PYF terrible book: Freud molesting a thesaurus.

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Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Disappointed to see the lack of Jonathan Maberry mentioned. His Joe Ledger series, about a clandestine Black Ops group that fights monsters and poo poo is just awful.

The main Hero, Joe Ledger, is bad rear end to the supreme, who has different personalities. There's his usual self "The Cop", the rational self, but if he's constantly having to fight back his "Warrior" mode. These personalities manifested when he forced to watch his fiancee being raped. He has a attack dog as a pet (which seems to be all intuitive). After a battle where the dog was injured, it was outfitted with titanium teeth. Maberry invited his readers to name the dog, so of course, it's loving called "Ghost" (because Game of Thrones had just become a thing on TV)

He works for the DMS, Dept of Military Sciences, headed by an enigmatic man named "Church", though it's not his true name. Some people know him as "Deacon", or some other religious pseudonym.
He's the only one who has access to MINDREADER, the ultimate computer program. It can get into a computer in the world, and leave no trace that it had been hack.

There's also "Bug", one of the best hackers in the world. Dr Hu, their rear end in a top hat chief scientist. There's also "Auntie" the sassy black woman who's number two in the DMS, and someone you don't want to mess with.

The President loves the DMS, and lets them do whatever, but the VP is constantly looking to shut them down (because he was secretly working for the bad guys in one of the books)

His group finds itself in an uneasy alliance with a group of female Vampire assassins, and of course, Ledger has an on again, off again, relationship with one of them.

The first book, Patient Zero, has Muslim terrorists creating zombies. And each book gets worse.

One of the thing that gets me is his character description. Auntie is described as looking just like Whoopi Goldberg, and I don't mean he writes a description that conjures up images of Whoopi. Nope, flat out says, Whoopi Goldberg. She acts like Whoopi too.

In another of his books, Dead of Night, (not a Ledger book) he describes the protagonist as looking like Scarlett Johansson. Again, doesn't write a description of Scarlett, flat out says she looks exactly like Scarlett Johansson.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2015 15:17

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 02:40

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

pentyne posted:

She's been burning all her bridges and rolling further and further downhill in terms of book deals. Her last big score was writing a random Halo trilogy.

Back when she started she made a lot of drastic changes to the SW "culture" by making a ton of Jedi look like assholes and tell stories from the pov of soldiers and grunts it was controversial but a breath of fresh air from the "everything is about Jedi and no one else". However she became wholly obsessed with her details being the only accurate ones, even when she was hilariously wrong and developed a fetish for Mandolorians that she worked into everything she wrote.

Sadly, IDW has given her the reigns of the main G.I. Joe title, and it's turned out just as well as you can imagine.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2015 14:08

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Klaus88 posted:

That implies that G.I. Joe wasn't anything other then jingoistic America gently caress yeah bull, but I do feel sorry for anybody who grew up with it seeing it worked over by an inferior writer.

Yeah, I know. But one of the hallmarks of the G.I. Joe premise was "Bad guys attacking? G.I. Joe to the rescue!" In her first arc, it's "G.I. Joe sent to assassinate foreign leader."

Chuck Dixon did an awesome job with the title before she came on. What she's trying to do just comes of as a poor knock-off of what Cristos and Gage did on the Cobra series.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2015 14:03

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

flosofl posted:

The only EU books worth a poo poo are the Thrawn novels by Zahn.

And they're a bunch of poo poo as well.

Traviss was given, for some reason, IDW's G.I. Joe comic. Say what you will about the silliness of G.I. Joe, but the basic premise has always been, "Bad Guys attack, and only G.I. Joe can stop them!". So of course, her storyline is the Joes committing covert assassinations of foreign leaders. Oh, and over half the book is about the teenage son of some minor Cobra character living in a rebel camp. It was supposed to be for twelve issues, IDW ended it after 9. The book hasn't returned. Meanwhile, IDW's other Joe book, written by Larry Hama, is still going on.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2015 16:01

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

RNG posted:

I haven't read the entire thread, so I'm sure some of these have already popped up, but:

-Congo by Michael Crichton. The first novel I ever read that was so bad I couldn't finish.

Congo's the only Crichton book I've read, and what annoyed most about it was how in the midst of the story, there was a part that started off with something like "After they got back to America" (or something, been 20 years since I've read it). Basically, he just told the readers who had survived this ordeal, destroying any sense of suspense.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 13:31

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Ryoshi posted:

I got Only Revolutions for like four dollars new at a Borders and I feel like I overpaid. I've never tried reading it the "proper" way which is reading every seventh page then starting at the back and reading every fifth page or whatever absurdist way you're supposed to do it but seriously, what a mess.

It's a shame because that kind of ultra-meta-surreal storytelling is a cool idea but I've never seen it done well on the scale Only Revolutions attempted.

Choose Your Own Adventure?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 13:13

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Tiggum posted:

Another character takes a job where he switches into his boss's body and exercises for him so the guy can basically get the benefits of that without spending the time.

This was actually the plot of an episode of Red Dwarf

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 13:56

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

gradenko_2000 posted:

This was me, except with the Star Wars EU.
Mammals that can suppress the force
A literal clone of Luke Skywalker

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Named Luuke.

These are from what are considered to be the "best" EU novels, which included an admiral who could determined his opponent's battle strategies by studying their art.

Most of the EU read like rejected SF novels that simply used search and replace to turn characters and things into SW characters and object.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 15:20

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

The main thrust of the book, as I remember, was more about how authors tend to be viewed as a brand to sell, more than the books themselves. The author of the titular "Death Rat" is actually replaced on the jackets and press tours by a younger and handsomer man as a means of selling more copies. There's also a kind of Tom Clancy knock off in the book who's very protective of his look of wool sweaters and fishing hats.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 13:50

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Jerry Cotton posted:

*ahem*

A potions book having belonged to "Tammi" instead of Snape would have been an interesting read.

I read about one Chinese Harry Potter knock off that started off with Dumbledore telling Harry an adventure he had when he was known as Gandalf, and the book then just proceeded to reprint The Hobbit.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2016 15:30

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Partially, though he's as much of a Guy N. Smith parody as he is a Stephen King parody, which a lot of people miss.

Speaking of, someone should read Guy N. Smith's prodigious output and see if it's all as funny as that one book about killer crabs.

The first line of his wikipedia page:

quote:

Guy Newman Smith (born 1939, Hopwas, Staffordshire) is a prolific English writer best known for his pulp fiction-style horror fiction, though he has also written non-fiction, soft-porn, and children's literature

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 15:13

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

TK8325 posted:

Wow, dude just fire bombed his career.

This is amazing. You can practically see him tip his fedora at the end.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 13:54

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

McKilligan posted:

What the gently caress? Someone fingerbangs a magic bowling ball so hard it turns from opaque to transparent? Is that what I'm reading?

Wait, is that not how you're supposed to do it?

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 12:57

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Inescapable Duck posted:

I mean, just have a drat fantasy setting where they also invented computers and guns if you want them that badly. Or just do Fallout.

May I introduce to a show called "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe"?

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 13:20

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

hackbunny posted:

Oh boy

Based on the rules set by a book about magic

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 21:07

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Leavemywife posted:

I know the latter half of your post was trying to get back to books, but I like how the first Blade movie did his origin; we see a pregnant woman who's been bitten by a vampire, then Blade just tells us over the opening credits that he's a half-vampire and now he kills them.

The Incredible Hulk movie started out with was basically a flashback to a film that didn't exist

# ¿ Feb 17, 2018 18:35

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Adding to the Traviss chat, IDW, which has the G.I. Joe license (and was turning out genuinely good stories, especially in its COBRA title) wrapped everything up and relaunched with a new Joe #1, written by Traviss. Her run was to last initially 12 issues, but the book was ended after 9 because her stuff was so awful.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 17:43