the first chapter (that I was referring to in the Eragon thread)...I knew someone else had to have the same problems.

Thanks Stego.

cell by stephen king. i didn't heed the warning and started it anyway and since i can't seem to put a book down unfinished...i would really, realllly like to have the time invested back.

I'd say you did put that one done unfinished...but it was King who didn't finish it.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Yeah, the Mirror of her Dreams was pretty poor, though I'd put it in the "boring and not worth a reread" camp rather than the "Worse than Goodkind" one!

Dragon Queen by Alice Borchardt was bloody awful. She's Anne Rice's sister, isn't she? Figures.

yes...she also did a werewolf series, Night of the Wolf, Wolf King, The Silver Wolf, all of which were below average (but I kept reading the series anyway)

just a note...her historical fact checker should be fired.

[Tagot]

Debt of Honor, by Tom Clancy. A friend of mine recommended it to me, and I figured "I've never read a Tom Clancy novel, might as well give it a try..."

None of the characters were compelling... at all. The writing was not sickeningly awful, but a bit below mediocre. Some of the lines made me wince, though. "It was electronic incest of sorts, the world's most powerful sonar system trying to stack the world's most stealthy sub" (slightly paraphrasing the second part, don't have the book in front of me). Eww. There were about 20 subplots and most of them were completely irrelevant. I couldn't follow the battle scenes, though maybe that's due to my short attention span. I only finished the last grueling 200 pages (in a 990 page book) for my friend's sake. I could have honestly put it down at any time in those pages and never felt even a passing urge to pick it up again, it was that dull.

And now I'm about to start reading Eragon. I know that it's not good, but I feel that I won't be able to honestly say that until I've read it myself- and I'm surrounded by rabid Eragon fans. I'm going to try to attempt it with an open mind.

[Tears of Lys]

Try not to throw it against the wall

After reading "Song of Ice and Fire," you'll find it pretty tame stuff AND a pastiche of many much superior works, but it's not totally unreadable. I know many boarders will disagree with me on that. I managed to force myself through it. But then I have a high tolerance level. I only sighed heavily and sneered a few, half-dozen times.

I actually liked the second book, "Eldest," more than "Eragon." I think that's because he actually does get into descriptions of the "magic" of the Elves. While I dearly love all of Tolkien's works, he purposefully leaves much of this to the reader's imagination, and I kind of wanted to know more about that.

I tried to get a friend to read "aSoIaF" only to have her get up to around page 150 and say she couldn't get into it - too many characters to follow! Can you imagine that?

[Relic]

Olympos was a shit book, regardless of the anti-muslim idiocy that he espouses in it. It was just a poorly-constructed book which has bad answers to the cool questions in Ilium.

Yup.

I agree that the first two Hyperion books and Illium were awesome. Shame Olympos sucked such huge donkey dong.

Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep is one of the best scifi books ive ever read. i highly recommend it.

[Ashara]

Just dropped "The Memories of Ice" by Erikson back to the library, barely made 300 pages in 9 weeks. It's not that bad, just not interesting.

[Falagar]

Just want to chime in with all those who were disappointed with Olympus. Ilium had a vast sea of potential, and he managed to butcher it all. I thought it was an ok read (seems like I missed something though - where did he get anti-muslim? Feeling a bit stupid right now skipped some parts and had long breaks in my reading, might have spoiled it) but clearly inferior.

Haven't had much time for reading anything lately due to exams.

[Durckad]

Still reading through "The Book of Jhereg." I don't understand what the fuss is all about...