Worst fantasy literature you've read?

[Wolfdude]

The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks

I guess this is considered a fantasy classic but I don't know how because it reads like a Lord of the Rings rip-off. There's an evil mountain in the distance, a magic item that must be captured, a council that gathers to decide how to deal with the menace, a powerful wizard who leads the band, some humble country bunchkins who are the center of the tale. "George Lucas gonna sue somebody!" (<--you had to watch a certain movie to get that )

The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind

Bad fantasy literature must run with guys who are named Terry. Actually, I managed to read the first book in his series. The second book was just too much nonsense for me to go on. I think what bugs me about Goodkind's series is that it feels like something a bunch of Dungeons & Dragons kids would come up with one Friday evening. It feels like a fantasy world where a dirt path replaces the highway, where a magic wand replaces a machine gun, where medeival food replaces fast food joints, it just doesn't feel like a period piece. I almost gave up on book one when he started to go into vivid detail about a rape scene, but thankfully it didn't happen. One thing I will give Goodkind is that he has a nice romance story going which most fantasy authors tend to avoid for some reason. It rarely seems like a man and a woman start a journey, become close, and finish the journey.

I haven't read a lot of fantasy novels, mostly just the popular stuff, but those two were bad, bad, bad. I advise readers looking for new stuff to fill the void while GRRM writes another novel to dodge those books.

What would be on your thumbs down list?

[Sad King Billy]

You know. I had actually hoped Goodkind would only show up at the 5th or 6th post. Ah well.

[Asa]

Eragon. 'Nuff said.

[Brys]

This comes right at the top:

Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken's head rose. Kahlan pulled back. Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway. "Shoo," Kahlan heard herself whisper. There wasn't enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn't tell if it had the dark spot, But she didn't need to see it. "Dear spirits, help me," she prayed under her breath. The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest.

Thanks to Goodkind III thread - apparently it's from Soul of the Fire. Really, you can't get much worse than this, but then it does provide hilarity.

But the worst fantasy books I've read all of would be:

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan (I really don't know why I read this now - 800 pages of nothing. Mind-numbingly boring, terribly written, and having to endure that much of Jordan's awful characters).

Wit'ch War by James Clemens - utterly predictable, badly written, unrealistic characters - all the standard stuff in poor quality fantasy - but he manages to go one step further, by putting an apostrophe in every other word, and his naming is so original that he has races called "rock'goblin" and "el'vin" and "og're". The saddest thing of all was that the first 20 or so pages of the first novel (this is the third in the series, where I stopped) were actually competently written and showed some potential.

The Elder Gods by David Eddings - Eddings is a terrible author at his best, but this is by far the worst of his I've read. I don't think it needs explanation.

Trudi Canavan's Magician's Guild and Ian Irvine's Geomancer were pretty terrible as well, but not quite as bad as the above.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Hey Sword of Shannara is completely different from Tolkien. The council you mention takes place in the DWARVEN capital not the Elven one. So durrrrr.

I hate to do it because of the avid following here: Gardens of the Moon by Erikson. Horrid.

[williamjm]

When I was a teenager I read quite a lot of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels. Now, they're not all bad, I wouldn't rank any of them as being particularly great but the best are entertaining and competently written. However, there are some really awful novels in that series, often the worst books feel like (and probably are) novellisations of RPG campaigns.

Particularly bad examples include Spellfire and Crown of Fire by Ed Greenwood, the quality of the prose is dire, the plot of CoF is virtually incomprehensible and it was filled with some horrible cliches and large numbers of cameos by minor FR characters that would mean absolutely nothing to people not already familiar with the setting. Scott Ciencin was the other FR author that really stood out as being really, really bad, he was responsible for the first two thirds of the Avatar trilogy, a potentially entertaining attempt at epic fantasy ruined by Ciensin's extremely mediocre writing and characterisation, like Spellfire it also had absurd numbers of cameos and many written-down-from-RPG segments. It was noticeable that the last book in the trilogy, written by a different author (the competent, if uninspired, Troy Denning) was much better.

I'd have to agree with the suggestion above of Eddings' "The Elder Gods". Eddings' best books were good for what they were (generic Epic Fantasy adventures), but in tEG he didn't even appear to be making the slightest effort and the characterisation was pathetic, even by his not particularly high standards.

I'd say those books were probably the worst Fantasy books I've read, since I don't think they really have any redeeming features. There are also books I really didn't like, but will admit weren't complete failures like Stephen Donaldson's "Lord Foul's Bane" (interesting concept, pity it was so tedious to read) or Ricardo Pinto's "The Chosen" (impressively detailed and original world-building, reasonably good prose, but ruined by awful, predicatble plotting, poor characterisation and being far too long).

[Asa]

A Song of Ice and Fire. Terrible stuff. It's just more cliche good vs evil, good guys get the girls, are immortal, and always kick evil's butt. Martin. Jordan. Both 6 letters. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

[Wolfdude]

A Song of Ice and Fire. Terrible stuff. It's just more cliche good vs evil, good guys get the girls, are immortal, and always kick evil's butt. Martin. Jordan. Both 6 letters. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

George, Robert, both 6 letters.

[Mad Queen]

George = 6 letters

Martin = 6 letters

ASoIaF = 6 letters

666!

[The Marquis de Leech]

Bad fantasy literature must run with guys who are named Terry.

Terry Pratchett being the exception.

[Mind Elemental]

Tossup between Thomas Covenant and Dragonlance for me.

Disclaimer: I have never read (or tried to read) Brooks, Eddings, Jordan, or Goodkind.

[Elfqueen]

Well I'll have to say the last book that Terry guy made..It makes me sad becasue he was the first fantasy author I ever read.WFR ..

And I liked it but well we know how the story goes..He started getting all weird and self rightous.

Any ways.Be sides that mess.I read some thing called the Tryanny of The Night,by Glen Cook that sucked major ass

I know there's been many more but I can't even recall thier names..because they sucked so bad

[direwolf]

i think the horridness of Goodkind can never be overstated. the only i've read is Wizards First Rule. Imagine my dismay: i took a bus trip from san francisco to humbolt county, hubolt county to corvalis oregon, back the same way (making the same stops), and then a train from san francisco to albany, NY. the only book i brought was Wizards First Rule.

that really, really, really sucked.

as much as i hate to admit it, RA Salvatore has written some utter fucking trash (see: A Passage to Dawn). In his defense, i've heard he only continues to write Drizzt books because Wizards of the Coast owns the right to Drizzt and wont let him kill Drizzt, and also they threatened to hire someone else to write the series if he quit.

[The Wolf Maid]

I think everyone just about said some of the worst....

oh yes, Hamilton. I forgot her name...the Anita Blake one. Got within a few paragraphs, but couldn't bear to finish it.

A Song of Ice and Fire. Terrible stuff. It's just more cliche good vs evil, good guys get the girls, are immortal, and always kick evil's butt. Martin. Jordan. Both 6 letters. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

[Jagged]

In his defense, i've heard he only continues to write Drizzt books because Wizards of the Coast owns the right to Drizzt and wont let him kill Drizzt, and also they threatened to hire someone else to write the series if he quit.

This is what I heard as well and I tend to believe it.

[sologdin]

there's some bad stuff out there, but of famous mainstream crap--

narnia.

anything by weiss & hickman.

the xanth books.

(both terrys are in on the ground floor.)

[KazigluBey]

I tried to read the first WOT book a few years ago, and although I made it through it, it was painful. Honestly, I think some of you think it was good purely for nastolgic reasons. The book is terrible, from the dialogue to the cliched characters, to the hack LOTR rip off story, it was all so bad I wanted to throw it away in disgust halfway through. And it wasn't the braid tugging that made it unbearable to me, it was the damned constant deus ex machine that made no sense.

So the whole troop is being chased by an army of orcs or whatever they were, and all of a sudden the witch woman just casts a spell and the ground completely engulfs the whole enemy army?! Why should I *ever* feel any empathy for the characters, or share in their terrors and triumphs, if they can defeat whole armies of the "dreaded" orcs by themselves? That's just one of the hack moments I can remember in that book, but I guess that's good because I don't want to remember any more of it.

[Wolf Girl]

When I was a teenager I read quite a lot of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels. Now, they're not all bad, I wouldn't rank any of them as being particularly great but the best are entertaining and competently written. However, there are some really awful novels in that series, often the worst books feel like (and probably are) novellisations of RPG campaigns.

I read a bunch of terrible fantasy in high school that I've blocked out, but the Dragonlance ones stick in my mind because of their popularity. I'd change "entertaining" above to "occasionally engaging" and "competently written" to "might pass a junior English class if the teacher thought you were cute." Especially the first trilogy of the main six books: they were pretty horribly done as I recall. I gave the second three a re-read before I moved just so I could throw the books away at last. I didn't mind the loss.

[commando penguin]

Iv never been able to 'get into' the LOTR books. I have tried at least five times to read the series but i lose interest after a few hundred pages or so. This is in my opinion what determines the quality of a book; not how well it is written (LOTR is no doubt very well written), but whether it can grab my attention. Shit, i was even able to finish Eragorn, and even though i know that its shit i still kind of enjoyed reading it, if that makes sense . LOTR is by no means the worst book iv tried to read but it is the only one that springs to mind at the moment.

That was probably a very bad attempt at an explanation but i cant be bothered editting it so it'll have to do

[Centrist Simon Steele]

See, I don't see Jordan as ripping off Tolkien, but instead taking the pattern Tolkien used (which he himself would probably agree, he didn't invent either), and popping down another couple of ages.

That's actually interesting to me.

I don't know what specific scene you are thinking of, but I certainly can't recall anything quite matching that description. Every time Moiraine or anybody fights large numbers of Trollocs it is generally considered a struggle, not easy. Heck, they had a group of powerful channeler's in the most recent book facing an army of Trollocs who barely came out of it alive because they weren't prepared for a fight.

But therein lies the problem Mister Manticore--what are we on, Book 10? (I haven't read the latest yet...) You said it yourself. The group of channelers weren't prepared for a fight and BARELY made it out alive, but yes, once again they made it out alive. JUST KILL SOMEONE JORDAN DAMN YOU!