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Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.




Psycho Squad: Execution Night



JJ Santiago is my favourite. :allears:

(JJ Santiago is hardly even in the book, for obvious reasons)

quote:

Meet Jack Flint

Flint hurdled a table and tackled Dr. Blood. They slammed against the kitchen stove as they battled for control of the gun.

Dr. Blood's free hand tore at Flint's face, narrowly missing his eyes. Flint smashed Blood's other hand against the top of the stove, but Blood wouldn't let go of the gun.

Flint tried a different tactic. He held Blood's hand down on one of the burners and turned the flame on full.

There was the smell of burning hair and then burning flesh. Blood screamed and dropped the gun.


reality_groove posted:

I know it's popular and optioned and everything but Ready Player One was physically painful to get through. The protagonist is the geekiest geek of all geekdom, gets super buff, gets an online girlfriend, repeatedly outsmarts an entire corporation of evil murderers and wins the world by having an 'on the spectrum' dedication to rewatching 80s movies and TV shows. All while making frequent terrible references to pop culture. Adamantium! Godzilla! TIE fighters!
I got this as part of some ebook bundle and couldn't get through it, then later found out that it's supposed to be really popular. I'm still not convinced that the people who say they like it aren't pulling some kind of elaborate prank, because really?

This, on the other hand, I kind of want to read. Not for the $5.37 they want for the Kindle version on Amazon though. Maybe if it were $2 or less...

NLJP posted:

edit2: Ah I forgot The Dresden Files: "Urban Magician" Harry Dresden Private Eye etc. is too cool for all of your bullshit. Dames, trenchcoat gets into the establishment's face, scrapes through each situation in banter and blood, general fuckup but only so that he can shrug through it all but actually he's really miserable and man just awful all around. A pastiche of a noir sleuth meets Die Hard and magic. I got through three books of this now 15 book series for some reason (people told me that's when it gets good I think). Now all this might sound ok again as a dumb escapist fantasy (which, yeah, got no problem with that kind of thing) if it wasn't so miserably badly written.
I've never read the books, but I liked the TV show.

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The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow

I kind of want to read Psycho Squad now, drat you.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

Tiggum posted:

I got this as part of some ebook bundle and couldn't get through it, then later found out that it's supposed to be really popular. I'm still not convinced that the people who say they like it aren't pulling some kind of elaborate prank, because really?
It's terrible, but it's easy to see why it's popular. It proposes a world where getting rich, getting the girl and being the most famous man in the world all come down to how much bullshit pop culture trivia you've memorized. It's pure wish-fulfillment. It's an insufferable nerd's wet dream. That guy who incessantly quotes Firefly at inappropriate times finally gets to pretend that all the time he's wasted watching TV and reading comic books is actually worth something.

Der Luftwaffle
Dec 29, 2008
The Silmarillion is a printed and bound wiki. I get that it's a compendium of lore stuff, but good god is it dry as hell.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

NLJP posted:

edit2: Ah I forgot The Dresden Files: "Urban Magician" Harry Dresden Private Eye etc. is too cool for all of your bullshit. Dames, trenchcoat gets into the establishment's face, scrapes through each situation in banter and blood, general fuckup but only so that he can shrug through it all but actually he's really miserable and man just awful all around. A pastiche of a noir sleuth meets Die Hard and magic. I got through three books of this now 15 book series for some reason (people told me that's when it gets good I think). Now all this might sound ok again as a dumb escapist fantasy (which, yeah, got no problem with that kind of thing) if it wasn't so miserably badly written. One of those I won't ever understand being quite as popular as it is.

Yeah, everyone in said thread will tell you the first two are poo poo, being literally the first books he'd ever wrote. The third is a bit better, but I'd say it doesn't really get "good", in the sense of being schlocky fun action-movie style fiction until the 4th book. You can really obviously tell that Butcher's learning as he goes, which I have no issues with, as he actually does improve as he goes.

Hell, I actually think ambitious but poo poo books should be given a pass, the only books I can really hate are those that are hateful. I don't hate Xanth for the puns or poor characterization, I hate it for the pedophile apologia and all the rest of Anthonies hosed up gender issues. I hate the Sword of Truth, not because it's poorly written thinly plotted fantasy garbage, but because the author uses the series as an amateurish wannabe Atlas Shrugged. Yes, the Sword of Truth is basically Atlas Shrugged if Rand was a fantasy nerd and also borderline illiterate.

My vote for worst loving book I've ever read?



Now, on the surface this book has an amazing premise, and even the plot in the book isn't that bad!

The gist is that Earth is being "invaded" somehow by an alien biosphere. Alien lifeforms, labled Chtorrans due to the call of the most feared invaders the giant man-eating Worms, are just appearing on Earth. They are totally wrecking our ecosystems, basically wholesale replacing Earth's natural life. Which wouldn't be bad if absolutely everything Chtorran wasn't horrifically deadly to us. Their version of dandelions are basically made out of Asbestos for example.

Plus there's 12 foot long men-eating worms with bulletproof hides.

The main issues with the books are 3 fold:
1. The Main Character Sucks
2. The Plot Doesn't Move
3. The Author WONT loving DIE

Point one is an issue because the main character sucks. As in, he is literally useless. His every action is revealed to be pointless. Every scientific discovery (HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE A SCIENTIST) is either worthless (There's literally a scene where another scientist basically throws out his research because other people already figured the same thing out), or just completely wrong (The worms are hostile only because we attack them on sight! If we approach them without weapons they won't attack! NOPE TURNS OUT PEOPLE ARE TASTY gently caress ME). The issue with this is that each of these "discoveries" TAKE HUNDREDS OF PAGES TO FIND OUT. An entire NOVEL of the series is based around the whole "Peace" plan to communicate with the Worms! Which leads to problem 2:

NOTHING HAPPENS. Where do the aliens come from? NOBODY KNOWS. How did they get here? NOBODY KNOWS. How do we stop them? NOBODY loving KNOWS. The plot, which is nominally how to stop the invading ecology from killing us all, never advances. There's 4 books, which end on a cliffhanger, no sign of the last one in years, and NO ADVANCEMENT OF THE STORY. Well, characters advance, but unless the series actually ends with the extinction of the human race, dude is loving up everything.

Oh and the last bit? The author wont' shut up. In every book there's uncomfortable pseudo-philosophic rambling that is then explicitly shown to be wrong! Imagine reading Atlas Shrugged, the whole goddamn thing, and then the book ends... with a detailed breakdown why the entire philosophy illustrated throughout the rest of the book is bad. The Chtorr books actively go BACKWARDS in content. Some hosed UP EXAMPLES:
1. The first book has a running narrative device of the main character thinking back to his High School Civics class as taught by a TOUGH BUT FIRM MARINE who has Nontraditional Teaching Methods. From these memories he gains insight on his current situations. A GOOD LITERARY DEVICE, I liked it! I got a bit annoying at how preachy Mr. Marine was, but it wasn't that bad. Until the end, where Main Character realizes that the entire class was basically brainwashing him into being a Proper Citizen and that the whole class was actually a propaganda laced lie. gently caress you.
2. Main Character's Love Interest rapes him. Command rapes him. His military superior tricks him into a loving UNDERGROUND VAULT, locks them both inside, and orders him to gently caress her. He does so. They get married. gently caress you.
3. Main's Gay Best Friend becomes a Telepath (Actually body swappers. People who can swap bodies with other Telepaths via brain cybernetic thing), who then almost tricks Main into loving him while he's in a Sexy Lady Body. Main is of course disturbed when he realizes he almost hosed his Gay Best Friend. This is logical. GBF then procedes to give a chapter-long rambling speech about FREE LOVE, and how being a telepath makes you realizes that Gender is an Illusion maaaan, and straight and gay are just shackles holding down your soul. He convinces Main Character to gently caress him in sexy-lady-body. They do the dirty deed all night long baby. It is loving UNCOMFORTABLE.

Then they reveal that whole chapter of weird gender-fluid, transexual-buddhist claptrap was... well bullshit. When Main Character wakes up the next morning, Sexy Lady is now back in her own body and calls him basically a rapist. Why? Cause GBF, isn't a full Telepath, he's a Housesitter. His whole job is just to make sure Telepath bodies not being currently used for active mission (Telepaths are basically a branch of the CIA), he's supposed to take care of their poo poo. Make sure the bodies eat healthy, get exercise, pay their rent and bills, etc. Y'know, housesit. Instead he always takes bodies out to get drunk and have orgies. So...

gently caress THESE BOOKS.

EDIT:

Der Luftwaffle posted:

The Silmarillion is a printed and bound wiki. I get that it's a compendium of lore stuff, but good god is it dry as hell.

The Silmarillion is straight up Tolkien trying to write The Bible. It's the Middle Earth's Old Testament. It's the Elven Torah. Looking at it like that, yeah it's dry, but it's exactly what it was meant to be right down to lists of genealogy for the Kings of Gondor.

Ferrosol
Nov 8, 2010

Notorious J.A.M

Mycroft Holmes posted:

Anything by Tom Krateman, especially Watch on the Rhine.

Surprised we got this far before this book was mentioned. Short version John Ringo (whose collective works themselves deserve several posts here himself) wrote standard right wing military sci-fi porn in which our rugged and manly hero mows down the alien hordes using his super high-tech weaponry. Pretty regular stuff right by the admittedly low standards of the genre. But this is where Kratman came in. See amongst the tech the good guy aliens hand humanity is the ability to regenerate old people into younger bodies. So a lot of places use it to regenerate world war II vets and vietnam vets etc. Apart from Germany that who decide to use it to regenerate the Waffen SS.

Yes the Waffen-SS. Now in the hands of a better author that might be the makings of a great moral dilemma. But no not Kratman. See all the SS characters are noble aryan supermen defending Germany despite the best efforts of the liberal and green governments to cripple the glorious German war-effort all the liberals etc are massive straw man caricatures while all the SS soldiers are noble warriors who had absolutely nothing to do with the Death camps. Yeah. Its basically nazi apologism the book that ends up with the SS overthrowing the German government because they're too limp-wristed and soft to fight the aliens properly.

Ferrosol has a new favorite as of 12:17 on Jul 4, 2015

Mr. Gibbycrumbles
Aug 30, 2004

Do you think your paladin sword can defeat me?

En garde, I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style

Der Luftwaffle posted:

The Silmarillion is a printed and bound wiki. I get that it's a compendium of lore stuff, but good god is it dry as hell.

It was never meant to be a riveting read. It's supposed to be a dense, super-spergy account of thousands of years of Middle-earth history.

The publishers are the terrible ones for marketing it as a novel alongside LotR and The Hobbit.

Nanomashoes
Aug 18, 2012

NLJP posted:

My brother loaned me Ready Player One and good loving lord is that infuriating bullshit of the most childish kind. It was so bad.

Apparently there's a whole thread about it in GBS but no way am I going to go in there. I like dumb escapist fantasy and science fiction, I've read many bad books that I kinda enjoyed but the whole shtick of being a total badass because you know all these obscure 80s pop culture references was just sort of sad. Plus the writing was awful.

It's not a complementary thread.

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow

Nanomashoes posted:

It's not a complementary thread.

I don't think the thread being complimentary is the reason he doesn't want to go there.

I brought my Drake
Jul 10, 2014

These high-G injections have some serious side effects after pulling so many jumps.

Do comics count? Scott Pilgrim is like the Ready Player One of comics.

quidditch it and quit it
Oct 11, 2012


This is a set of four books, of which I've read the first three; The first one's called "The Book With No Name", written by "Anonymous" (not the 4chan dudes, thankfully). They are absolutely batshit insane, and not particularly well written, but are somehow still fun to read. There's vampires, ghosts, zombies, cowboys, Elvis, it's like the writer just couldn't decide what pop culture reference to throw in, so he just used them all. The protagonist, The Bourbon Kid, lights his cigarettes using flames that come from his fingers.

The third book's essentially Zombie Pop Idol the book, complete with a Simon Cowell stand-in. Read the books, they're so bad they're almost amazing. Have a wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_Kid

The Moon Monster
Dec 30, 2005

Nckdictator posted:

The "destruction of Mecca" sequence is so overdone one can imagine the author pleasuring himself while writing it.

quote:

:words:

I'm pretty sure I've listened to a book on tape with this scene except instead of Mecca it was San Francisco.

Morton Haynice
Sep 9, 2008

doop doop
doop doop
doop doop
doop doop

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

While I'm here, I should also mention Tyra Banks' debut novel Modelland. The official theme song should be enough to let you know what you're in for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjC-L2O3I4g

The best way to experience this book is by listening to Sydnee McElroy explain the plot to her increasingly incredulous husband.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This poo poo is hilarious.

Vanderdeath
Oct 1, 2005

I will confess,
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.



Morton Haynice posted:

The best way to experience this book is by listening to Sydnee McElroy explain the plot to her increasingly incredulous husband.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This poo poo is hilarious.

Holy poo poo thank you for this. This is absolutely incredible.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Vanderdeath posted:

Holy poo poo thank you for this. This is absolutely incredible.

"Toukie lives in Peppertown, which is very hot, and as such suited for garment factories."

"Toukie is whats referred to as a forget-a-girl, I think you can figure out the context. She even signs her name as Toukie FG. She only has one friend, Lizzie Cutsherself, who lives in a tree and has red hair, that's important"

"Toukie dreams of a paradise they can live in with no sharp rocks, so Lizzie can't cut herself and then Lizzie will be cured"

"Toukie's favorite hobby is laying on the floor of her school and no one notices her. She lays there and eats whip cream out of a can"

"If Toukie was a remembergirl, she'd get in trouble for it, but since she's not no one notices her"

"Toukie is unattractive, has one brown and one green eye, has multiple personality disorder hair, and she speaks every language in the world"

"The people on Sanscolor are all albinos and speak the language colorian"

"We know she speaks all languages because she writes letters in different languages in her notebook T-mail jail. This is clearly not related to Tyra Mail"

"Toukie is known for her undying love of Theokalis Lovelace, but he's dating Zarpessa who is hot but also a remembergirl. She's Toukie's archnemisis, except Toukie doesn't sink to their level"

"We meet Toukie on the day before TDOD (the day of discovery), where is set up that her sister Miracle is the one likely to be chosen. Miracle is white, blond, pretty, and has the same eye colors."

"Modelland is an type of Olympus, where the only 7 famous people in the entire world live, who are the Intoxibellas, and only famous people can come from Modelland. You can only be chosen by the judges if they see you while you are walking. If they see you standing still you won't be selected. Oh and the Intoxibellas have magic powers"

"Toukie's parents, Chris and Creamy de la Creme"

"You know what they say, no pain, no removal of funk stain"

"They send out 7 smizes (eye smiles) in the water supply, so in the run up to TDOD everyone wastes tons of water in hopes of finding a smize. Toukie finds one, but her parents make her give it to her sister because it increases your chances of getting chosen by 96%."

"Toukie is considered ugly because she's so tall and thin and just can't gain any weight, even after eating tons of whip cream"

This is after only 25 minutes.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012
My god, this is less a book and more a deep insight into the workings of Tyra Bank's mind.

Vanderdeath
Oct 1, 2005

I will confess,
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.



pentyne posted:

My god, this is less a book and more a deep insight into the workings of Tyra Bank's mind.

It's like beautiful outsider art but done by a millionaire. I'm considering reading it myself because it's absolutely amazing.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Vanderdeath posted:

It's like beautiful outsider art but done by a millionaire. I'm considering reading it myself because it's absolutely amazing.

I've going to the library tomorrow to check it out. It sounds batshit insane but its probably a look into the mind of Tyra Banks, someone who seems barely sane half the time she's on tv.

James Garfield
May 5, 2012
Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!

Nckdictator posted:

"Dragon's Fury"

Holy poo poo, this book is one of the funniest things I've read. It out-freeps freep itself.

Also:

quote:

Geneva had gotten the job several months ago. She had taken a local class on computers and then on word processing and surprised herself and Alan too when she had literally excelled at it. The school had a placement program and Simplot had taken her on as a temp in their word processing pool. After three months as a temp, they had brought her on full time and she really enjoyed the work.

:tviv:

INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
I bought this one.

http://i.imgur.com/SXCibgTl.jpg :nws:

Somebody has a new favorite as of 21:16 on Jul 12, 2015

Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




pentyne posted:

Modelland podcast stuff

You know what, I'm going to choose to believe that these aren't quotes from the podcast but are instead actual quotes from the book.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves
Anything written by Raymond E. Fiest after the Serpent War series (which were still pretty bad, but not awful).

What started as the back story to his DnD groups world turned into a overly long explanation as to why it looks different in his books compared to the game. It also takes what was a fairly basic story of "Evil Ancient Overlords attempt to return, heroes stop them" into all sorts of fuckery with twists that exist not to be interesting but to simply draw the story out. You can tell how bad it gets just looking at the original covers; the first few books have covers that make sense but around Serpent War they start using stock fantasy art that has literately nothing to do with the content of the book.

He spends so much time going into detail explaining how the universe works, how the gods function, how ancient evil gets its powers; and then in the next series he goes and tells you that it's actually all wrong. The last book was a hodge podge of references to the previous works mashed together to show there was in fact some continuity and act as though he knew the ending when he was writing the Serpent War saga back in 93-94, some ten years before hand.

And on the subject of continuity: he only got worse as he went on. At first it was stuff like saying one of his characters never got married, when it was a plot point an earlier book of him getting married to a character who actually got fleshed out a bit. It later divulged into straight up not editing his work. One chapter in a later book had Character A rocking up to a place and doing some things but two chapters later suddenly Character B is there, is implied to have been there the whole time in place of Character A; who is called in to visit and is amazed at the things that he two chapters earlier discovered.

I'm not saying DON'T read Magician, by all means READ Magician; it's a classic. It takes some typical fantasy ideas and gives them little changes that are enjoyable. Read Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon if you're an RPG fan; they basically read as a dramatized adventure log for characters who wouldn't be out of place on a DnD character sheet, you can even pick out who is what class and what role they fill in the typical RPG party setup. Hell go and read the entire Empire saga that he co-authored with Janny Wurts; it is hands down the best saga in the series. Political intrigue that's well written with interesting characters and development.

Ambitious Spider
Feb 13, 2012



Lipstick Apathy
Firefly by piers Anthony. It isn't so much a horror novel as it is a defense of pedophilia

butthole pornpig
May 12, 2013

The lens is conveniently housed in the pig's ass
Friends kept praising Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance, so I read it. I just do not understand the love for this book. I thought it was godawful. Apparently Vance's stories were influential in the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe they get a lot of nostalgic love because of this association?

Another book that I read because it was recommended, and a award-winning classic: Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel.

I admit, I did not finish the book. I dropped it after the underage heroine is repeatedly raped, complete with detailed descriptions and then she finds out she's pregnant, so the rape was all worthwhile, because now she's filled with joy and of course because rape is about power, and her joy has lifted her above fear, her rapist no longer wants to rape her.

I do not understand the chain of decisions that led to that book being published, let alone winning awards. Also, it goes on bizarre meanders into detailed identification of local flora and fauna. I mean, it's nice that the author did her research, and I DO love natural history, but I don't need to know about every single wildflower.

quote:

The Silmarillion is straight up Tolkien trying to write The Bible. It's the Middle Earth's Old Testament. It's the Elven Torah. Looking at it like that, yeah it's dry, but it's exactly what it was meant to be right down to lists of genealogy for the Kings of Gondor.

Well, that explains a lot. Maybe I'll try it again, with context!

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow

Ambitious Spider posted:

Firefly by piers Anthony. It isn't so much a horror novel as it is a defense of pedophilia

Piers Anthony is cheating.

Ambitious Spider
Feb 13, 2012



Lipstick Apathy

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Piers Anthony is cheating.

How about Richard Laymon? His women characters are mostly just there to get raped and murdered. In some cases, the do the rape/revenge thing, some cases not. Some of his books have interesting jumping off points but often kind of stumble (to put it politely) on execution.

Here's someone's blog, that dismisses one of his more repugnant books, his debut, The Cellar:

http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2011/09/cellar-by-richard-laymon-1980-its-sick.html

quote:

You got your rape and torture, but when it comes to depicting, even minimally, real human interaction and psychological motivation, Laymon's at a complete loss. Total amateur hour - The Cellar is that bad. I have been reading horror fiction for almost 30 years and it is easily one of the very worst books in the genre that I have ever read.

...

The final pages are a ludicrous extreme - perhaps in 1980 this was seen as extreme - but since they stretch credibility and nothing Laymon has described about his characters previously would make you suspect the outcome, one can surmise the motive was shock value alone. Shock value alone isn't always terrible, but there's no fun to be had, nor even any scares, unless you dig it when men rape and kidnap little girls after slaughtering their parents. Some fun, huh, kid?

...thoughtless exploitation of child rape is really something I can do without in my horror fiction - particularly when it's handled so cheaply, so clumsily, thus making all its horrors trite and phony rather than deep and true - to say nothing of simply inept writing and an amateur approach.

He also has a book called Funland, about the homeless attacking people in a beachside town with an abandoned Funhouse. IT ends with a bunch of rear end in a top hat teenagers going to beat up the and torture homeless in the funhouse, and there, out of nowhere, with nothing to foreshadow this or any other fantastic happenings, there's a man riding a giant spider behind everything.

HMS Beagle
Feb 13, 2009



spite house posted:

Emma Donoghue's Frog Music is outlandishly bad, a horrible unpleasant slog full of characters who aren't even unlikeable in an amusing way and a plot that reads like the dullest-ever CYOA. A shame since Room was loving brilliant. What happened?

God yes. Was so disappointed in Frog Music.

On the topic of authors who should definitely do better, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer is ridiculously awful.

Nutsngum
Oct 9, 2004

I don't think it's nice, you laughing.

Gridlocked posted:

Anything written by Raymond E. Fiest after the Serpent War series (which were still pretty bad, but not awful).

What started as the back story to his DnD groups world turned into a overly long explanation as to why it looks different in his books compared to the game. It also takes what was a fairly basic story of "Evil Ancient Overlords attempt to return, heroes stop them" into all sorts of fuckery with twists that exist not to be interesting but to simply draw the story out. You can tell how bad it gets just looking at the original covers; the first few books have covers that make sense but around Serpent War they start using stock fantasy art that has literately nothing to do with the content of the book.

He spends so much time going into detail explaining how the universe works, how the gods function, how ancient evil gets its powers; and then in the next series he goes and tells you that it's actually all wrong. The last book was a hodge podge of references to the previous works mashed together to show there was in fact some continuity and act as though he knew the ending when he was writing the Serpent War saga back in 93-94, some ten years before hand.

And on the subject of continuity: he only got worse as he went on. At first it was stuff like saying one of his characters never got married, when it was a plot point an earlier book of him getting married to a character who actually got fleshed out a bit. It later divulged into straight up not editing his work. One chapter in a later book had Character A rocking up to a place and doing some things but two chapters later suddenly Character B is there, is implied to have been there the whole time in place of Character A; who is called in to visit and is amazed at the things that he two chapters earlier discovered.

I'm not saying DON'T read Magician, by all means READ Magician; it's a classic. It takes some typical fantasy ideas and gives them little changes that are enjoyable. Read Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon if you're an RPG fan; they basically read as a dramatized adventure log for characters who wouldn't be out of place on a DnD character sheet, you can even pick out who is what class and what role they fill in the typical RPG party setup. Hell go and read the entire Empire saga that he co-authored with Janny Wurts; it is hands down the best saga in the series. Political intrigue that's well written with interesting characters and development.

Magician is surprisingly readable and good considering it was his first book.The next two are still drat fine reads but I do agree that things began to unravel a little in the serpentwar saga. It just became the whole "power creep" idea where everything has to get bigger and badder and the odds even greater.

I do give Feist credit for bringing in new characters and writing old characters out (to death) tough. He did create a rather nice world that you do see varying viewpoints within.

Whatev
Jan 19, 2007

unfading

James Garfield posted:

Holy poo poo, this book is one of the funniest things I've read. It out-freeps freep itself.

Also:


:tviv:
This girl is a word processing prodigy. Are we so arrogant that we would dessicate her gift with Microsoft Office 97? We must introduce her to Office 2003. I'll find a way to pay for it myself, goddamnit. There is no limit to the words she could process!

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
If we're on terrible Fantasy, here is a great page where Terry Goodkind gets thoroughly destroyed.

quote:

She is almost raped at least 9 times throughout the series, but always manages to escape/be rescued in the nick of time. On one occasion, she is attacked by a chicken that is not a chicken, but evil incarnate. It has an evil cackle.

NLJP
Aug 26, 2004


SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

If we're on terrible Fantasy, here is a great page where Terry Goodkind gets thoroughly destroyed.

Yeah that's one author that I'm astonished is still on all sci-fi/fantasy bookshelves in shops after all these years.

Citrus Sky
Sep 30, 2012
Daughter of the Blood, the first book in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. The protagonist is a preteen girl whose love interest is a thousand year old demon named The Sadist. Her destiny is to topple the Evil Queen, who spends most of the book torturing and raping The Sadist, and install herself queen of a realm where powerful women have harems of sexy men who serve them.

Anne Bishop needs a therapist.

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010
Eragon I think it was. Probably the worst book I read as a kid. I only vaguely remember it, but it was ridiculous self-insert by a teenage author who got published because his dad owned a publishing company or somesuch.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Anatharon posted:

Eragon I think it was. Probably the worst book I read as a kid. I only vaguely remember it, but it was ridiculous self-insert by a teenage author who got published because his dad owned a publishing company or somesuch.

Nah, Eragon the first book was actually fairly competant for a YA fantasy novel. The following ones with the perfect vegetarian elf race that were unquestionably superior to meat eating scum were poo poo.

It was self published, a random book agent read it and thought it had promise, and then published it. It was only after his second book proved to be derivative as gently caress, moreso then book one that people realized the kid was a hack.

Human
Jun 9, 2004


REAL HUMAN. SAFE TO APPROACH.

Morton Haynice posted:

The best way to experience this book is by listening to Sydnee McElroy explain the plot to her increasingly incredulous husband.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This poo poo is hilarious.

Say what you want about Modeland, but Tyra Banks could have handed this poo poo off to a ghostwriter and shat something out. Instead, she crafted a deeply crazy book written by herself that's too strange to be anything other than the story she really wanted to tell. It's clearly insane garbage but it's principled.

Blog Free or Die
Apr 30, 2005

FOR THE MOTHERLAND

aequorea posted:

Friends kept praising Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance, so I read it. I just do not understand the love for this book. I thought it was godawful. Apparently Vance's stories were influential in the creation of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe they get a lot of nostalgic love because of this association?

Tales of the Dying Earth isn't the greatest book, but it's still awesome. Vance's stories all generally involve the protagonist trying to accomplish a difficult goal by outsmarting enemies who are trying to trick them. You might prefer The Demon Princes, which has a redeemable main character doing those things.

What makes Tales of the Dying Earth special is that the protagonist (in the middle two books, others are meh) is a pretty awful dude, that isn't actually clever enough to deserve the moniker he's given himself. Cugel the Clever is a bad guy, but it's fun seeing him survive by conning jerks and assholes, only to mess up his situation even worse when he gets greedy.

Vance does have an unusual prose style, but it's really fun when you get used to it.


Terry Goodkind though, terrible. The main character of the Sword of Truth series, Richard Rahl, at one point ends up bringing down the evil (socialist) empire's capital city. It goes something like:

+Start sculpting a statue (Richard Rahl is good at swordfighting, magics, BDSM, everything, so he just goes for it)
+Use the power of the free market to get sculpting supplies and make friends
+Make a sculpture so beautiful it makes everyone realize socialism is evil
+City revolts

Also the sculpture is of him and his wife.

The books can actually be entertaining, though. There's a sick part where Richard plays murderball against the evil empire, and does rad flips and poo poo to score goals.


To post something new though, David Weber. He's probably best known for his scifi Honor Harrington series, which is basically the Napoleonic war, but with space instead of sailing ships. It's not all bad, and there's some cool space battles, but as the series goes on the main character starts getting ridiculous. She saves a planet of....space mormons? Who duel each other with samurai swords because all they had to watch were Kurosawa movies? It's been a while since I read it, hopefully someone else remembers more. I think they listened to country music.

One of the french stand-in bad guys is literally named Rob S. Pierre.

I actually really enjoy his fantasy books, the War God series. They are bad, but still have a simple charm. It's like eating a huge bowl of mac and cheese; you know you shouldn't, but sometimes you need something comforting on a cold night. Also each book in the series is less good than the previous one.

They also have some of the worst covers I have ever seen. First book clocks in at mildly embarrassing:



The third one though :



:madmax: :q:

spite house
Apr 28, 2009

HMS Beagle posted:

On the topic of authors who should definitely do better, Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer is ridiculously awful.
Is that the one with the boring middle-aged white people who do it in the woods? I completely forgot I ever read that. What a fuckin dog.

I think terrible books by authors who could do better are more offensive than terrible books whose terribleness is inevitable, but they're also less fun to poo poo on. Except for Bret Easton Ellis' bad books, those are a scream. Glamorama is exhibit A. Best if read aloud "Eye of Argon" style with a bunch of drunk friends.

INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless

Morton Haynice posted:

The best way to experience this book is by listening to Sydnee McElroy explain the plot to her increasingly incredulous husband.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

This poo poo is hilarious.

I can actually hear his facial expression. I think I need to read this book.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Human posted:

Say what you want about Modeland, but Tyra Banks could have handed this poo poo off to a ghostwriter and shat something out. Instead, she crafted a deeply crazy book written by herself that's too strange to be anything other than the story she really wanted to tell. It's clearly insane garbage but it's principled.

Yeah, calling it "outsider art" is the best description possible. I was actually sad to find that she didn't write the rest of the series. It's something everyone should read mostly for the experience of the mind and thoughts of a super famous model who is somewhat insane.

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INCHI DICKARI
Aug 23, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
I could tell he was drinking heavily but I just got to the part in part 2 where he needs more whiskey and then just breaks down laughing in the other room and this might just be the first and only time I've ever sat down and listened to 2 people discuss the plot of a book for like an hour and a half straight on the edge of my seat.

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