theflyingorc posted:

All the Sword of Truth I read was at a young enough age that I did not note the libertarian subtext at all.

Tiggum posted:

I read the first one as a teenager and wouldn't have known what libertarianism was to be able to spot it, but there was enough else to put me off the rest of the series.

Another one I read about the same time was Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson, the first book of the Thomas Covenant series. The main gimmick of the series is that the protagonist is transported from the real world to a magical world, and doesn't believe any of it is actually really happening. He goes along with it anyway though because reasons. Also he has leprosy in the real world but not in magic-land and not having leprosy somehow makes him rape a woman he meets there.

For some reason, both those books were in my highschool's library. I doubt whoever decided which books the library would buy ever read them.

quote:

He is also unprepared for the sudden restoration of his health, which cures the impotence brought on by his leprosy. This, and his mental turmoil over the reality he feels but does not believe, drives him into a frenzy, causing him to rape Lena, an act which will be pivotal to all that follows. When Lena's friends and family learn of what happened to her, they are barely able to comprehend the enormity of or reasons behind this crime, but the Oath of Peace to which they are sworn forbids them from taking vengeance.

Citrus Sky posted:

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.

quote:

First off, the “Born of Shadows” is the fourth book in the “League” series. I can accept that without reading the first 3 I am lacking some context, but from reading just this book I have no idea what the League is or does. They apparently keep the 9 systems (not sure if this was a metaphor or actual number) from constantly fighting, dispatch assassins that the Systems aren’t allowed to prosecute, and are so corrupt they can be bought by anyone. However, a minor plot of the novel is one system/kingdom (ruled by a Queen) is lying to give pretense to invade another system, for resources maybe, and nothing is said of the fabled “League”. The shadowy background government isn’t an effective plot device when their only reason for existing doesn’t matter for the sake of the current plot.

Next, the characters. The idiotic, offensively 1-dimensional characters. For the male lead we have Caillen, who is the first 30 pages demonstrates that he is the biggest badass in the universe by brutally killing 6 Enforcers while running parkour around an environment that is never described or made clear. There’s an alley of some kind, and mention of a wall and roofs, but nothing else. This quickly sets the tone for the rest of the novel with the line

“Badass came at a price and today that price just might be his life.”

Then, following his walk to the execution grounds, his last words are to yell to the Warden’s daughter that she has a hot rear end. But, he’s not dead, and wakes up to be told he’s the son of the System’s Emperor.

What follows is the brief attempt of Caillen to adjust, described by his new father as fluent in 38 languages plus all dialects (one language has 19), idioms, and cultures, a better fighter then the top tier of Special Ops, and able to seduce any woman he meets with a smile. He of course chaffs at high society with its rules and longs to be back smuggling, fooling around with women, and being a charmingly misogynist braggart.

We also meet Caillen’s friend Maris, who’s every dialogue starts with a graphic overtly sexual advance on Caillen, in jest of course, and Darling Cruel (I swear this is the printed name) who is some high society noble who also became a gun/explosive expert after meeting Caillen.

The main female character is Desideria, raised on an Amazonian planet where women are bred to be violent and skilled warriors who treat men like fourth class citizens, unless said man manages to best the woman in combat and will then be treated like an equal. Her culture is hard, unforgiving, and eschews all emotion. She cries frequently throughout the book.

Desideria initially is brought in to emphasize just how insanely handsome Caillen is, and also has some plot or something. From her perspective, he is described as a smoldering, god-like figure who also has the appearance of being an ultra fierce warrior. Her mother, the Queen has come to a starship for some diplomatic meeting. As the Queen airs her grievances to the council and lies about a neighboring system, Caillen shows off his command of galactic politics and knowledge by loudly and smugly calling out her lies in front of everyone, causing an incident. As a side note, the Queen wears the most revealing outfit possible, extremely skimpy thin gauze, and puts rouge on her nipples to enhance the effect.

I cannot loving believe a woman author wrote this.

So, the conspiracy starts and Caillen and Desideria end up on a hostile planet and have to avoid capture. They constantly fight back and forth while thinking to themselves how captivated they are with the other, and talk over a campfire for what feels like 80 pages. It wasn’t a campfire, but there was no action or plot at all for the duration, other then the sexual tension.

Then the plot twists begin, fighting, injuries, attempts at self sacrifice, nobly saving each other, same old tripe. It’s not important. What is important is that Caillen is almost offensively misogynistic to her, and she constantly mentions how her warrior race shows no emotions but cries at least 6 times during the course of the book. They fall into “true love” of course. OF COURSE, and it is so florid, melodramatic, and cliché a 13 year old girl would find it too juvenile.

The plot is almost non-existent, makes nearly no sense in any context, and the twists continue past any point of reason until they are laughably absurd. It’s one thing to make up words and technology in a Sci-Fi setting, but to have paper-thin characters switch their entire motivation on a whim is pretty awful.

I really need to just highlight the most offensive parts, this is getting too long.

The Queen ‘womyn’, who refers to men as “manginas” laughs and exiles Desideria for being stupid enough to report an assassination plot, but then apparently follows in lock-step with something Darling Cruel (still cannot loving believe this) and Maris, 2 men, plan for her to avoid getting murdered.

And speaking of fake words, the word “subclass” is used as a unit of speed, along with ‘starclass’, and then 1 page later used as a unit of planet size. Then later wormholes are methods of travel, but only for badass dudes like Caillen.

In describing a sex scene, Desideria’s state of total bliss is defined as being “unbodyconscious.” That is not a word. Body conscious is not even a word; it’s apparently some new age massage technique. When you resort to pushing words together to describe something, you are a terrible writer who cannot effectively communicate with the language.

This line. “I would laugh at your arrogance, but aside from your sister, you’re the one person I know who could pluck the right particle out of dark energy.” And given that dark energy made up 70 percent of the universe, that was saying something.

This book was being written, and the author decided she needed more “sciencey” things so she pulled up Wikipedia and picked that gem, dark energy never being mentioned again.

This dialogue between the villain and Caillen

“No one will believe that”
“Sure they will. People are sheep. They believe whatever lies they’re told, especially when it comes from the media. After all, the news never lies.”
“Sad thing was, he agreed with her. Most of the time they did.

Goddamnit how did this book get published?

Finally, the last complaint. And, one of the biggest.

The Queen bitch, who comes from a society that treats men like poo poo, constantly calls her daughter a ‘half-breed’ for being born from an off-worlder. The man that was described up to this point as a coward is revealed by the Queen to be a prince from another planet who willingly agreed to live as a fourth class citizen that she loved and when her son ran away, she sobbed and begged her husband to retrieve him. It is mentioned earlier that this society tortures male children by peeling their fingernails back for the audacity to have a penis.

Ah, almost forget. It turns out Caillen does have a flaw.

This woman he was seeing ‘casually’, sexing up and occasionally eating with, whom he never called, she always sought him out, called him up out of the blue one day and screamed at him for forgetting her birthday, a date he never knew, and proceeded to try to destroy his life. Because of that psycho, Caillen refuses to let himself love a woman, because they’re all batshit crazy who want you to settle down and put a baby in them.

pentyne posted:

Sherrilyn Kenyon

She vomits out novels at an obscene rate, and once you read one you can immediately see how. I found this review on goodreads that sums it up better then I could.

Inspector Gesicht posted:

That bitch is the reason why Paul Kearney's W40K book Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumnus had to be pulped just before it could hit shelves, because "Dark Hunters" is such a distinct name that no two books could share the same two words in the title. Paul Kearney is one of my favourite authors for writing The Monarchies of God and The Macht but he just can't catch a break

Inspector Gesicht posted:

That bitch

W40K book

The Saddest Rhino posted:

quote:

"All dead guys are irregardless of how they lived their rotten, two-timing sadistic, pathetic, discombobulatedly senseless, irreligious, unthinking, flakes, debauched, foulmouthed, obnoxious, deviant, gross, adulterous, murderous, gluttonous, alcoholic, lazy, indolent, filthy, grotesquely indecent, lunatic, lives", "She preened. He turned away with me! Quickly! Inside!"

quote:

"It's full of sick, people!"

quote:

"The waitress jotted down Isadore's order, then looked at Isaac with the patience of a saint who has to work tables in order to support a family and possibly just a writing habits, not to mention, pay bills and federal taxes."

quote:

"[He] splattered it with his blood and ichor, all kinds of body fluids, all more or less foul and sticky."

quote:

“Whatcha doin', Freak Girl?"
---------------------------
"What does it look like, brainiac?" I shot back, even surprising myself with the force of my jab. "I'll give you three guesses. No, wait. Don't strain yourself. Wouldn't want to hurt your head." I waved a flyer in his face, channeling my inner mean girl. "See these? I'm hanging them...on a...wall!" I spoke the last part slowly, as if addressing a dim-witted child. Which wasn't far off the mark, now that I thought about it. "With tape," I added, waving at the dispenser. "You know-sticky, sticky!”

Nanomashoes posted:

After Maddy's parents divorce, she's stuck starting over at a new high school. Friendless and nicknamed Freak Girl, Manga-loving artist Maddy finds refuge in the interactive online game Fields of Fantasy. In that virtual world, she reinvents herself as Allora, a gorgeous elfin alter ego, and meets a true friend in Sir Leo. Maddy can?t hide behind Allora forever, especially as a real-life crush begins edging in on her budding virtual romance. But would anyone pick the real Maddy, gamer girl and Manga freak, over the fantasy? This fresh, geeky/cool novel includes online chats and exciting gaming, and features Maddy?s Mangastyle artwork.

quote:

She seemed at first view to be half-snake, half-human. Her body was that of a python's and at least forty feet long. Her skin, however, was scaleless, smooth as Deyv's. It had a silvery quality, as if impregnated with metal, with dark spindle-shaped markings on the back and sides. The body was raised from the floor in a most unsnakelike manner by twenty pairs of short thick humanoid legs. These were black up to the thighs and silvery to the body. The feet were also human, though they were very broad and threetoed.

The catlike nails were painted crimson. Her forepart curved upward where the legs ceased, giving her the effect of a snake-centaur. She had shoulders and quite womanlike arms and hands, but these were four-fingered. The two large coneshaped breasts showed that she was, despite the ophidian body, a mammal. Or perhaps she wasn't, in the strictest sense of the term. Feersh had said that she gave, instead of milk, blood. She did bear live young; she was no egg-layer. The hairless reddish delta of her sex was located just below the point at which her body became vertical.

Her head was twice the size of Deyv's, similar to a human's but more triangular than the face of any member of Homo sapiens could be. The cheekbones were very prominent. The chin was very pointed but had a deep cleft. Her lips were very everted and very red. The open mouth showed pointed teeth, a fox's. The tongue increased the snakish look, being slightly bifurcated. The nose was short but hawkish.

Her eyes were very large in relation to the head and completely leaf-green. The forehead was broad and high, so large that it seemed that the relatively tiny face had been attached to it as an afterthought.
She lacked head-hair, having instead very long and thick silvery quills banded in the middle with black.

artsy fartsy posted:

The most infuriating series of books I read were about a Sexy Badass Future Cop. She had a sexy badass super-hacker boyfriend with unlimited wealth and vague and convenient connections to the criminal underworld that would move the plot along as needed (why can't I ever date a hunky deus ex machina?)

Only one scene has stayed with me over the years--Future Cop got the flu or something, but she was just too drat badass to admit it. Cue all these people being like, "Go home and get well, Future Cop" but NO she couldn't do that because she's too BADASS. She goes to boyfriend's hacking lair and badasses collided as he physically fought with her and forced her into bed and poured nyquil down her throat and it dragged on and on and on because at every turn she tried to get away from him because I'M NOT SICK I'M A BADASS and he's all BUT I'M PHYSICALLY OVERPOWERING YOU BECAUSE I'M THE PERFECT MAN

Does that ring any bells for anyone?

Antivehicular posted:

Oh, man, was this one of J.D. Robb's In Death books? I kind of love those trashy pieces of poo poo, but the main characters are the worst loving things about them, especially Omnicompetent Billionaire Hacker Boyfriend/Husband. Some fictional characters just need to be taken out behind the back of the barn and put out of everyone's misery.

EDIT: Also, the main couple both have Extremely Sad Backstories that we go over in every. loving. Book. Like loving clockwork. (Sexy Badass Future Cop in particular has terrible nightmares related to her murder cases and her Extremely Sad Backstory, which kind of makes me wonder if murder investigation is really an ideal career for her?) These backstories are hilariously overwrought, and we get to hear about them constantly. I swear to God, these books are about 60% moderately fun trash featuring characters who aren't completely wretched to follow around, and the other 40% is all the loving protagonists.

Part of Everything posted:

Philip Jose Farmer's science fiction novel Dark is the Sun was excruciating. Please enjoy this exhaustive and frightening excerpt describing one of the characters... THE SHEMIBOB!

Part of Everything posted:

Oh , I almost forgot about The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey. I read that in 1996. When it got to the part where the gryphons had graphic gryphon sex I took the book out to the backyard and burned it.

Pinball posted:

Better than Marion Zimmer Bradley, though, who ended up being a pedophile.

Pinball posted:

Oh my god, I read that when I was twelve or so, and I will never forget the lady gryphon (who couldn't get a man gryphon for some reason) trying to have sex with a human dude who was some sort of magickal sex healer or something. Mercedes Lackey wrote weird poo poo.

Better than Marion Zimmer Bradley, though, who ended up being a pedophile.

Pinball posted:

Better than Marion Zimmer Bradley, though, who ended up being a pedophile.

Sakurazuka posted:

Woah, what? Mists of Avalon was one of my favourite books, once upon a time.

quantumavenger posted:

MZB was married to Walter Breen, who had a previous conviction for child molestation from 1954. Breen was banned from WorldCon in 1963 for being a pedophile, which caused an uproar in a science fiction fandom firmly in the grip of the Geek Social Fallacies, decades before they were formulated. This document is a contemporary account of the controversy.

Breen continued to molest children up till 1990, when he received his final conviction for child molestation and died after serving one year. It emerged last year that not only was MZB completely aware of what Breen was doing, but that she also joined Breen in molesting their own kids

quote:

Although Breen's behavior at conventions right around the time of Pacificon II seems to have been beyond reproach, Breen (who also wrote an authoritative book on man-boy love) was known by many fans, especially in the Bay Area, to have engaged in sex with boys. (Ultimately, he died in prison a multiply-convicted pederast.)

quote:

Q. Where did you have this discussion with David where he thought he was too old for Walter?

A. When he was 15 or so.

Q. So at the time that David was 15, David informed you that he believed that your then husband was not propositioning him because at that point David was too old for Walter’s tastes?

A. I think that’s what he said. To the best of my memory, that’s what he said.

Q. So you were curious enough to ask your own son whether your husband had made a sexual proposition to him?

A. I wouldn’t say I was concerned enough. I would simply say the matter came up in conversation.

quote:

And how to learn to cope And not give up all my hope
Is painful far enough without your lies
But if you had seen me then With blood pouring off my skin
Would you have turned a deaf ear to my cries??

And told me “Mommy did her best, yes, she really did her best
So stop crying and stop bleeding and forgive her
To cut you she’s the right, and to throw you out of sight
And not love you till you sexually deliver!!

Thinky Whale posted:

I think it came out a while back that it was a bunch of crap, but what got me is the distinctive prose of somebody who is being a writer at you as hard as they possibly can. My breaking point was a line that went something like, "Mortenson sat down to take a drink of water, but he couldn't drink in enough of the scenery around him."

pentyne posted:

It's been a while, and I can't remember the book, but it was the guy who was featured on Oprah's Book Club and was later found to have fabricated 95% of his life. The entire thing reeks of stdh.txt yet for some reason it was a big deal for a year or so.

pentyne posted:

It's been a while, and I can't remember the book, but it was the guy who was featured on Oprah's Book Club and was later found to have fabricated 95% of his life. The entire thing reeks of stdh.txt yet for some reason it was a big deal for a year or so

loquacius posted:

- All the Grand Moffs fly around on a ship together. That ship is called the Moffship. On the Moffship they have conferences. Those conferences are called Mofferences.

quote:

- There is a character named Zorba the Hutt; he looks like Jabba the Hutt except he has a full human-style beard

loquacius posted:

- A guy comes along claiming to be the son of Emperor Palpatine. He has three eyes. His name is "Trioculus"; this is a word meaning "three eyes." As proof of his ancestry, he produces a glove that he claims to be the glove of Darth Vader. He is able to use this glove to choke people at a distance, and, you see, the glove is what allowed Darth Vader to do that in the movies, and only a son of Emperor Palpatine could use it (I guess Darth Vader was also a son of Emperor Palpatine?). Trioculus wants to marry Princess Leia (as a Main Villain in an '80s kids book/cartoon he is contractually obligated to want this); when she proves less than amenable to this idea, he instead marries a robot replica of Princess Leia. It kills him. At the robot wedding.
- At some point it is revealed that Trioculus isn't actually the son of Emperor Palpatine. Another guy is. This guy also has three eyes. His name is "Triclops"; this is a word meaning "three eyes."
- The main character of the series is a kid named Ken. He is a kid Just Like You, who grows up in a room full of Star Wars memorabilia and like C3PO action figures or whatever, only his room is in an underground city on Yavin IV (the Lost City of the Jedi!!!!) where he was raised by robots and has no human contact before being discovered partway through book 2. The robots give him "lessons" that consist entirely of Star Wars trivia.
- All the Grand Moffs fly around on a ship together. That ship is called the Moffship. On the Moffship they have conferences. Those conferences are called Mofferences.
- There is a character named Zorba the Hutt; he looks like Jabba the Hutt except he has a full human-style beard
- Han and Leia build their dream house (a Cloud House, on Bespin) and have a housewarming party. Later they attempt to elope to a theme park, called Hologram Fun World. In the end they decide not to elope and make a big production out of planning their REAL wedding. These are subplots in a Star Wars book.

Tiggum posted:

I think you're in the wrong thread, this one is for terrible books.

FactsAreUseless posted:

A Million Little Pieces, the story of a man who got drug high on crack weeds.