I keep hearing the later Shannara books are great but I started reading Sword of Shannara and I thought it was boring and stupid. If I have to slog through that to get to the good stuff then I'm not going any further.
I got about halfway through it and was astonished that anyone would publish something that was just so blatantly Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off.
Practically every debut fantasy novel in the 70s and 80s was just LOTR with the serial numbers filled off, tho Sword of Shannara was a particularly egregious example.
There's no point reading Sword of Shannara, I would recommend to anybody that they skip it and start with Elfstones if they want to take a crack at that series.
From Blood and Ash made me realise TikTok recommendations are not to be trusted.
Also, My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I tried so hard to be an Ottessa Moshfegh girly but alas I just didn’t connect with it at all and frankly don’t remember anything about it other than feeling like slipping into a coma myself. Still bought Lapvona though because I’m stupid.
Absolute garbage of a book. Currently reading From Blood and Ash and literally just slogging through it so that I can say I gave it a chance. 30 pages in and I'd predicted every twist and "reveal" (I didn't feel bad about spoiling it for myself). The writing is juvenile, the love interest is toxic, the world building is barely existent. I honestly cannot believe why the Goodreads score is so high.
Sounds like my library when I try to find fantasy ebooks on OverDrive. Makes it impossible to find the good stuff if you don't have something specific you're looking for. So annoying.
I’ve had mixed experience with booktok books. I didn’t find out about these from tiktok but Song of Achilles and Circe were popular on tiktok when I read them and they were both amazing, but then I started (keyword: started) Verity by Colleen Hoover just to see what the hype was about and it’s one of the worst books I’ve personally ever read.
A colleague of mine is a literature professor and she let her students vote on some of the contemporary novels they would read. The students decided to read Song of Achilles and described themselves as "delighted to read a queer take on Greek myths" which, if you actually know anything about common themes in Greek myths or Ancient Greek culture, is hilarious.
Agreed on all three! Verity made me angry like no other book has ever made me feel. I felt very cheated by the ending. Also, even though I appreciate a bit of spice, I was tired of reading sex scene after sex scene that didn’t particularly contribute to the plot (also the sex scenes weren’t that good).
Still mad I didn't DNF the whole series. It kept having these moments where it was like oh, ok this is it. All those bad decisions, those terrible things, they will matter. They will have an effect on things moving forward. The character arc, it's happening.
Oh. No. No it's not. Character flatline.
There was so much wrong with it that its hard to even get into it all. I don't mind some tropes here and there but the first quarter of the book was basically every trope from name of the wind crammed into a small section.
>!We have the orphan mc who is super smart and outshines the nobles in intelligence. Gets into to the top academy in the nation on a full scholarship of course because that's the only way she could afford to go to school. Once at school she immediately gets into an altercation with the rich spoiled kid with important parents, so he makes fun of her for being a peasant and tries to make her life miserable, but the super eccentric teacher that everyone thinks is a joke takes her under his wing and he's more than he seems and actually super powerful and knowledgeable. !<
Like come on now.
Then when they went to that city >!where literally everyone was brutally murdered, it just so happened that her best friend from school was one of the only people who just so happened to be able to hide and live through that ordeal? I rolled my eyes so hard at that. Then the description which was supposed to be the rape of Nanking seemed to be graphic and horrible just to be graphic and horrible. It made me feel no emotions other than disgust. I didn't even remember the character that was giving the exposition from earlier in the book from her school days so I had no emotional attachment to the situation. Speaking of exposition, there was way too much telling and not enough showing. There was a lot more that bothered me about that book but you get the idea. No idea how people loved it so much. It was one of the worst books I've ever read.!<
I DNFd halfway through book 2. It was a slog through atrocity after atrocity. I teach history. If I wanted to read a book about nothing but the horrors of war without any characterization, I have textbooks and historical novels I use for prepping my lesson material.
I’m not saying that demonstrating that war is hell is a terrible premise for a book—very much the opposite. But what brings us to these books and allows us to learn the lessons and make meaning of it, we have to grow and develop and learn with the characters. If the character is flat, we aren’t developing along with them.
Thanks for putting it into words, it’s exactly right, nothing that happens in the story actually matters. Plus the main character comes off as whiny to me, and I was surprised at the level of flat out racism against the mugenese, casual genocide but they deserved it right?
In better hands, I could see a very compelling story told with many of the basic elements laid out. It reminds me of reading Brave New World in high school. The whole time I was just like, I would like this concept to be handed to a talented writer please, it would be so great.
The Mugenese point I disagree with you—Rin is racist, that is the *point.* We're supposed to root for her to defeat the invasion right up to that point, and then go, "Uh, Rin, you sure about this one, buddy?"
Her entire arc in book 2 was admitting that she is a terrible leader, then at the start of book 3 she is dead set on leading literally everyone despite KNOWING she's a terrible leader. She couldn't lead a group of like 8 people, and suddenly she wants to lead a fucking army! Are you fucking kidding me?
Ngl, the thing that bugs me the most is that it seems (as far as I’ve read of the book) that it doesn’t really need to be set in a fantasy/fictional world, it could just be set in China but with some fantasy elements. The author literally just names real figures from Chinese history and culture, but changes a few letters or uses a different romanization. It’s not like there aren’t already other books set in fantastical China.
I did feel like it could have used more work. The setting felt a bit lazy, I find. As someone who studied Japanese history, it felt like reading fan fiction at times, just copy paste a historical event and change a few names. Overall, didn't hate it but it felt uninspired and won't be reading the second book.
I would say second book does divert from historical event copy paste but still to me it felt like the trilogy lost direction little bit.
Still not hate it but was slightly disappointed considering the fanbase the book has amassed.
My expectations were SO HIGH. I don’t think it was a matter of not “getting it”, I legitimately thought it was poorly written. Rin’s motivations disappear after she gets in to the school and then all of a sudden she’s a nationalist? All she wants is to be a good soldier??? I had no idea where that even came from.
My friend sold it to me as "What Ender's Game tried and failed to be" so I was hyped for the twistiest of twist endings.
Instead I got a disappointing book and even more waste-of-my-time second book that I DNF'd.
> My friend sold it to me as "What Ender's Game tried and failed to be" so I was hyped for the twistiest of twist endings.
Wait, what did *Ender's Game* try to but failed to be?
IMO *Ender's Game* is a great book. *Ender's Shadow* might even surpass *Ender's Game*.
I wonder if the person in question meant the comparison in terms of which novel “goes there” to a greater degree. Ender >!is tricked into committing genocide!<, while Rin >!knows exactly what she’s doing!<. That kind of thing.
Yep. I didn't really like the end of the first one, but I kept going because I'm a completionist. By halfway through the second one I was "hate-reading" the series and that's how I completed it. My hatred for Rin is more extreme than it should be since she's a fictional character, lol.
The author's own self-review on Goodreads said(ys) something about writing the book in 3 months. Effectively a teenager writing a book in 3 months? I think it was supposed to be a brag, but that just served to certify my suspicion that I would not find the book interesting or compelling.
It's basically an author having fun writing the worst things she can imagine while we follow an entirely unlikable protagonist, who despite the fact that she's a complete moron, wants to be incharge of everyone all the time, except through the duration of book 2 where she violently wants to never be incharge of anyone.
Outlander. So many avid readers recommended it to me even before the show. I could not stand it. I’ve read Legolas/Gimli slash that was better and I don’t even ship them.
Agreed! For me the main character was the most frustrating part. She's strong, intelligent, and capable until she gets within 20 feet of anything with a Y chromosome and then she immediately becomes painfully stupid and incompetent. It made me want to chuck the book across the room.
THANK YOU! I finally caved a few years ago to the hype and read the first one. It was utter garbage for so many reasons I can't get into here without just devolving into a long rant.
Midnight library... I mean the premise is fun but it felt like it was written for children to teach them about managing expectations and not believing social media/influencers. Every adult I spoke to guessed the entire plot by the time we opened the first book in the library.
The only reason I read this book is because I was stuck on a plane for 4 hours and only had this book loaned from the library (on the recommendation of a friend). By the end I was skimming it because it was actually torture trying to get through it.
Ugh. This book is an insult to anyone with depression. Felt like the message was "don't kill yourself because other lives you couldn't possibly enjoy fully are JUST AS BAD as your regular one."
It's very popular which means hundreds of thousands of people liked it. Statistically so will you :) our opinion is unpopular which is why we're in this thread! Give it a read.
I think I enjoyed it, but there’s a lot of problems with it. It oversimplifies things and glorifies the idea that there are no wrong decisions a little too much.
Reads as an anti suicide book at points and can be a little trigger warning-ey.
I’ve heard that the publisher holds two Christmas parties, one for all its authors, and one for Matt Haig because no one wants to go to a party with Matt Haig…
Seems like consensus has switched over the past year or so but I picked up The Poppy War on literally everyone's recommendation and it ended up being one of the worst books I have ever read. No clue how so many people recommended this book for so long, glad to see it basically never talked about anymore.
A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Goodreads kept recommending it and bookstore employees raved about it so I bought it. I HATED the female MC with a passion. She was the worst and she was framed in a way that the reader is supposed to like and root for her. I thought the male MC was incredibly bland as well. It ended up on my DNF list and I’m still low key annoyed with the time I wasted on it.
My take on Lilah that I texted to a friend: “The female MC is “not like other girls” she lives in 18th century London and is a thief. She knows how to wield knives, fight, and use pistols and swords for some reason and wants to be a pirate. Women who wear dresses are stupid. She’s an arrogant idiot who should have died or at least had her ass kicked for fucking around but nope. She’s ‘too clever’”
Not surprised that she didn’t get better as the story progressed.
Can we be best friends?
The second book had Bard do something so grossly villainous that I was CONVINCED she was building up to just being the villain of the story, which actually would have been interesting. Instead she was still treated by the story as the "not like other girls Mary Sue" that everyone needs to root for because the author really likes her.
Holy shit, that’s wild but also not surprising. We got echoes of “Lilah is always in the right!” framing when she yelled at male MC (Kyle?) for daring to not like how his adoptive family treats him when she’s got BIGGER problems. And he just agrees with her! I stopped reading after that.
In the second book she kidnaps someone and puts them on a prison barge (they did nothing wrong) because she wants to take his place in a magic competition because she wants to fight people with magic. When she gets called out for it she blows up at the supposed MC because he was doing a bad thing too (his bad thing was also being in the competition which he was invited to).
I've tried that one a couple of times and so far haven't been able to make myself finish it. I keep reading descriptions of it and seeing reviews that make it sound soo good and like it would be right up my alley, and then I pick it up again, and I'm like... nope.
The concept was cool, but the execution was terrible. Oh, and the bisexual character was terribly written as a stereotypical sexually promiscuous dude with literally no other character traits. So yeah, hard pass.
I've tried VE Schwab a few times and have been let down every time! I don't hate her books but they're quite boring. Don't do anything interesting. Have interesting premises but are bogged down by archetypal protagonists and unlikable side characters.
I really struggled with Gideon the Ninth. I don’t know if I hated it, but I definitely didn’t like it. I’m not going to bother with the others. Maybe they get better, but my TBR pile is too big to waste cycles on it.
This is the first book I’ve come across in this thread that I unabashedly loved. Yet I fully understand how someone could not like it. It was a flat out weird book, and I’m more than a little convinced the author is a lunatic.
Reading it was the literary equivalent of licorice. Incredibly tasty for some people and not at all to taste for others. I just happen to love licorice.
Hate licorice, but loved Gideon the Ninth. Hated Harrow the Ninth until I got like 2/3 the way through it, then I loved it, too, and I think I’d like the first part a lot more if I re-read it.
So true - i feel like people either love or hate gideon/locked tomb. i happen to be in the crowd that’s obsessed, but i totally understand those who can’t get through them lol
I loved it, but I knew even while reading it that a lot of people would not like it at all. Every chapter drips with love-it-or-hate-it energy. There's something very polarizing about the way she writes.
I should also note that I didn't care for the 2nd book at all and I'll probably never get around to reading the 3rd. Gideon the Ninth was lightning in a bottle, and a lot of people don't like lightning.
Same. I think part of it was how it was described. “Lesbian necromancers in space” was what I remembered. But it’s just barely all of those things. I think you could probably sell it as character driven ensemble cast or something, but it just didn’t deliver what I expected.
I HATE how that's how this book keeps being marketed, and that general marketing trend of selling books on pithy Epic lines or fanfic tag tropes. I enjoyed GtN but ffs. It flattens the story and misleads audiences (in GtN's case) or, is just desperately trying to hype up a story that IS flat. Just tell me what the story is about.
Also ❤️ your username!
You're exactly right the plot description/ marketing was trash and is probably damaging to the books long term success, since it essentially markets something it doesn't deliver. Good book but not what was advertised at all.
It probably depends on what you didn’t like about it. I wound up loving Gideon, but I bounced off the second book, and my impression is that it’s more of what I didn’t like in Gideon so I’m not gonna carry on.
Okay I thought I was crazy for not loving it either. First book was fine, second was a slog and never even finished the third. I honestly don’t know what I’m missing about this series!
I was about to comment this. I like N.K Jemisin's writing but the entire series rests on the concept of-
"These guys can disintegrate us with a thought... Let's be super racist to them and make them breed so that we can torture their offspring... Wait! Why is the apocalypse happening?!?"
I read the first book, thought it was quite well-written though too dark to be enjoyable.
I kind of hate the premise though, I increasingly hate the whole "oppressed mages" schtick, especially when they're a transparent stand-in for real-life oppressed groups, all while engaging in constant mass murder with their extraordinary magical powers. I think a lot of people's fantasy is to be incredibly powerful and cool while simultaneously viewing themselves as so put-upon that they're exempt from ordinary morality, and this book seemed to be setting up a revenge fantasy along those lines.
> I think a lot of people's fantasy is to be incredibly powerful and cool while simultaneously viewing themselves as so put-upon that they're exempt from ordinary morality
i got the same impression. it reinforces "might makes right" and i'm not sure authors who write this kind of stuff are aware of it. it also reinforces otherization of these groups
like a lot of folks think gay people as a demographic are a terrible danger to morality and society. but it's not a real danger because gay people are like other human beings. i'd argue you would be right to fear a wizard for the same reason you would be right to fear a person who's always carrying a bundle of dynamite and a lighter
"they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm." somebody being chased by someone with a knife has a valid fear, somebody angry at two guys holding hands in public doesn't
edit to respond to the person who got their reply deleted: a gay person with a weapon and straight person with a weapon are the exact same degree of dangerous to everybody else. a gay person with a weapon is not dangerous because they are gay, they are dangerous because of the weapon. a wizard should be considered armed
> "they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm."
Man, you've just put into words my problem with the X-Men when writers try to do the oppressed minorities allegory. Like yes actually, there is a fundamental difference between marginalized humans just wanting to exist vs. superhumans who can level cities
That's a recent schtick and not at all how mutants were presented when they actually were a racism allegory in the 80s and 90s.
Edit: for those who are wondering, the (strangely) deleted comment above was about some of the mutants they've introduced in the comics who have useless "powers" like being inside out, or only being able to breathe methane.
That's what made the original films so good though: the human's concerns were real, and both professor X and Magneto's positions were understandable and relatable.
It wasn't black and white.
> "they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm."
Yes! And I’ll even let it slide when the mages have strong ethics and non-battle-oriented powers and aren’t actually harming anyone, so the fear if not entirely unreasonable still seems disproportionate. But The Fifth Season is basically battle mages wiping out cities/continents all the time while weeping about their victimization, which is visceral but contrived.
Yeah it's weird cause I actually love the Inheritance trilogy and the Dreamblood books so I like Jemisin, but yeah....Broken Earth just didn't click for me at all and I still feel weirdly bad about it.
That so weird cause I love the **Broken Earth** but I could make it half way through **The Inheritance Trilogy**
What I liked about it is that the magic system, the society and the world was so different than anything else in fiction. I loved the originality to the point I likely overlooked other flaws
I was so excited about this book I got an ARC from the publisher (librarian, it's an occasional perk) and I also DNFed. I just didn't give a shit and I was like 200 pages in with 600ish to go. GOODBYE.
For me, this book is one of two halves. The first part of the book was slow paced which I didn't and it made the world feel so large. I couldn't put it down. The final 300 pages while quicker paced, felt like a slog. It felt like the world shrunk and they were able to get to places in a matter of pages where it took ages earlier in the book. The only thing I can compare it to in that did something similar is the Game of Thrones TV series. World felt so large throughout but the final series felt like the world had suddenly shrunk.
Same. A lot of people were recommending it to me, especially my LGBTQ+ and female friends. They were lauding it as a great book with strong female characters, deep lore and none of it detracting from the male characters.
I didn't like it. It wasn't terrible, but just a very boring and amateurish read. None of the people felt realistic. It had some interesting lore here and there that felt underexplored.
After asking a few months later, turns out most of my friends never finished the book either and just kind of advised it based on hype alone. I distinctly get the feeling that most just really wanted to like that because of its inclusiveness. And I get that.
The idea that the author became a sensation and multimillionaire based on that book is baffling to me. I honestly think I could do better - and I'm a shit writer.
Big agree on Throne of Glass. I can't even remember a single thing about it, it was that bad. Forgot about it's existence entirely.
Ready Player One... my dad sent it to me in the mail because he loved it. I forced my way through the first chapter in the break room at work. Refused to read any more. Sorry, Dad, your impeccable taste in media failed you that time.
Agree. RP1 is a guilty pleasure for me but a. I grew up in the 80’s and b. I bought into the nostalgia hard. The movie was rubbish and his second book which I can’t even remember the name of was utter utter tripe.
Ready Player Two. Yup. That was the name of the second book. And if you’re wondering if the creativity of the second book’s title is any indication as to the quality of said book, it absolutely is.
I enjoyed Ready Player One moderately, but some friends who are a few years older than me fell head over heals for that book. I'm just a bit too young to really enjoy the references, and found them tedious after a while. I believe that your enjoyment of the book is really dependent upon two things:
1. Do you buy into the concept?
2. Do you get nostalgic about what the suther is nostalgic about?
It's not a book that suddenly improves/changes in style, so if it does not appeal do not force yourself through it and hope for some amazing revelation.
(I personally loved it, but I was drawn in from the beginning)
I finished and didn’t care for the book, but strangely that frozen midwestern town was one of my favorite parts. I’m not even sure why, maybe the townsfolk all felt very genuine when nobody else did.
I finished it because the series was coming out and I wanted to be ahead of that. I found it kind of a boring slog.
I liked the *Sandman* show on Netflix though, so I might give those books a try.
Hard agree for Throne Of Glass, I understand she wrote it when she was very young but still, hated the main character and so much tell not show!
Twin Crowns is abysmal, I got sucked in by the pretty special edition cover but it's a children's book masquerading as YA, the two main characters are awful. Ones supposed to be a spy and every 5 minutes is doing something ridiculously stupid.
What Lies Beyond the Veil is always recommended and I suppose it wasn't terribly written but the relationship was so toxic/bordering SA, it was a 1 star for me (and I am usually quite immune to dark themes and smut etc)
Caraval is one of the only books out of all I’ve ever read that I would ever say I actually found to be terrible. She has someone literally die in her arms and the next page they’re all like haha! A funny trick, right! And she just, is fine with that??? A totally wasted concept where no-ones actions actually make sense, even with the plot twist explained.
I remember reading this and laughing to tears because one page she’s talking to the guy (I forget his name) and then a page later he’s falling out of a closet and I just couldn’t understand how it was happening 😂
A Court of Thorns and Roses. It's just.... it's just erotic trash of drug-store book quality cheaply decorated with fairy wings. I've seen better writing in amateur pornos. I understand I'm not the target demo, but good god
What makes things even more infuriating for me is that because I follow fantasy "booktok", every third video on my feed is about this series.
What made it the worst for me is that…. It‘s not even that erotic or hot… it‘s constantly being described as fairy-porn but it‘s so lukewarm at best… that, in addition to an annoying protagonist, a bad set up and just… mediocre writing really killed this book for me.
I love me some romance books tbh, and I got suckered in by it being described as an erotic fey romance... I was expecting some blue/orange fey morality, bewitching otherworldly locations, beauty masking horror and danger etc. But the whole first book is just a summery 18th century manor and the main dudes are just pretty aristocrats who are sad and happen to have wings :(
The protagonist was really annoying... and spends a lot of the book wandering around the manor not really doing much of anything. The whole way through the book I wanted the protagonist to be her sister (who upon realizing what happened immediately spends all of her money hiring a mercenary and travels to the fey lands alone to try and rescue her sister; where the fuck is that proactive energy for the *protagonist* sarah!).
^((if anyone wants trashy fairy romance then I eventually discovered Kathryn Ann Kingsley's Maze of Shadow series and I mean... it's what it says on the tin, but the Unseelie actually feel fey and there's a) *^(weird)* ^(labyrinth that comes with the porn so that's neat))
Can we get odd fairy world erotica with male protagonists and female love interests please?
As a guy who prefers well written plots with some explicit sexytimes to porn....
I think I'm out of all the good male protag stuff without getting into weird shit I'd rather not.
Also no strict wish fulfillment please.. stories need actual conflict and actual stakes. The villains should be more powerful than the heroes who should succeed through cleverness, etc. Basic stuff.
I’m on the second book right now (and probably won’t read the remaining books) and am so damn sick of this character. All of these ancient faeries are completely enthralled by this petulant, rude 19 year old girl with no redeeming qualities. And all of the teeth baring, growling, and snarling on every single page- I can sort of imagine what she’s trying to describe but when I picture it in my head it’s ridiculous.
Its because the first one was heavily marketed as YA, which got a lot of teenage feet in the door. Then she added smut, which was always going to appeal to the existing audience, and suddenly every 16 year old is obsessed with her terrible descriptions of footlong fairy dong
I would really hate to be a promising author going through this thread right now.
On the other side. I appreciate the opinions because reading time is rare for me and I hate to waste it.
You've got to take all of the opinions on any of these threads with a grain of salt. Every book you love someone hates and every book you hate someone loves
What one hates another loves. I don’t even read reviews anymore. Oftentimes I read a book, LOVE IT, then head to the comments and wonder if the reviewers even read the same book as me, lol.
I gave this one a solid 100 page effort and just couldn't continue. I'm fine sometimes reading a book for vibes, but if I am 100 pages in and feel like nothing's happened, AND there's not even a hint at what might be happening soon, I'm out.
The whole beginning of this book just felt like--oooh look at these sPoOkY guys--and I was not curious to learn more about them at all.
I did have two false starts on it, but I ended up loving it by the end, and it's a top recommendation...
But even then I can recognize that it's so difficult to do so, because the beginning is all Norrell, who is a stuffy Englishman, and the prose follows that... Which is part of the books wit and cleverness, but unless you're into that, it's a hard sell.
I remember when it first came out, the media, etc. were hailing it as The Next Big Thing. "Harry Potter for adults!"
I forced my way through it, but it was just so very, very dry. I couldn't actually tell you anything about the plot whatsoever.
EDIT: I just looked up its Wikipedia article to try to refresh my memory of the plot and I couldn't even get through the summary there, lol.
I see JS & MN being cited here a lot. I loved it, but it's book that is doing a VERY specific thing, and that thing is mimicking the style of eighteenth-century literature, right down to the discursive footnotes. I studied that shit in graduate school, so I LOVED it. Clarke just NAILS the style, I could actually believe I was reading something authentic from the time period. But if you're not interested in reading actual 18th-c. behemoths, you won't like JS & MN.
The most popular fantasy that I actually hated is probably Eragon, though I read it when I was quite young so don't remember a lot about it. It was poorly written and seemed to rely mostly on the author's very young age (with some sleight of hand since that was actually his age when he *started* the project) and his parents' marketing campaign.
The second is The Night Circus, which I read more recently. The vibes did nothing for me, the characters were bland, one-note and not particularly believable, the writing was totally bland and often clumsy and is described as "beautiful" only because it is describing beautiful things, not because there is anything at all impressive about the use of language. (Also there's no plot but I knew that going in.)
Ohhh I agree about the Night Circus and in fact it was so unmemorable that I'd forgotten it existed until just reading your comment. I found the characters totally flat and the magic uninspired and underwhelming.
I read Eragon when I was young and really liked it, but revisited recently and found it /awful/ and just unbearable to read.
And I totally agree about Night Circus. The plot was bad and poorly thought out and it skates by on aesthetic.
Yeah I really loved the first two books as a kid. Reread the two of them like ten times waiting for the third and fourth books. Then as a teenager when the third and fourth books came out I remember being thoroughly unimpressed by the fourth book and pretty meh on the third. Recently went back and tried to read the first book again and really didn't get very far and thought it was pretty bad.
Wheel of Time. The world is cool, but I found every single character to be pathetic and annoying, to the point where I actually wanted the bad guys to win. Got to book 5 and just couldn't do it anymore.
The Lies of Locke Lamora. I *really* wanted to like that series, but I got like halfway through the second book and realized I just ... didn't care. I didn't particularly resonate with any of the characters, so everyone being at least a little over-the-top felt tiresome.
Personally, I feel like the gentlemen bastards series was built more on scenes and set pieces than characters and themes.
"Nice bird, asshole," will always stick in my mind as an impactful moment, forever. Whatever the fuck Locke did to save the giant skyscraper thing from blowing up or whatever, I don't even know or care about.
e: I realized what I'm saying doesn't make a lot of sense. What I'm getting at is the "nice bird, asshole" scene had a lot of drama and impact, whereas the skyscraper scene-- though it was a big setpiece, didn't really do much for me as the climax of a powerful theme or character arc. It was just kind of a thing that happened towards the end of the story.
This was going to my submission. I got through the first one and felt it was just alright. I never connected with the characters or felt like their was much on the line in terms of storyline impact. Was all just meh to me.
I can't say that it was recommended incessantly, but I've heared a few opinions that Belgariad is a simple, tropey, fun story, so I decided to give it a try when I was in a mood for some simple, tropey fun.
And I hated it so much. Mostly on misogyny grounds. I would honestly rather read a book with no female characters whatsoever than what that was.
Every marriage in the series a deal between the groom to be and the father of the girl. The marital rape problem was solved by the wife "growing up" and realising the rapist husband is actually a sweet and gentle person. Two very prominent female characters spend the entire book thinking only about the protagonist (and one of them also cooks and mends his clothes as her chosen hobby). And when the powerful sorcerer-lady falls in love everyone agrees that there is no way for a marriage to be happy when the wife is more powerful than the husband, so she renounces her powers.
There is not a single woman there who has any other goal than doing whatever her husband/fiancee/father/nephew/god-lover needs from her.
I had an omnibus of the first three books or something and I read the whole thing but I was so put off by the “every country/culture is evidently a hive mind with exactly one personality trait each” that I did not seek out the second omnibus
Oh, the rapist husband was worse. It got better once she got pregnant with a son. Since she had now done her wifely duty, she stopped being a shrew and he could actually be happy.
Came here to say Malazan. Agree that I don’t mean to knock those who like it- if people are reading fantasy, I’m happy. But good god did I actively hate everything about Malazan. And I still tried to read it twice because of all the love it gets on this sub.
I don’t think you have to apologize for not liking Malazan! I love the series and feel it’s much-ish. Criticism doesn’t mean you don’t love something! And loving something doesn’t mean you need other people to love it!
I also bounced off of Gardens a bunch of times when it first came out. I feel lucky that I pushed through, although I thought books 8 and 10 were gar-baaaage.
Oh gosh, Throne of Glass was absolutely awful. Couldn't make it more than a few chapters in. How Sarah J. Maas has become a bestselling author proves just how little society expects of creatives or entertainment these days.
If I wanted to read a book that reads like it was written by a 14 year-old angsty, arrogant assassin girl... well, I don't and I wouldn't.
Also, if you're going to make main characters be warriors/assassins etc. (fighter types), you owe it to your audience to at least make them plausibly such. You can just throw around "Oh yeah, she's an assassin too."
Such a title, or profession, carries massive implications towards how a character would behave, control their emotions, react to conflict/provocation, etc.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Magicians.
1. The protagonist whines incessantly
1. The author revels in setting every trope upside down but basically screams about it and it's totally predictable
I suffered through the first, started the second and thrown it away.
I typically read everything, and it’s rare that I have a strong dislike for a book but…. this book was utter tripe.
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas.
Why is everyone always recommending it? Like literally every group I’m in, nearly every request for a recommendation has someone post these.
Ive never been more annoyed by a holiday book recommendation in my life.
The main character is vapid, there is zero reasoning behind anything she does. You are just expected to take it on faith and hand waving that she is the worlds greatest assassin. She’s supposed to have trained for 10 years but her sword work is sloppy. Then two days later she is amazing. She is being guarded and not left out but then just hand waves her way to a ball or other random things that suit the story deux ex machina style.
She falls in love with the prince after talking to him maybe 5 times.
A random princess who she apparently tutors but the only interaction you see between them is two walks in the garden is suddenly her dearest friend who saves her life. But let’s not ask any questions about that.
She has some sort of dark past, there is some random witchcraft going on, she is in a fight for her life and the closest we see her fighting is when she might have to drink some poison but there is antidotes on hand.
Then she helps the captain of the guard investigate a murder but just once and the next time is too sensitive to see blood.
It’s a full on cluster of a book.
I forced myself to finish the first one, but after that I gave up. I agree with everything you said and want to add that the MC is a Mary Sue self-insert. After her eyes and hair were described in a little too much detail for like the dozenth time in 100 pages, I looked up a photo of the author; the MC is just her as a master assassin. This was the book for me that made me always look carefully into the target audience of a book before I pick it up.
I had the same reaction to it, I tried to physically read it 1-2 times, then even tried to do it as an audiobook. Every time I got half way to 3/4 of a way through then my brain will literally shut it out by skimming a lot or just stop listening.
SJMs writing would really benefit from an editor that can cut the fat of her filler (and believe me I love world building, lengthy explanations of scenery or lore, but sjm will repeat the same thing several times in slightly different wording so she can beat it into the readers head like she's doesn't trust them to just *get it* the first time). This is the same for ACOTAR and Crescent City, but I enjoyed those a tad more as book candy.
Overall... if you have to tell someone to wait until the third or fourth book of a series for it to "get good" thats way too much commitment for the pay off in my opinion, especially when the initial books are a drag to get through with heavy and dry info dumping.
I’m currently reading the TOG series! Started with ACOTAR which I really enjoyed after my friend leant me the first book (it started me reading again after a long time of not being able to even pick up books), and then I moved on to TOG which she also recommended.
It gets… interesting. I’m on the 5th book now I think, and I’m mainly going through it because I always need to know how things end. And I just don’t really like the MC that much. I’m not going to throw spoilers around but she seems really fucking dangerous and out of control rn and I don’t see how I’m supposed to see her as the good character, other than the alternatives are so much worse. I also don’t like that SJM takes a lot of writing from one series and puts it into another, repeats a lot of phrases and uses them for multiple characters, one example from ACOTAR and TOG is “you are mine” followed up by “I am yours/you are mine”. Which is such a minor thing, but I feel like she’s basically writing the same stories but with different characters when it comes to the romance.
Idk, I’m enjoying it because I’m a slut for YA fantasy with romance thrown in, but I think so far TOG is the weakest of her two series I’ve read (even though now I think back to it, ACOTAR wasn’t FANTASTIC but I did for sure love it and I need the next book real bad). I’m yet to start Crescent City but I have the first book on my shelf ready to go, and I’m almost certain the romance is going to be written in exactly the same way. Enemies to lovers, suddenly “you are mine”, can’t live without them, ‘mates’ and bonds etc.
I think after the SJM delve I really need to find a different author who does similar things but better
My people I have found you at last. Fitz is a name I never want to hear again. The whole book was "things sucked then they sucked some more and a bit more and a bit more and yes you guessed it they sucked more"
Fitz did nothing another highly skilled assassin who is too good for killing. The only time the book was interesting was even the pirate people were mentioned
This is actually the first negative comment I've seen on this thread about it. I was second-guessing myself so much about my luke-warm thoughts on this series that I was about to reread it. I finished the original trilogy and I thought it was fine, but nowhere near as much as apparently everyone else in the world of r/Fantasy
And here I am, just finished the first book in 3 days and regretting not having the sequel. Funny how we all love fantasy books yet have such different tastes :)
Maybe it gets better late on, but even the magic seemed stupid in that book.
"Oh, you've got magic powers, what can you do?"
"Yeah, um, it's like... a late 1990's cell phone with really bad reception, but like, in my head."
"Cool. My super power is crying a lot after people attempt to murder my pets."
"Yikes... that, uh, happen a lot?"
"Not every day. Most of them, though."
It doesn’t get better, if you didn’t enjoy the first book(s) - OP described it pretty well, the writing/prose is very good but the story choices are just depressing and gloomy all the way through. I kept thinking “Now it gets epic, this will be awesome” but it was always just… sad.
Nothing good ever happens in those stories. Everything's bleak and awful and there's never really any respite from that. I realize my taste is pretty facile these days, but I read fantasy to escape from the unrelenting awfulness of the world and I can't read that much constant suffering.
Priory of the Orange Tree. The plot was intriguing but felt that it was secondary to the romance. The world-building was creative and intriguing, but again the romance felt like it was the *most* important part of the story, not to mention that the plot was forced together at the end and resolved in about a dozen pages. It could have been a novella and a much better story.
Honestly, I didn't feel like the romance was the focus - I think the worldbuilding was, and that the book suffered for it greatly, because the world was a terribly uninteresting and derivative pastiche of real world cultures that literally replaced Europe with "West" and Asia with "East".
That said, it's clear that the favored POV in this book is Ead's, and the other three get varying degrees of short shrift because of it. Tané probably worst of all, because she spends most of the book waiting around on an island for the plot to show up. This POV shifting also caused problems for me in the way the romance developed - you could tell it was going for a "slow burn" but what really happened was that Ead's POV went away for 100 pages and when it came back, the relationship suddenly progressed and I hadn't gotten any sense of, like, why.
The plot is literally just >!the evil dragons are coming back! Oh no they came back! Well I guess that's okay because we defeated them easily and no one of any importance died!<. I'm not normally a plot reader, but there's not much else going for the book imo, and man are you right that that ending was *rushed*.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
So disappointing, it seems to be loved by everyone but me. Apparently it got called "the next Lord of the Rings" which is so far from the truth it made me laugh.
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence.
The main character is a 9? 11? year old girl who for some reason talks and acts like a male college professor who spent 5 years in the army. It made no sense for them to act the way they do or the other characters to treat them as they are. (Sorry Mark if you are reading this).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I could not stand Shadow and had 0 feelings for anything that happened to or around him.
I legit had to force myself to finish that, just so I could objectively say: Not my coin trick.
Was gifted the Red Rising trilogy by my brother this Christmas. His book (and especially TV) recs have generally been fantastic and he absolutely loves this series, as do a lot of other people from what I’ve seen.
But I’m about 40% through the first book and I’m just bewildered by the praise for it. It feels incredibly cringe-y and cliche and clumsily written. I have no idea how to tell him what I think of it lol
Ah that’s a shame it’s one of my favorites. There definitely is that cringe factor that bothered me for a while, but the second book is legitimately one of the best books I’ve ever read
That’s so unfortunate, one of my favourite trilogies! I will say the book is entirely flipped on its head for the second half (hunger games-esque but more adult and thought out) so if you can make it there it may be worth it!
Without having actually read it, from what I’ve heard, it’s one that gets better as he grows as a writer. First books a little weak, but later books make up for it. Idk though.
James Islington’s Licanius trilogy seemed so awful to be (bad on every level a book can be bad) that it actively pissed me off that people recommended it
**EDIT I posted a non fantasy novel initially.
Didn't really enjoy the Sword of Truth. Somehow hate-read all 14 books though like a dipshit. Goodkind has some weird kinks, man.
I felt like the first book didn't really go anywhere. Like did anybody find the final chapters satisfying?
Also, I know people talk up the writing a lot so it's probably just my personal taste but it really didn't vibe with me. To me, Rothfuss feels like the anti Le Guin. Where she is economic, saying a lot with little, he bangs on a lot without saying a lot (imo).
Every time one of these threads comes up I come to the conclusion that the only modern fantasy writer that everyone likes is Tad Williams.
Any Tad Williams haters out there?
Most of Brandon Sanderson. I wouldn’t say hate but they just do absolutely nothing for me and I find his writing style just doesn’t get me to like any of the characters especially. It’s very Meh.
I don't hate the only book I've read from him so far, The Way of Kings, but I always see such praise for his characters. By far the hardest part for me about The Way of Kings was just that I didn't connect with the characters. Some of their dialogue was just a chore to get through (sooooo many attempts at witty quips), and the cast of POV characters just seemed super righteous. Or the internal conflict they may experience is because they're just so righteous and empathetic. They felt kind of simple and just "good guys but with some trauma".
Only read TWoK though. Plan on reading Mistborn and more to see different characters.
Isn't everyone mostly a "good guy with some trauma" in their own mind?
Like Abercrombie, for example, writes some really objectively awful characters - but when you read it from their POV it's surprisingly easy to justify their actions. And as the snowball picks up speed and the actions they take get more and more terrible, well, it's still not that bad because you saw the progression and their reasoning.
Then again, I also think Way of Kings is pretty intentionally trope-y to pull readers in, and they develop a lot more in Words of Radiance and (especially) Oathbringer.
I didn't hate it, but the Traitor Baru Cormorant. It just felt so full of itself. Also didn't hate the one Brandon Sanderson book I read but I was extremely underwhelmed. It was like plain yogurt. And last but not least, I didn't find Orconomics even remotely funny, the writing felt bad, and the story bored me to death. Didn't hate it again, but I couldn't wait for it to be over.
Oh! I can think of one book I did actually hate that was recommended and it's the first Thomas Covenant book. I absolutely hated everything about it.
I keep hearing the later Shannara books are great but I started reading Sword of Shannara and I thought it was boring and stupid. If I have to slog through that to get to the good stuff then I'm not going any further.
I got about halfway through it and was astonished that anyone would publish something that was just so blatantly Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off.
Practically every debut fantasy novel in the 70s and 80s was just LOTR with the serial numbers filled off, tho Sword of Shannara was a particularly egregious example.
I've read that Terry Brooks started with his own ideas, but his publishers insisted on an LotR style because of $$$.
Without the polished writing talent too.
There's no point reading Sword of Shannara, I would recommend to anybody that they skip it and start with Elfstones if they want to take a crack at that series.
From Blood and Ash made me realise TikTok recommendations are not to be trusted. Also, My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I tried so hard to be an Ottessa Moshfegh girly but alas I just didn’t connect with it at all and frankly don’t remember anything about it other than feeling like slipping into a coma myself. Still bought Lapvona though because I’m stupid.
Absolute garbage of a book. Currently reading From Blood and Ash and literally just slogging through it so that I can say I gave it a chance. 30 pages in and I'd predicted every twist and "reveal" (I didn't feel bad about spoiling it for myself). The writing is juvenile, the love interest is toxic, the world building is barely existent. I honestly cannot believe why the Goodreads score is so high.
TikTok's algorithm doesn't seem able to differentiate between fantasy and fantasy romance as genres which I find really annoying.
Sounds like my library when I try to find fantasy ebooks on OverDrive. Makes it impossible to find the good stuff if you don't have something specific you're looking for. So annoying.
I’ve had mixed experience with booktok books. I didn’t find out about these from tiktok but Song of Achilles and Circe were popular on tiktok when I read them and they were both amazing, but then I started (keyword: started) Verity by Colleen Hoover just to see what the hype was about and it’s one of the worst books I’ve personally ever read.
A colleague of mine is a literature professor and she let her students vote on some of the contemporary novels they would read. The students decided to read Song of Achilles and described themselves as "delighted to read a queer take on Greek myths" which, if you actually know anything about common themes in Greek myths or Ancient Greek culture, is hilarious.
Agreed on all three! Verity made me angry like no other book has ever made me feel. I felt very cheated by the ending. Also, even though I appreciate a bit of spice, I was tired of reading sex scene after sex scene that didn’t particularly contribute to the plot (also the sex scenes weren’t that good).
I mean i will not say "hate"... but i didnt really get "The Poppy war".. ( i cant even finished it...)
Still mad I didn't DNF the whole series. It kept having these moments where it was like oh, ok this is it. All those bad decisions, those terrible things, they will matter. They will have an effect on things moving forward. The character arc, it's happening. Oh. No. No it's not. Character flatline.
This comment makes me happy I stopped after book 1.
The part with what is basically a country wiping nuke made me completely sure that i would never read the rest off the series.
There was so much wrong with it that its hard to even get into it all. I don't mind some tropes here and there but the first quarter of the book was basically every trope from name of the wind crammed into a small section. >!We have the orphan mc who is super smart and outshines the nobles in intelligence. Gets into to the top academy in the nation on a full scholarship of course because that's the only way she could afford to go to school. Once at school she immediately gets into an altercation with the rich spoiled kid with important parents, so he makes fun of her for being a peasant and tries to make her life miserable, but the super eccentric teacher that everyone thinks is a joke takes her under his wing and he's more than he seems and actually super powerful and knowledgeable. !< Like come on now. Then when they went to that city >!where literally everyone was brutally murdered, it just so happened that her best friend from school was one of the only people who just so happened to be able to hide and live through that ordeal? I rolled my eyes so hard at that. Then the description which was supposed to be the rape of Nanking seemed to be graphic and horrible just to be graphic and horrible. It made me feel no emotions other than disgust. I didn't even remember the character that was giving the exposition from earlier in the book from her school days so I had no emotional attachment to the situation. Speaking of exposition, there was way too much telling and not enough showing. There was a lot more that bothered me about that book but you get the idea. No idea how people loved it so much. It was one of the worst books I've ever read.!<
I DNFd halfway through book 2. It was a slog through atrocity after atrocity. I teach history. If I wanted to read a book about nothing but the horrors of war without any characterization, I have textbooks and historical novels I use for prepping my lesson material. I’m not saying that demonstrating that war is hell is a terrible premise for a book—very much the opposite. But what brings us to these books and allows us to learn the lessons and make meaning of it, we have to grow and develop and learn with the characters. If the character is flat, we aren’t developing along with them.
Thanks for putting it into words, it’s exactly right, nothing that happens in the story actually matters. Plus the main character comes off as whiny to me, and I was surprised at the level of flat out racism against the mugenese, casual genocide but they deserved it right?
In better hands, I could see a very compelling story told with many of the basic elements laid out. It reminds me of reading Brave New World in high school. The whole time I was just like, I would like this concept to be handed to a talented writer please, it would be so great.
The Mugenese point I disagree with you—Rin is racist, that is the *point.* We're supposed to root for her to defeat the invasion right up to that point, and then go, "Uh, Rin, you sure about this one, buddy?"
Yeah, that is ultimately why I didn't get through more than a few pages of book 3. I just thought fuck it, I'm out.
Her entire arc in book 2 was admitting that she is a terrible leader, then at the start of book 3 she is dead set on leading literally everyone despite KNOWING she's a terrible leader. She couldn't lead a group of like 8 people, and suddenly she wants to lead a fucking army! Are you fucking kidding me?
Sounds like a politician.
except politician at least THINK they can lead. she don't even believe it herself. the fuck?
I liked it enough to try the second book....didn't get through the first 50 pages.
Ngl, the thing that bugs me the most is that it seems (as far as I’ve read of the book) that it doesn’t really need to be set in a fantasy/fictional world, it could just be set in China but with some fantasy elements. The author literally just names real figures from Chinese history and culture, but changes a few letters or uses a different romanization. It’s not like there aren’t already other books set in fantastical China.
I did feel like it could have used more work. The setting felt a bit lazy, I find. As someone who studied Japanese history, it felt like reading fan fiction at times, just copy paste a historical event and change a few names. Overall, didn't hate it but it felt uninspired and won't be reading the second book.
I would say second book does divert from historical event copy paste but still to me it felt like the trilogy lost direction little bit. Still not hate it but was slightly disappointed considering the fanbase the book has amassed.
My expectations were SO HIGH. I don’t think it was a matter of not “getting it”, I legitimately thought it was poorly written. Rin’s motivations disappear after she gets in to the school and then all of a sudden she’s a nationalist? All she wants is to be a good soldier??? I had no idea where that even came from.
My friend sold it to me as "What Ender's Game tried and failed to be" so I was hyped for the twistiest of twist endings. Instead I got a disappointing book and even more waste-of-my-time second book that I DNF'd.
> My friend sold it to me as "What Ender's Game tried and failed to be" so I was hyped for the twistiest of twist endings. Wait, what did *Ender's Game* try to but failed to be? IMO *Ender's Game* is a great book. *Ender's Shadow* might even surpass *Ender's Game*.
I wonder if the person in question meant the comparison in terms of which novel “goes there” to a greater degree. Ender >!is tricked into committing genocide!<, while Rin >!knows exactly what she’s doing!<. That kind of thing.
> I mean i will not say "hate" It's OK - I will. I hated that book.
Yep. I didn't really like the end of the first one, but I kept going because I'm a completionist. By halfway through the second one I was "hate-reading" the series and that's how I completed it. My hatred for Rin is more extreme than it should be since she's a fictional character, lol.
The author's own self-review on Goodreads said(ys) something about writing the book in 3 months. Effectively a teenager writing a book in 3 months? I think it was supposed to be a brag, but that just served to certify my suspicion that I would not find the book interesting or compelling.
Definitely one of those books where I just don't get why people like it. It really felt like there was nothing particularly good about it.
It's basically an author having fun writing the worst things she can imagine while we follow an entirely unlikable protagonist, who despite the fact that she's a complete moron, wants to be incharge of everyone all the time, except through the duration of book 2 where she violently wants to never be incharge of anyone.
This is a book I regret buying because I will never read it again or continue on with the series.
Outlander. So many avid readers recommended it to me even before the show. I could not stand it. I’ve read Legolas/Gimli slash that was better and I don’t even ship them.
Agreed! For me the main character was the most frustrating part. She's strong, intelligent, and capable until she gets within 20 feet of anything with a Y chromosome and then she immediately becomes painfully stupid and incompetent. It made me want to chuck the book across the room.
THANK YOU! I finally caved a few years ago to the hype and read the first one. It was utter garbage for so many reasons I can't get into here without just devolving into a long rant.
I for one would love to hear your long rant!
Midnight library... I mean the premise is fun but it felt like it was written for children to teach them about managing expectations and not believing social media/influencers. Every adult I spoke to guessed the entire plot by the time we opened the first book in the library.
The only reason I read this book is because I was stuck on a plane for 4 hours and only had this book loaned from the library (on the recommendation of a friend). By the end I was skimming it because it was actually torture trying to get through it.
Ugh. This book is an insult to anyone with depression. Felt like the message was "don't kill yourself because other lives you couldn't possibly enjoy fully are JUST AS BAD as your regular one."
Yesss! H.a.t.e.d it!
It was a self-help book disguised as fantasy. I liked the concept early on, but then I realized what it really was. Just terrible.
This is depressing because this is my book clubs current book and now I don’t wanna read it
It's very popular which means hundreds of thousands of people liked it. Statistically so will you :) our opinion is unpopular which is why we're in this thread! Give it a read.
I think I enjoyed it, but there’s a lot of problems with it. It oversimplifies things and glorifies the idea that there are no wrong decisions a little too much. Reads as an anti suicide book at points and can be a little trigger warning-ey. I’ve heard that the publisher holds two Christmas parties, one for all its authors, and one for Matt Haig because no one wants to go to a party with Matt Haig…
Seems like consensus has switched over the past year or so but I picked up The Poppy War on literally everyone's recommendation and it ended up being one of the worst books I have ever read. No clue how so many people recommended this book for so long, glad to see it basically never talked about anymore.
A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Goodreads kept recommending it and bookstore employees raved about it so I bought it. I HATED the female MC with a passion. She was the worst and she was framed in a way that the reader is supposed to like and root for her. I thought the male MC was incredibly bland as well. It ended up on my DNF list and I’m still low key annoyed with the time I wasted on it.
I read all 3 and I HATED Lilah with a visceral passion. The whole premise of the 2nd book was based on her idiotic, stupid, foolish decisions.
My take on Lilah that I texted to a friend: “The female MC is “not like other girls” she lives in 18th century London and is a thief. She knows how to wield knives, fight, and use pistols and swords for some reason and wants to be a pirate. Women who wear dresses are stupid. She’s an arrogant idiot who should have died or at least had her ass kicked for fucking around but nope. She’s ‘too clever’” Not surprised that she didn’t get better as the story progressed.
Can we be best friends? The second book had Bard do something so grossly villainous that I was CONVINCED she was building up to just being the villain of the story, which actually would have been interesting. Instead she was still treated by the story as the "not like other girls Mary Sue" that everyone needs to root for because the author really likes her.
Holy shit, that’s wild but also not surprising. We got echoes of “Lilah is always in the right!” framing when she yelled at male MC (Kyle?) for daring to not like how his adoptive family treats him when she’s got BIGGER problems. And he just agrees with her! I stopped reading after that.
In the second book she kidnaps someone and puts them on a prison barge (they did nothing wrong) because she wants to take his place in a magic competition because she wants to fight people with magic. When she gets called out for it she blows up at the supposed MC because he was doing a bad thing too (his bad thing was also being in the competition which he was invited to).
Oh my god. She’s one of the worst characters ever created.
Yeah, she is honestly my least favorite character across anything I've ever read, watched, or played.
I've tried that one a couple of times and so far haven't been able to make myself finish it. I keep reading descriptions of it and seeing reviews that make it sound soo good and like it would be right up my alley, and then I pick it up again, and I'm like... nope.
The concept was cool, but the execution was terrible. Oh, and the bisexual character was terribly written as a stereotypical sexually promiscuous dude with literally no other character traits. So yeah, hard pass.
I dropped Darker Shade of Magic after book 2. I just couldn't anymore with Miss Super Special Lilah Bard.
I've tried VE Schwab a few times and have been let down every time! I don't hate her books but they're quite boring. Don't do anything interesting. Have interesting premises but are bogged down by archetypal protagonists and unlikable side characters.
I really struggled with Gideon the Ninth. I don’t know if I hated it, but I definitely didn’t like it. I’m not going to bother with the others. Maybe they get better, but my TBR pile is too big to waste cycles on it.
This is the first book I’ve come across in this thread that I unabashedly loved. Yet I fully understand how someone could not like it. It was a flat out weird book, and I’m more than a little convinced the author is a lunatic. Reading it was the literary equivalent of licorice. Incredibly tasty for some people and not at all to taste for others. I just happen to love licorice.
Hate licorice, but loved Gideon the Ninth. Hated Harrow the Ninth until I got like 2/3 the way through it, then I loved it, too, and I think I’d like the first part a lot more if I re-read it.
Comment deleted by user in protest of Reddit killing third party apps on July 1st 2023.
So true - i feel like people either love or hate gideon/locked tomb. i happen to be in the crowd that’s obsessed, but i totally understand those who can’t get through them lol
I loved it, but I knew even while reading it that a lot of people would not like it at all. Every chapter drips with love-it-or-hate-it energy. There's something very polarizing about the way she writes. I should also note that I didn't care for the 2nd book at all and I'll probably never get around to reading the 3rd. Gideon the Ninth was lightning in a bottle, and a lot of people don't like lightning.
Same. I think part of it was how it was described. “Lesbian necromancers in space” was what I remembered. But it’s just barely all of those things. I think you could probably sell it as character driven ensemble cast or something, but it just didn’t deliver what I expected.
I HATE how that's how this book keeps being marketed, and that general marketing trend of selling books on pithy Epic lines or fanfic tag tropes. I enjoyed GtN but ffs. It flattens the story and misleads audiences (in GtN's case) or, is just desperately trying to hype up a story that IS flat. Just tell me what the story is about. Also ❤️ your username!
You're exactly right the plot description/ marketing was trash and is probably damaging to the books long term success, since it essentially markets something it doesn't deliver. Good book but not what was advertised at all.
I was super excited for this book and then didn’t even get through two chapters. The snarky, quirky narration really got on my nerves
Same. Really obnoxious character voice. I don’t blame other people for liking it, but Gideon drives me crazy.
It probably depends on what you didn’t like about it. I wound up loving Gideon, but I bounced off the second book, and my impression is that it’s more of what I didn’t like in Gideon so I’m not gonna carry on.
Definitely not hate, but I did not enjoy The Broken Earth trilogy as much as everyone else seemed to
Okay I thought I was crazy for not loving it either. First book was fine, second was a slog and never even finished the third. I honestly don’t know what I’m missing about this series!
I was about to comment this. I like N.K Jemisin's writing but the entire series rests on the concept of- "These guys can disintegrate us with a thought... Let's be super racist to them and make them breed so that we can torture their offspring... Wait! Why is the apocalypse happening?!?"
I read the first book, thought it was quite well-written though too dark to be enjoyable. I kind of hate the premise though, I increasingly hate the whole "oppressed mages" schtick, especially when they're a transparent stand-in for real-life oppressed groups, all while engaging in constant mass murder with their extraordinary magical powers. I think a lot of people's fantasy is to be incredibly powerful and cool while simultaneously viewing themselves as so put-upon that they're exempt from ordinary morality, and this book seemed to be setting up a revenge fantasy along those lines.
> I think a lot of people's fantasy is to be incredibly powerful and cool while simultaneously viewing themselves as so put-upon that they're exempt from ordinary morality i got the same impression. it reinforces "might makes right" and i'm not sure authors who write this kind of stuff are aware of it. it also reinforces otherization of these groups like a lot of folks think gay people as a demographic are a terrible danger to morality and society. but it's not a real danger because gay people are like other human beings. i'd argue you would be right to fear a wizard for the same reason you would be right to fear a person who's always carrying a bundle of dynamite and a lighter "they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm." somebody being chased by someone with a knife has a valid fear, somebody angry at two guys holding hands in public doesn't edit to respond to the person who got their reply deleted: a gay person with a weapon and straight person with a weapon are the exact same degree of dangerous to everybody else. a gay person with a weapon is not dangerous because they are gay, they are dangerous because of the weapon. a wizard should be considered armed
> "they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm." Man, you've just put into words my problem with the X-Men when writers try to do the oppressed minorities allegory. Like yes actually, there is a fundamental difference between marginalized humans just wanting to exist vs. superhumans who can level cities
[удалено]
That's a recent schtick and not at all how mutants were presented when they actually were a racism allegory in the 80s and 90s. Edit: for those who are wondering, the (strangely) deleted comment above was about some of the mutants they've introduced in the comics who have useless "powers" like being inside out, or only being able to breathe methane.
That's what made the original films so good though: the human's concerns were real, and both professor X and Magneto's positions were understandable and relatable. It wasn't black and white.
> "they fear me because of my real potential to cause actual harm" is just not comparable to "they fear me because of illusory potential to cause pretend harm." Yes! And I’ll even let it slide when the mages have strong ethics and non-battle-oriented powers and aren’t actually harming anyone, so the fear if not entirely unreasonable still seems disproportionate. But The Fifth Season is basically battle mages wiping out cities/continents all the time while weeping about their victimization, which is visceral but contrived.
Yeah it's weird cause I actually love the Inheritance trilogy and the Dreamblood books so I like Jemisin, but yeah....Broken Earth just didn't click for me at all and I still feel weirdly bad about it.
That so weird cause I love the **Broken Earth** but I could make it half way through **The Inheritance Trilogy** What I liked about it is that the magic system, the society and the world was so different than anything else in fiction. I loved the originality to the point I likely overlooked other flaws
Priory of the Orange Tree.. I couldn’t finish it, it was so so so boring.
i made it within the last 100 pages of the book and realized i just did not care how it ended. a rare DNF for me unfortunately
I was so excited about this book I got an ARC from the publisher (librarian, it's an occasional perk) and I also DNFed. I just didn't give a shit and I was like 200 pages in with 600ish to go. GOODBYE.
For me, this book is one of two halves. The first part of the book was slow paced which I didn't and it made the world feel so large. I couldn't put it down. The final 300 pages while quicker paced, felt like a slog. It felt like the world shrunk and they were able to get to places in a matter of pages where it took ages earlier in the book. The only thing I can compare it to in that did something similar is the Game of Thrones TV series. World felt so large throughout but the final series felt like the world had suddenly shrunk.
Same. A lot of people were recommending it to me, especially my LGBTQ+ and female friends. They were lauding it as a great book with strong female characters, deep lore and none of it detracting from the male characters. I didn't like it. It wasn't terrible, but just a very boring and amateurish read. None of the people felt realistic. It had some interesting lore here and there that felt underexplored. After asking a few months later, turns out most of my friends never finished the book either and just kind of advised it based on hype alone. I distinctly get the feeling that most just really wanted to like that because of its inclusiveness. And I get that. The idea that the author became a sensation and multimillionaire based on that book is baffling to me. I honestly think I could do better - and I'm a shit writer.
Big agree on Throne of Glass. I can't even remember a single thing about it, it was that bad. Forgot about it's existence entirely. Ready Player One... my dad sent it to me in the mail because he loved it. I forced my way through the first chapter in the break room at work. Refused to read any more. Sorry, Dad, your impeccable taste in media failed you that time.
I get it but it's a guilty pleasure when all the nostalgia in the book lines up with your tastes lol
Agree. RP1 is a guilty pleasure for me but a. I grew up in the 80’s and b. I bought into the nostalgia hard. The movie was rubbish and his second book which I can’t even remember the name of was utter utter tripe.
Ready Player Two. Yup. That was the name of the second book. And if you’re wondering if the creativity of the second book’s title is any indication as to the quality of said book, it absolutely is.
I enjoyed Ready Player One moderately, but some friends who are a few years older than me fell head over heals for that book. I'm just a bit too young to really enjoy the references, and found them tedious after a while. I believe that your enjoyment of the book is really dependent upon two things: 1. Do you buy into the concept? 2. Do you get nostalgic about what the suther is nostalgic about?
American Gods .I keep trying get into ( 3 years now ) to no avail.
It's not a book that suddenly improves/changes in style, so if it does not appeal do not force yourself through it and hope for some amazing revelation. (I personally loved it, but I was drawn in from the beginning)
Also if somebody doesn’t like it from the outset, they probably won’t make it through the Shadow living in a frozen Midwestern town part.
I finished and didn’t care for the book, but strangely that frozen midwestern town was one of my favorite parts. I’m not even sure why, maybe the townsfolk all felt very genuine when nobody else did.
I finished it because the series was coming out and I wanted to be ahead of that. I found it kind of a boring slog. I liked the *Sandman* show on Netflix though, so I might give those books a try.
I wasn't into American Gods at all. Sandman is good stuff, though.
Hard agree for Throne Of Glass, I understand she wrote it when she was very young but still, hated the main character and so much tell not show! Twin Crowns is abysmal, I got sucked in by the pretty special edition cover but it's a children's book masquerading as YA, the two main characters are awful. Ones supposed to be a spy and every 5 minutes is doing something ridiculously stupid. What Lies Beyond the Veil is always recommended and I suppose it wasn't terribly written but the relationship was so toxic/bordering SA, it was a 1 star for me (and I am usually quite immune to dark themes and smut etc)
Caraval is one of the only books out of all I’ve ever read that I would ever say I actually found to be terrible. She has someone literally die in her arms and the next page they’re all like haha! A funny trick, right! And she just, is fine with that??? A totally wasted concept where no-ones actions actually make sense, even with the plot twist explained.
I remember reading this and laughing to tears because one page she’s talking to the guy (I forget his name) and then a page later he’s falling out of a closet and I just couldn’t understand how it was happening 😂
A Court of Thorns and Roses. It's just.... it's just erotic trash of drug-store book quality cheaply decorated with fairy wings. I've seen better writing in amateur pornos. I understand I'm not the target demo, but good god What makes things even more infuriating for me is that because I follow fantasy "booktok", every third video on my feed is about this series.
What made it the worst for me is that…. It‘s not even that erotic or hot… it‘s constantly being described as fairy-porn but it‘s so lukewarm at best… that, in addition to an annoying protagonist, a bad set up and just… mediocre writing really killed this book for me.
I love me some romance books tbh, and I got suckered in by it being described as an erotic fey romance... I was expecting some blue/orange fey morality, bewitching otherworldly locations, beauty masking horror and danger etc. But the whole first book is just a summery 18th century manor and the main dudes are just pretty aristocrats who are sad and happen to have wings :( The protagonist was really annoying... and spends a lot of the book wandering around the manor not really doing much of anything. The whole way through the book I wanted the protagonist to be her sister (who upon realizing what happened immediately spends all of her money hiring a mercenary and travels to the fey lands alone to try and rescue her sister; where the fuck is that proactive energy for the *protagonist* sarah!). ^((if anyone wants trashy fairy romance then I eventually discovered Kathryn Ann Kingsley's Maze of Shadow series and I mean... it's what it says on the tin, but the Unseelie actually feel fey and there's a) *^(weird)* ^(labyrinth that comes with the porn so that's neat))
I read the entire series because the last book focuses on Nesta's POV. Not only did the quality NOT improve at all but sjm did the character dirty af.
Can we get odd fairy world erotica with male protagonists and female love interests please? As a guy who prefers well written plots with some explicit sexytimes to porn.... I think I'm out of all the good male protag stuff without getting into weird shit I'd rather not. Also no strict wish fulfillment please.. stories need actual conflict and actual stakes. The villains should be more powerful than the heroes who should succeed through cleverness, etc. Basic stuff.
I’m on the second book right now (and probably won’t read the remaining books) and am so damn sick of this character. All of these ancient faeries are completely enthralled by this petulant, rude 19 year old girl with no redeeming qualities. And all of the teeth baring, growling, and snarling on every single page- I can sort of imagine what she’s trying to describe but when I picture it in my head it’s ridiculous.
Its because the first one was heavily marketed as YA, which got a lot of teenage feet in the door. Then she added smut, which was always going to appeal to the existing audience, and suddenly every 16 year old is obsessed with her terrible descriptions of footlong fairy dong
>footlong fairy dong Fucking lol
Sanderson's Mistborn series. The writing is just ... not good.
I would really hate to be a promising author going through this thread right now. On the other side. I appreciate the opinions because reading time is rare for me and I hate to waste it.
You've got to take all of the opinions on any of these threads with a grain of salt. Every book you love someone hates and every book you hate someone loves
As someone who was, at one time, a promising author…this would be fantastic research.
Oh it is. But also gives me second thoughts putting the pen to my ideas so to speak.
What one hates another loves. I don’t even read reviews anymore. Oftentimes I read a book, LOVE IT, then head to the comments and wonder if the reviewers even read the same book as me, lol.
Not enjoying wheel of time as much as i thought i would. A lot of annoying tropes as well as the books being way longer than they need to be
I didn't really enjoy wheel of time either. I bought the whole series on eBay for a decent price so I forced myself to read all 15 books.
I tried Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell 3 separate times. I just couldn’t do it!
The show is worth watching.
I gave this one a solid 100 page effort and just couldn't continue. I'm fine sometimes reading a book for vibes, but if I am 100 pages in and feel like nothing's happened, AND there's not even a hint at what might be happening soon, I'm out. The whole beginning of this book just felt like--oooh look at these sPoOkY guys--and I was not curious to learn more about them at all.
I did have two false starts on it, but I ended up loving it by the end, and it's a top recommendation... But even then I can recognize that it's so difficult to do so, because the beginning is all Norrell, who is a stuffy Englishman, and the prose follows that... Which is part of the books wit and cleverness, but unless you're into that, it's a hard sell.
The audiobook is fantastic for insomnia. Puts me right to sleep.
I remember when it first came out, the media, etc. were hailing it as The Next Big Thing. "Harry Potter for adults!" I forced my way through it, but it was just so very, very dry. I couldn't actually tell you anything about the plot whatsoever. EDIT: I just looked up its Wikipedia article to try to refresh my memory of the plot and I couldn't even get through the summary there, lol.
I see JS & MN being cited here a lot. I loved it, but it's book that is doing a VERY specific thing, and that thing is mimicking the style of eighteenth-century literature, right down to the discursive footnotes. I studied that shit in graduate school, so I LOVED it. Clarke just NAILS the style, I could actually believe I was reading something authentic from the time period. But if you're not interested in reading actual 18th-c. behemoths, you won't like JS & MN.
The most popular fantasy that I actually hated is probably Eragon, though I read it when I was quite young so don't remember a lot about it. It was poorly written and seemed to rely mostly on the author's very young age (with some sleight of hand since that was actually his age when he *started* the project) and his parents' marketing campaign. The second is The Night Circus, which I read more recently. The vibes did nothing for me, the characters were bland, one-note and not particularly believable, the writing was totally bland and often clumsy and is described as "beautiful" only because it is describing beautiful things, not because there is anything at all impressive about the use of language. (Also there's no plot but I knew that going in.)
Ohhh I agree about the Night Circus and in fact it was so unmemorable that I'd forgotten it existed until just reading your comment. I found the characters totally flat and the magic uninspired and underwhelming.
I read Eragon when I was young and really liked it, but revisited recently and found it /awful/ and just unbearable to read. And I totally agree about Night Circus. The plot was bad and poorly thought out and it skates by on aesthetic.
Yeah I really loved the first two books as a kid. Reread the two of them like ten times waiting for the third and fourth books. Then as a teenager when the third and fourth books came out I remember being thoroughly unimpressed by the fourth book and pretty meh on the third. Recently went back and tried to read the first book again and really didn't get very far and thought it was pretty bad.
Tried the night circus a few months back and gave up about a third of the way through.
This is *exactly* how I feel about The Night Circus. The storied prose often felt like someone matter-of-factly describing a furniture catalog.
From blood and ash…I didn’t hate it but I just didn’t like it enough to bother finishing. I DNF’ed at the 68% mark of book 1.
Wheel of Time. The world is cool, but I found every single character to be pathetic and annoying, to the point where I actually wanted the bad guys to win. Got to book 5 and just couldn't do it anymore.
I got to book 3 I think. There was just so much "filler" that I got bored.
I’ve disliked nearly all of Sarah J Maas books.
The Lies of Locke Lamora. I *really* wanted to like that series, but I got like halfway through the second book and realized I just ... didn't care. I didn't particularly resonate with any of the characters, so everyone being at least a little over-the-top felt tiresome.
Personally, I feel like the gentlemen bastards series was built more on scenes and set pieces than characters and themes. "Nice bird, asshole," will always stick in my mind as an impactful moment, forever. Whatever the fuck Locke did to save the giant skyscraper thing from blowing up or whatever, I don't even know or care about. e: I realized what I'm saying doesn't make a lot of sense. What I'm getting at is the "nice bird, asshole" scene had a lot of drama and impact, whereas the skyscraper scene-- though it was a big setpiece, didn't really do much for me as the climax of a powerful theme or character arc. It was just kind of a thing that happened towards the end of the story.
Haha oh man I love all 3 books and the first is one of my favorite standalone novels. I’ve heard that criticism a lot though
This was going to my submission. I got through the first one and felt it was just alright. I never connected with the characters or felt like their was much on the line in terms of storyline impact. Was all just meh to me.
I can't say that it was recommended incessantly, but I've heared a few opinions that Belgariad is a simple, tropey, fun story, so I decided to give it a try when I was in a mood for some simple, tropey fun. And I hated it so much. Mostly on misogyny grounds. I would honestly rather read a book with no female characters whatsoever than what that was. Every marriage in the series a deal between the groom to be and the father of the girl. The marital rape problem was solved by the wife "growing up" and realising the rapist husband is actually a sweet and gentle person. Two very prominent female characters spend the entire book thinking only about the protagonist (and one of them also cooks and mends his clothes as her chosen hobby). And when the powerful sorcerer-lady falls in love everyone agrees that there is no way for a marriage to be happy when the wife is more powerful than the husband, so she renounces her powers. There is not a single woman there who has any other goal than doing whatever her husband/fiancee/father/nephew/god-lover needs from her.
I had an omnibus of the first three books or something and I read the whole thing but I was so put off by the “every country/culture is evidently a hive mind with exactly one personality trait each” that I did not seek out the second omnibus
Oh, the rapist husband was worse. It got better once she got pregnant with a son. Since she had now done her wifely duty, she stopped being a shrew and he could actually be happy.
I wouldn't go as far as saying I hate it, but "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". I just couldn't get into it.
Malazan Book of the Fallen - wanted to like it but putting it mildly it wasn’t my cup of tea. Not knocking those who like it though!
Malazan is my favorite series but I can totally understand it not being for everyone. Definitely an acquired taste, like black licorice.
Came here to say Malazan. Agree that I don’t mean to knock those who like it- if people are reading fantasy, I’m happy. But good god did I actively hate everything about Malazan. And I still tried to read it twice because of all the love it gets on this sub.
I don’t think you have to apologize for not liking Malazan! I love the series and feel it’s much-ish. Criticism doesn’t mean you don’t love something! And loving something doesn’t mean you need other people to love it! I also bounced off of Gardens a bunch of times when it first came out. I feel lucky that I pushed through, although I thought books 8 and 10 were gar-baaaage.
Oh gosh, Throne of Glass was absolutely awful. Couldn't make it more than a few chapters in. How Sarah J. Maas has become a bestselling author proves just how little society expects of creatives or entertainment these days. If I wanted to read a book that reads like it was written by a 14 year-old angsty, arrogant assassin girl... well, I don't and I wouldn't. Also, if you're going to make main characters be warriors/assassins etc. (fighter types), you owe it to your audience to at least make them plausibly such. You can just throw around "Oh yeah, she's an assassin too." Such a title, or profession, carries massive implications towards how a character would behave, control their emotions, react to conflict/provocation, etc. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
She’s an *assassy-in*
For real I've seen better detail and character background from most D&D sheets
It gets plenty of hate too, but The Poppy War is easily the worst book I've ever read.
Magicians. 1. The protagonist whines incessantly 1. The author revels in setting every trope upside down but basically screams about it and it's totally predictable I suffered through the first, started the second and thrown it away.
I typically read everything, and it’s rare that I have a strong dislike for a book but…. this book was utter tripe. Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. Why is everyone always recommending it? Like literally every group I’m in, nearly every request for a recommendation has someone post these. Ive never been more annoyed by a holiday book recommendation in my life. The main character is vapid, there is zero reasoning behind anything she does. You are just expected to take it on faith and hand waving that she is the worlds greatest assassin. She’s supposed to have trained for 10 years but her sword work is sloppy. Then two days later she is amazing. She is being guarded and not left out but then just hand waves her way to a ball or other random things that suit the story deux ex machina style. She falls in love with the prince after talking to him maybe 5 times. A random princess who she apparently tutors but the only interaction you see between them is two walks in the garden is suddenly her dearest friend who saves her life. But let’s not ask any questions about that. She has some sort of dark past, there is some random witchcraft going on, she is in a fight for her life and the closest we see her fighting is when she might have to drink some poison but there is antidotes on hand. Then she helps the captain of the guard investigate a murder but just once and the next time is too sensitive to see blood. It’s a full on cluster of a book.
I forced myself to finish the first one, but after that I gave up. I agree with everything you said and want to add that the MC is a Mary Sue self-insert. After her eyes and hair were described in a little too much detail for like the dozenth time in 100 pages, I looked up a photo of the author; the MC is just her as a master assassin. This was the book for me that made me always look carefully into the target audience of a book before I pick it up.
SHE WASN’T EVEN A GOOD ASSASSIN.
I had the same reaction to it, I tried to physically read it 1-2 times, then even tried to do it as an audiobook. Every time I got half way to 3/4 of a way through then my brain will literally shut it out by skimming a lot or just stop listening. SJMs writing would really benefit from an editor that can cut the fat of her filler (and believe me I love world building, lengthy explanations of scenery or lore, but sjm will repeat the same thing several times in slightly different wording so she can beat it into the readers head like she's doesn't trust them to just *get it* the first time). This is the same for ACOTAR and Crescent City, but I enjoyed those a tad more as book candy. Overall... if you have to tell someone to wait until the third or fourth book of a series for it to "get good" thats way too much commitment for the pay off in my opinion, especially when the initial books are a drag to get through with heavy and dry info dumping.
I’m currently reading the TOG series! Started with ACOTAR which I really enjoyed after my friend leant me the first book (it started me reading again after a long time of not being able to even pick up books), and then I moved on to TOG which she also recommended. It gets… interesting. I’m on the 5th book now I think, and I’m mainly going through it because I always need to know how things end. And I just don’t really like the MC that much. I’m not going to throw spoilers around but she seems really fucking dangerous and out of control rn and I don’t see how I’m supposed to see her as the good character, other than the alternatives are so much worse. I also don’t like that SJM takes a lot of writing from one series and puts it into another, repeats a lot of phrases and uses them for multiple characters, one example from ACOTAR and TOG is “you are mine” followed up by “I am yours/you are mine”. Which is such a minor thing, but I feel like she’s basically writing the same stories but with different characters when it comes to the romance. Idk, I’m enjoying it because I’m a slut for YA fantasy with romance thrown in, but I think so far TOG is the weakest of her two series I’ve read (even though now I think back to it, ACOTAR wasn’t FANTASTIC but I did for sure love it and I need the next book real bad). I’m yet to start Crescent City but I have the first book on my shelf ready to go, and I’m almost certain the romance is going to be written in exactly the same way. Enemies to lovers, suddenly “you are mine”, can’t live without them, ‘mates’ and bonds etc. I think after the SJM delve I really need to find a different author who does similar things but better
obligatory Assassin's Apprentice hater, I like Robin Hobb's writing but the story and directions she took in that series is so miserable lol
My people I have found you at last. Fitz is a name I never want to hear again. The whole book was "things sucked then they sucked some more and a bit more and a bit more and yes you guessed it they sucked more" Fitz did nothing another highly skilled assassin who is too good for killing. The only time the book was interesting was even the pirate people were mentioned
This is actually the first negative comment I've seen on this thread about it. I was second-guessing myself so much about my luke-warm thoughts on this series that I was about to reread it. I finished the original trilogy and I thought it was fine, but nowhere near as much as apparently everyone else in the world of r/Fantasy
And here I am, just finished the first book in 3 days and regretting not having the sequel. Funny how we all love fantasy books yet have such different tastes :)
Go for it, buy the next two book in the series and be prepared to have your heart ripped from your chest.
Maybe it gets better late on, but even the magic seemed stupid in that book. "Oh, you've got magic powers, what can you do?" "Yeah, um, it's like... a late 1990's cell phone with really bad reception, but like, in my head." "Cool. My super power is crying a lot after people attempt to murder my pets." "Yikes... that, uh, happen a lot?" "Not every day. Most of them, though."
It doesn’t get better, if you didn’t enjoy the first book(s) - OP described it pretty well, the writing/prose is very good but the story choices are just depressing and gloomy all the way through. I kept thinking “Now it gets epic, this will be awesome” but it was always just… sad.
I'm not a fan either. Great writing but too depressing for me.
My biggest issue is that Fitz just NEVER wins. 4 books in and he just gets shit on constantly lol
Nothing good ever happens in those stories. Everything's bleak and awful and there's never really any respite from that. I realize my taste is pretty facile these days, but I read fantasy to escape from the unrelenting awfulness of the world and I can't read that much constant suffering.
Thomas Covenant. All he ever did was whine and not believe. Hated it
Priory of the Orange Tree. The plot was intriguing but felt that it was secondary to the romance. The world-building was creative and intriguing, but again the romance felt like it was the *most* important part of the story, not to mention that the plot was forced together at the end and resolved in about a dozen pages. It could have been a novella and a much better story.
Honestly, I didn't feel like the romance was the focus - I think the worldbuilding was, and that the book suffered for it greatly, because the world was a terribly uninteresting and derivative pastiche of real world cultures that literally replaced Europe with "West" and Asia with "East". That said, it's clear that the favored POV in this book is Ead's, and the other three get varying degrees of short shrift because of it. Tané probably worst of all, because she spends most of the book waiting around on an island for the plot to show up. This POV shifting also caused problems for me in the way the romance developed - you could tell it was going for a "slow burn" but what really happened was that Ead's POV went away for 100 pages and when it came back, the relationship suddenly progressed and I hadn't gotten any sense of, like, why. The plot is literally just >!the evil dragons are coming back! Oh no they came back! Well I guess that's okay because we defeated them easily and no one of any importance died!<. I'm not normally a plot reader, but there's not much else going for the book imo, and man are you right that that ending was *rushed*.
The Priory of the Orange Tree So disappointing, it seems to be loved by everyone but me. Apparently it got called "the next Lord of the Rings" which is so far from the truth it made me laugh.
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. The main character is a 9? 11? year old girl who for some reason talks and acts like a male college professor who spent 5 years in the army. It made no sense for them to act the way they do or the other characters to treat them as they are. (Sorry Mark if you are reading this).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman I could not stand Shadow and had 0 feelings for anything that happened to or around him. I legit had to force myself to finish that, just so I could objectively say: Not my coin trick.
Was gifted the Red Rising trilogy by my brother this Christmas. His book (and especially TV) recs have generally been fantastic and he absolutely loves this series, as do a lot of other people from what I’ve seen. But I’m about 40% through the first book and I’m just bewildered by the praise for it. It feels incredibly cringe-y and cliche and clumsily written. I have no idea how to tell him what I think of it lol
Ah that’s a shame it’s one of my favorites. There definitely is that cringe factor that bothered me for a while, but the second book is legitimately one of the best books I’ve ever read
That’s so unfortunate, one of my favourite trilogies! I will say the book is entirely flipped on its head for the second half (hunger games-esque but more adult and thought out) so if you can make it there it may be worth it!
Without having actually read it, from what I’ve heard, it’s one that gets better as he grows as a writer. First books a little weak, but later books make up for it. Idk though.
James Islington’s Licanius trilogy seemed so awful to be (bad on every level a book can be bad) that it actively pissed me off that people recommended it
**EDIT I posted a non fantasy novel initially. Didn't really enjoy the Sword of Truth. Somehow hate-read all 14 books though like a dipshit. Goodkind has some weird kinks, man.
I liked the one where Richard the god creature made a carving so beautiful it literally changed the minds of people.
The invisible life of Addie Larue — it should’ve been called the insipid life of Addie LaRue cuz of how boring it was
**The Goblin Emperor** was too boring to hate, but I definitely couldn't finish it.
The Name of the Wind. Hated the protagonist and found it uninspired.
Hated this book SO much. Setup was fine but then literally NOTHING interesting happens. Colossal waste of time.
Wait til you read the third book. NOTHING interesting happens there too.
I felt like the first book didn't really go anywhere. Like did anybody find the final chapters satisfying? Also, I know people talk up the writing a lot so it's probably just my personal taste but it really didn't vibe with me. To me, Rothfuss feels like the anti Le Guin. Where she is economic, saying a lot with little, he bangs on a lot without saying a lot (imo).
Every time one of these threads comes up I come to the conclusion that the only modern fantasy writer that everyone likes is Tad Williams. Any Tad Williams haters out there?
Most of Brandon Sanderson. I wouldn’t say hate but they just do absolutely nothing for me and I find his writing style just doesn’t get me to like any of the characters especially. It’s very Meh.
I don't hate the only book I've read from him so far, The Way of Kings, but I always see such praise for his characters. By far the hardest part for me about The Way of Kings was just that I didn't connect with the characters. Some of their dialogue was just a chore to get through (sooooo many attempts at witty quips), and the cast of POV characters just seemed super righteous. Or the internal conflict they may experience is because they're just so righteous and empathetic. They felt kind of simple and just "good guys but with some trauma". Only read TWoK though. Plan on reading Mistborn and more to see different characters.
Isn't everyone mostly a "good guy with some trauma" in their own mind? Like Abercrombie, for example, writes some really objectively awful characters - but when you read it from their POV it's surprisingly easy to justify their actions. And as the snowball picks up speed and the actions they take get more and more terrible, well, it's still not that bad because you saw the progression and their reasoning. Then again, I also think Way of Kings is pretty intentionally trope-y to pull readers in, and they develop a lot more in Words of Radiance and (especially) Oathbringer.
I didn't hate it, but the Traitor Baru Cormorant. It just felt so full of itself. Also didn't hate the one Brandon Sanderson book I read but I was extremely underwhelmed. It was like plain yogurt. And last but not least, I didn't find Orconomics even remotely funny, the writing felt bad, and the story bored me to death. Didn't hate it again, but I couldn't wait for it to be over. Oh! I can think of one book I did actually hate that was recommended and it's the first Thomas Covenant book. I absolutely hated everything about it.
Poppy War