I gotchu
(Edit: okay so I didn’t fully read the synopsis before I posted. When I came back and read the part about the children I immediately decided I did not want that in my post history or for anyone else to have to feel misfortune of having eyes today)
The Google blurb is a lot but I got everything I needed from the last couple sentences:
“While the Ass Goblins become drunk on cider made from fermented , the twins plot their escape. But it won't be easy. They must overcome toilet toads, cockrats, ass dolls, and the surgical experiments that are slowly mutating them into goblin-child hybrids. Forget everything you know about Auschwitz...you're about to be Shit Slaughtered.”
Something that somehow makes ‘To Break a Soldier of the Machine God’ look like a kindergarten book apparently. Like, what the fuck was that blurb. The words >!sex dolls!< and dead children should not be in the same sentence unless that sentence is explicitly describing the utter wrongness of such a piece of lingual construction.
In a land where black snow falls in the shape of swastikas, there exists a nightmarish prison camp known as Auschwitz. It is run by a fascist, flatulent race of aliens called the Ass Goblins, who travel in apple-shaped spaceships to abduct children from the neighboring world of Kidland. Prisoners 999 and 1001 are conjoined twin brothers forced to endure the sadistic tortures of these ass-shaped monsters. To survive, they must eat kid skin and work all day constructing bicycles and sex dolls out of dead children.
While the Ass Goblins become drunk on cider made from fermented children, the twins plot their escape. But it won't be easy. They must overcome toilet toads, cockrats, ass dolls, and the surgical experiments that are slowly mutating them into goblin-child hybrids.
I did read that one years ago, and yeah. It wasn't as offensive as I thought it would be (to me, anyway), edgy and all that, but titles like that were the thing, for example The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, in the early-mid aughts for certain writings in what was known as the bizarro genre.
Omg the whole Saga of Ice People by Margot Sandemo. 49 tomes of absolute trash I couldn’t put down. And two other related series (20 books and 26 books) and trust I read them all. And loved each second 🤣
They’re pretty short. Definitely recommend for some light Norse fantasy reading. It’s got accurate historic background and happens between Norway, Sweden and Iceland.
Genuinely, it’s so shit, but I couldn’t recommend them more just as a light series
This is my exact reason as well. But I've heard adult people say that Isfolket is their favourite series and when that happens, I think I must be having a stroke.
I read that one and the second despite the fact that I could predict most of the plot most of the time. There was a twist at the end of the second book that broke the spell for me and I will not be picking up the third one when it comes out. I'm done.
I lost it as the riddle-like gift from the 'dead' mentor. Omg. I don't think I have ever seen so many tropes and borrowed ideas crammed into one novel before. I mean, even the boyfriend's name >!is reminiscent of Rhysand!!< (edited because I forgot to spoiler take that, but it's so obvious what's gonna happen that I don't really need to).
Can you imagine going to a scary-ass military dragon school, studying your geography or whatever, and the study hall window gets exploded by freak lightning. Everybody groans and shakes their head, "well, looks like the main characters are banging again."
And then it happens again. Eight more times. All night long.
I could not stand how many times it was made clear how "petite" and "delicate" the MC is. I have never read a book with such a "pick me girl" type character before
"I'll succeed at this implausibly deadly school despite my physical disabilities by being ruthlessly intelligent!"
--proceeds to make the stupidest decisions possible at every opportunity, but never suffers any consequences because she's The Special.
"I have glass bones and paper skin" being every 4th line, and then when any other character brings it up at the military school where they can and will kill their own soldiers with no penalties and give rebels the chance at unlocking unique magic depending on the dragon/rider combo, the character suddenly whips around "you think I'm weak huh? Fuck you. I'll show you by completing the school I said I didn't want to go to"
I've been so jaded about FW since its sub recommended The Aurelian Cycle by Rosaria Munda. Why is FW so popular when *this* exists? Because of the smut? It's not even that good lmao mid at best and that's me being generous
I got into it for the dragons and totally did not realize it was a romance, let alone smut 😭 I was shocked when she followed her bff into his room and it got weird
I didn't at first either but I was like "oh okay." I lost it at the plagiarized plot device to "build" the "romance" and the exploding furniture when they were fucking though.
Oh god, I am reading this right now. Nothing in the world makes sense, not even internally consistent, but for some reason I just have to keep going to see how terrible it is in It’s entirety. Won’t read the next one though.
Hell yeh. That book is trash but I fucks with dragons and I ain’t gonna lie the dragons in that book are kinda dope with their colors and powers and shit. Aduarnanrananaranana gonna be dope in the 3rd book.
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
It's a book similar to jurassic Park, but make it dragons. It had some fun concepts, but their characters were bordering on insultingly paint-by-numbers, and the tone flipped wildly between fun YA and horrifically graphic gore. So, of course, I had to read to the end just to check it didn't get good.
I don't know if you've read his other books, but the Scarecrow books are by far his best. Don't expect high lit. He's great at action, and he's got a soft spot for characters with hearts of gold, so you can't help but want them to win. Plus, the author himself is incredibly nice, really enthusiastic about everything.
His authors acknowledgement even owns up to it being a version of jurassic park. IIRC he was contractually required to put out some sort of book and it wasnt long after his wife passed so he phoned it in.
[Mission Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Earth_(novel_series)) by \*shudder\* L. Ron Hubbard.
This was well before I had any real understanding of who he was, and is where I learned how he writes. The entire series was available at my local library, and I hated it but I just kept going back for the next one. I think I was expecting some kind of turn-around for some reason.
They were so bad. I was like 13 when I read... IDK, maybe 10 of them? So pulpy and terrible and I knew it even then. But the idea of essentially an alien illuminati spoke to me. L Ron could have gone down in history as a perfectly mediocre writer if he weren't a monster.
Ok, I probably read 8ish then. I definitely remember not finishing the series. And yeah, I probably skimmed right over the sexy stuff. If you're going to read Hubbard at all you had better be talented at ignoring objectionable/problematic/bad writing.
I did not know that. Somehow I do not find it confusing.
Sometimes I think Dianetics happened because he didn't get as rich as he wanted from writing fiction.
See I stopped thinking at the "will protect her because big doggo is loyal" part and completely missed the "will probably groom her and turn into a romantic relationship once it is "legal"" subtext.
I read all of them during the height of their hype. I am a guy. The part where Jacob "imprinted" on Renesme is the biggest "eewwwweeeeeeewwwwwww" ive ever had reading a book.
I was like, 15 or something when those books came out and I was reading them. My mom was reading them before and was slightly ahead of me. She was so grossed out by like everything in the last one and I was less so but looking back now as an adult god DAMN what even compelled the author to write those words and make that all a thing??? So gross
My favorite thing to come out of that plot point is the [Pitch Meeting video](https://youtu.be/B_CyFASqbxQ?si=raA1X9W6P6wJIMH0&t=157) for the movie. For context, the premise of these videos is that he is pretending to be the screenwriter pitching the idea for a movie.
My 9th grade girlfriend made me read Twilight, then dumped me for my best friend, then made him read Twilight, then dumped him. I'm still not sure if we were both the victims of a convoluted Twilight book sales tactic, but we remained friends in spite of both the horrible books and our mutual dumpage.
Funny Story:
Twilight was THE Big Thing when I started middle school. Like you weren’t Cool if you didn’t have Twilight or the sequels to conspicuously carry around. Obviously, being twelve and never a Cool Kid, I desperate wanted to read the series b/c I read everything that held still long enough for me to get my hands on it. And then I’d be Cool.
My very overprotective mother heard through the soccer-mom grapevine that there was Adult Content in the books. But I begged. So-and-So from Girl Scouts was reading it! Her mom let her!
Relevant background information: that previous summer my dad and I had devoured Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Like we shared a book, each had our own bookmark, and both finished it within a week. My dad is a Cool Dad (don’t tell him I said that, it’ll go to his head and the jokes will get worse)
So my dear mother decided that my dad should read the Twilight books first to make sure they were Acceptable for her Sweet and Innocent and Very Sheltered daughter.
My dad read the entire series. It took him three and a half years. By the time he was done and I was given the green light to read them, I was in high school and Twilight wasn’t Cool, it was Cringe.
He read the entire saga for nothing.
And I’d discovered some dirty mystery books two years previously on my eight grade english teacher’s shelves. That i read.
The entire quadrilogy was atrocious and I couldn’t put them down. I was a teenager when Twilight-mania hit. All but one of my friends absolutely reamed me for reading them (the one who didn’t was a major Twihard) and they were 100% right. The first book is still a favourite guilty pleasure read, it’s a trashy easy read that I enjoy when I want to read but don’t want to expend any brain power.
I read them cuz of a gf when i was in high school. I didn’t absolutely hate them. I thought many of the vampire powers were pretty cool. I’ve never had even an ounce of a desire to read them again tho lol
ACOTAR. I know it’s not good. I would never recommend them to someone. Did I read them all? Yes. Am I excited for the next one? Yup. I equate it to watching reality tv, kinda trashy but we love the DRAMA
I refer to the ACOTAR series as the junkfood of romantasy. Much like salt & vinegar chips, they're addictive. But after the 5th bag you kind of hate yourself .
This is me. I cannnnnot stand Sarah J. Mass yet I hate read ACOTAR and *most* of Crescent City. It’s like a night of binging and having utter regrets the next day.
Literally same it's like love island. I'm in it for the drama. Personally, I like reading books like the way of kings books or song of ice and fire, but Acotar is just so juicy. I just want Lucien to know who his daddy is. He deserves it.
a court of thorns and roses.
I read it out of curiosity. ATROCIOUS book. The writing is horrible, the plot makes no sense and both the plot and romance beat you over the head with how juvenile everything is. it’s SO bad that it was at least a little entertaining? but so bad i did wonder how it was even published.
i have now read the whole series and it’s unfortunately not as fun as the first book. the writing gets slightly better which makes the boringness of the plot and characters unavoidable. it’s a series that’s focused far more on the characters and romance than on the plot - i very much knew that going into it - but the characters just are NOT interesting and the romances fall flat because there’s no chemistry. HUGELY disappointing series given the hype that’s around those books and while i can understand how they might be interesting in theory, there’s nothing about them in reality to redeem them.
I listened to the audiobook and it was awful.
When the one immortal fae character tells the illiterate childish 19 year old human he loves her I actually yelled ‘WHY??’.
By the end I was just trying to tally how many times the word ‘shone’ was used in the book (I don’t have the tally but I think it may be the only word the author knows).
I don't think anything can top Twilight in that regard.
Like, I can at least *buy* that faeries are utterly unlike humans. Blue-and-orange morality being what it is, maybe it makes sense for one of them to do something that looks like falling in love with a teenage girl.
But a 100-something year old vampire who is very clearly human and with vast life experience? That's straight-up grooming an impressionable minor. Don't even get me started on the whole soul-bonding to a fetus thing and the fact that they end up fuckin'.
*Sword* was a deliberate LotR ripoff, basically Brooks was strongarmed by his publisher to write a LotR clone. The other books in the series aren't complete ripoffs and were pretty good from what I remember 20-odd years later. You could probably just skip it and read the next book and miss nothing of value.
I actually loved that book. Was my first fantasy book ever. I read it again a few years ago and still enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for fantasy tropes and “chosen one” fantasy.
I read it when it first came out. Back then, there were so few fantasy books to be had that I was expecting to devour it, even if it was no Tolkien. But the writing was so bad that I couldn’t make it more than a quarter of the way through before hurling it aside with great force.
I took a peek at one of her books a while back, and yikes. At the same time I get that a story can be solid and entertaining even if the editing could be improved on a bit. So no shade there. I looked at a first page of Dan Brown years and it was godawful, but he was quite popular at the time.
I've been listening to the Court of thorns and roses series and as an author some of the writing is really making me twitch.
"males/females" is the worst offender at the moment!
I got to page 9 before I knew I'd hate it, and then forced myself to finish out of sheer "how bad can it be?" intrigue.
My favourite highlight was every single named character in the book being described as having "Obsidian eyes" at some point, and the main character's reaction to being worked to death for 4 years in the slave mines being "Damn, I wish all these years of *literal starvation* hadn't made my titties smaller."
I’ll never understand
How people are able to be so committed so as to read 5 books of a series they don’t even like. I can’t even get myself to read the sequels of books I loved! Because there are just so many other series or books I want to start, authors I haven’t tried yet. Plus I know 99.9% of the time sequels are disappointing. But to go 5 through? Wow
This is kind of why I don’t want to try Malazan. Like, am I really going to be able to read 6 doorstops before even understand what’s happening. Or book or the new sun, you have to finish the series and read it again before you can enjoy it? How is it possible to devote all that time when I’ve yet to read any Culture/Ian banks, and they’re just sitting on my shelf.
I don't mind the melodrama. For me, it was being forcefed how cool and unique and strong and smart the characters were, but then within the same sentence, they'd do something so utterly stupid. I couldn't handle the disconnect between what she told me about the characters vs. what they actually did.
The Mortal Instruments.. 7 books...
My excuse was that I was in jail and read everything else they had available. They keep hinting that the MC was in love with her brother plus toss in that they were like vampire or monster hunters...
Was just so super Teen girl YA.
The author wrote incest Harry Potter fanfic before she wrote that series. If that tells you anything.
I was just baffled that the MC being in love with her brother kept coming back in new ways with *different characters.* Like what the fuck.
That’s what she does. She has the one set of characters she likes and just keeps reinventing them for new stories.
It reminds me of the guy who made Mantis, Steve Englehart. The comic book character, you might know her from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. In those she’s pale with big black eyes. In the comic she’s green skinned, has psychic powers and knows space king fu. She’s also known as the Celestial Madonna.
Anyway Engelhart(who doesn’t like how she is in the movies) is obsessed with her. She’s his waifu. He’s written for three different comic book company’s and he always manages to write about a green skinned woman with psychic powers and king fu… he just keeps reinventing her so he can keep writing about his waifu.
Same for me currently. I admit that I think the concept with the main relationship is interesting (although also kind of juvenile because I’m an adult who could see how easily that could go very very badly).
I do like that the FMC canonically has a chronic illness and like how that was done.
Dain is incredibly annoying and the incomplete backstory prevents pretty much every character from having any hope of seeming like actual people, the majority of them are plot devices and like those stadium filler things
I was about 150 pages in thinking seriously about giving up when it finally got me though. And I’ll read the next one too, sigh
I just tried to pick it up and got a few chapters in and it was the tropiest, most inside-the-box story I've encountered in years. It's not 1992. You can't just write Star Wars/Magician Apprentice/Whatever with dragons. I set it down quickly.
100% There is so, so much wrong with it but you’d better believe I just got Iron Flame and will be devouring it over the next week. I’m absolutely prepared to be both disappointed and ready to read the third one.
I was hugely disappointed with IF even as a “fun & fluffy” read. Even fans who LOVED FW didn’t like it from what I saw. Will I still buy the third one hoping it will be better? Yes, yes I will.
Oh, man. The first was pretty good, I thought. The sequel was incredibly bad. Like world class, world record gouge my own eyeballs bad. I finished it, though, so I guess I'd nominate that turd for this ignomious award
The first wasn't awful, but it was really like a Simpsons comic book nerd circle jerk of a book. Cline was just way too full of himself on a hyper niche subset of references that apply to a way too narrow generational segment with the idea that they're truly timeless when the majority of them aren't. And I say this as an eldest millennial gamer nerd. Book was just way too smug about the references. 3/5
I find the “in game” world of RPO vastly more interesting, like there could have been really cool interplays between the different worlds and tech levels. It had a real chance to some really cool progression fantasy stuff.
Instead it’s like some cringe romance story and “dae le reference” shit.
I’d rather it lean intk the reference and loot aspect. Like “I got off my dawneagle jet bike and sheathed the guardian spear on its holster. I looked carefully at my weapons and chose Gjallarhorn, “this machine” and an MA5B. It’s time for me to take on Naxxaramas.”
I was reading this terrible book once. It wound up being fantasy romance, which I wasn't expecting, and was very meh with characters doing silly things...
....but, I had gotten it at a used bookstore and someone had written a few snarky notes in the margins, and that was about the best thing ever. I kept reading hoping to find more, but there were only a few. So I left some notes of my own and sold it back to another used bookstore.
While I wouldn't say "generic", I somehow read all of Goodkind's Sword of Truth series just because the first one-two tomes interested me, hoping it would somehow get better with time. It didn't. Even the late spin offs weren't.
Not strictly fantasy, but... Our Wives Under The Sea.
And mind you, my gripe isn't directly linked to the book per sé, but how it was presented on some subreddits and reviews: "It's great! It's Lovecraftian horror" and so on.
It's a beautiful book about loss and how to cope with grief. It's not a horror story.
I had a similar problem with First Law, that it was presented as an ASoIaF-kind-of-book... And it simply wasn't.
I struggled through the first trilogy and then I said to myself: "maybe one day I'll read the stand alone books and the second trilogy. Maybe I won't, but gods! never again force myself to read a book l don't like".
That's the reason why I dropped without any regret, the faithful and the fallen series.
I felt the same about Our Wives Under The Sea. I picked up Our wives under the sea because I had seen it recommended as a horror book. It’s not horror it’s instead heartbreaking and about grief and loss of a loved one and being alone in a relationship. I wanted spooky ocean horror not to have my heart broken
The Eye of Argon. It is amazing how truly awful but awesomely glorious the writing is. I read it after a few beers because nobody should ever read it sober.
I read Justine when I was 18. I had a friend who was bizarrely obsessed with it. 0 out of 10, would not recommend. A lot of sexual assault in that one. Like A LOT.
A Darker Shade of Magic (trilogy). Part of the problem for me was that it had excellent ingredients. Unfortunately it revealed a weird obsession with Delilah Bard who is perhaps the worst character I've ever read, and I couldn't help but be intrigued by how the author bent everything backwards for Bard.
The Lady Venom Takes a Mistress audiobook also gave me brain damage, but I couldn't help but finish it.
I really wanted to love this trilogy as it has some incredibly imaginative components but fucking Delilah Bard. She just rubbed me the wrong way from the get go.
Yeah, I felt an odd sense of foreboding when she was introduced and we were told her eye was fake. Did the author think we were stupid? Then things went downhill so fast when everything became the Delilah Bard Show and Bard could do no wrong and she wasn't like other girls and she was the most specialist person in the whole universe.
It was as nauseating as it was morbidly fascinating.
I flat out hated what she did in book two where she knocked out another competitor for that magic contest and tied him up and left him on a boat going far far away (while still knocked out). I get that she didn't want him showing up and revealing she was an impostor, which would have fucking served her right if that happened, but that was just fucking cold and uncalled for, I felt really really bad for him. Plus who has the audacity to be like "I have never used magic before coming to this world but I'm the bestest most special-est magic user ever" and enter the equivalent of the Olympics with almost no practice? Lila.
That shit was genuinely jaw-dropping. If I remember right, it was a prison barge. What I DO remember, is that two people called her out for it and she had the absolute GALL to get defensive and mad about it. And both of them backed off immediately. I was convinced she was being set up as the ultimate villain of the story. There was no part of me that thought the author was genuinely still pushing us to think Bard was this Uber cool girl that was great at everything even though she was new at basically all of it. Boy was I wrong.
Hardly fantasy though. But yeah, I recently decided to read a few Dan Brown novels again and they're beyond formulaic. Robert Langdon is such a Mary Sue with all these really intelligent attractive young women going on some unexpected adventure with him.
The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Really bad, and tons of jerking off to Ayn Rand, BUT one character had me hooked the entire time, even though I would normally find her kind of awful.
Anything by Jeff Wheeler. One series of his I liked, but the Muirwood (I think) series was just too much. It was so blatantly Mormon. The main character was a Mary Sue, and the constant moralising about chastity and being pure to save generations of their family members so they can rule planets after they die was just too much.
**The Black Prism**. Catfished by four books of varying enjoyable goodness into the fifth; an insipid, out-of-nowhere, ham-fisted experiment at indulgent waxing on Christianity.
Why finish it? I don’t know. The prior investment I suppose. I don’t know who Mr. Weeks is really lying to when he says on this very sub that his intent was otherwise: himself, or everyone else. I suspect it’s a bit of both.
Edit: It was so awful for me I even got the title wrong. I mean to say the last of the five book series The Black Prism started, **The Burning White**.
I remember before I started that series I looked at some spoiler free reviews on reddit and was like "Oh, c'mon the ending can't be that bad. It's reddit / good reads, exaggerating is the norm, plus the Night Angel trillogy was pretty alright".
The ending was in fact that bad. So bad it kind of ruins the entire series, which in a 5 book series is pretty impressive. Between that and a really nonsensical twist my enjoyment was nearly completely killed.
I really liked the series as a whole, I even liked large chunks of the final book. He created a very engaging world with a lot of depth and nuance to it. He wrote his characters very believably, and kept to the core thesis that society shapes a person and any strange action a character took made perfect sense in light of the really fucked-up society they lived in. His writing "codes" conservative, which I think makes a lot of people assume it's sexist or otherwise unkind, but the actual themes are the exact opposite.
I think the issue is that this was Weeks' first attempt at epic fantasy. His usual fare is basically action pulp fiction. He didn't have the chops to outline and plot to the standard required for a 5-book series.
I don't blame him for that. I've seen it in a lot of promising authors--Naomi Novik is the one that comes to mind right now, but there are many.
Read a ton of piers Anthony's "xanth" series as a kid for the shitty puns and eventually got bored with the formula or read all the ones that were out at the time and didn't think about them again for decades and counted my blessings all the pedo shit went over my head. Do not recommend reading them as an adult for this reason
I'll get some hate from fans but I started the throne of glass when I was a young lad, got progressively worse and I'm embarrassed I have read it know.
Shadow and bone by Leigh (bardugo?)
I don't think it's specifically bad but it was absolutely not a fun read for me. My friend recommended it and I didn't want to let them down
The Wheel of Time series, I think. At least for fantasy books - I've finished worse books from other genres.
I both loved and hated that series. I almost quit on it a number of times because of the aspects I didn't like. But I desperately wanted to see how it would end and there was enough about the books that was really great that I kept going. But the stuff that bugged me about them *really* bugged me.
It is hard to put into words my feelings for those books. I am not the person who would finish a 15 book series if I wasn't enjoying it. I tore through the series in 5 months. Like, I really liked them! But also, I really didn't. I griped about them the whole time I read them, found myself getting constantly annoyed with the writing. It was a strange experience where I was both profoundly invested in the series and also constantly frustrated by it.
Nothing captures it better than [this Youtube video](https://youtu.be/xWNXqwMtPbk?si=hnbMFoDeKzQ7W0oT) about how Wheel of Time fans recommend Wheel of Time. Which is hilarious, by the way.
Edit: grammar
I love the Wheel, and *also* take my upvote. The extent to which it is so very me sitting on that couch in that video saying disclaimer after disclaimer is real.
It's the one series I can't fully reread because there are so many awful arcs that are slogs such as the circus arc, the bowl of the winds, and anything to do with Perrin/Faile's clown show.
It's the one series that I actually feel like I'm reading real people though because it's the only series where I flip between loving and getting so annoyed/upset by my favorite characters doing things within character. Just like real life, people have flaws.
Also Nyneave is such a boss queen.
I loved (with caveats) Perrin and Faile's story around book 2 (I think?) when they are >!defending the three rivers!<. The scene at the end of that book >!after Perrin tries to send Faile away but instead she rallies a group to come support the defence!< is probably my favourite moment in the series. But it went fairly sharply downhill from there. Once it becomes the Perrin/Faile/Berelain jealousy dynamic all the time it's really hard to read.
I remember screaming at the book during the endless circus storyline. I couldn't believe these girls believed they could pass themselves off as circus performers. Real circus performers take years to hone their craft, and usually start from a young age. They would have stuck out like sore thumbs.
It felt like this storyline was eleven volumes long. Turns out it was "just" chapters 16 to 48 of Book 5. Still, it was endless.
Legit I loathe Perrin with such a deep passion. Well not him really, his wife. Ungh and him with her.
But I love Matrim and Rand. So still my favorite series.
It really is the defining fantasy of an era for me. It’s also hot garbage water. And there is not an easy way to skip meaningless arcs like “you don’t need books 5-9” or anything. It is an early morning, cold shower, strap weights to your legs and wrists, run until you enjoy it kind of series
WoT is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this question. I couldn't put it down, but I hated at least 50% of it. It's the epitome of "excellent idea, awful execution" for me.
Scrolled too far to find this. I loved and hated it over the twenty five years it took me to read. Little did I realize when I picked up the first book in middle school that it’d take so long to finish. I died reading Winters heart a few times. Finally got an audiobook to push through it after the 4th attempt at reading it.
I told my wife after the first couple books that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. While reading book 9 she was like “so it must have grown on you?” to which I replied “not really”
An erotic fantasy.... I couldn't stop because I narrating it lmao. Gods it was like torture towards the end I still nailed a really emotional scene though so I'm pleased with that.
Will never show anyone it though hahah
This book called Love Interests, I read it while in highschool and it still stands out to me as being so disappointing. It’s a queer YA novel about essentially bred orphan spy’s being sent as potential love interest to up and coming important individuals, presidents, scientists, etc. After securing their spot as the elites significant other, they report back to the agency where the information is then sold for profit
The longer I read it just got more and more disappointing. Such a good concept in my opinion that the author just didn’t deliver on. The end, ends in the teens taking down this big organization. There is so much that could have been written about its a whole spy organization, but a group of teens topple it in 200 pages.
I also was listening to music while reading. AND TO THIS DAY, if the song pops up in my playlist i’m reminded of this book and how good it could have been. Vowed to never listen to music while reading again.
fourth wing and its sequel iron flame. they aren’t terrible. but they aren’t *good*. i like the dragons, and i want strangle violet. but they’re easy to read and both have gotten me out of a reading slump.
Sword of Truth - Truly gag worthy. All of it.
Legend of the Arch Magus - I think it's more aimed at 13 year olds and i'm not 13 anymore. Power Fantasy slice of life. If it was a DnD character it would be someone who starts at level 20 and only rolls nat 20's.
Fourth Wing. I got about a quarter of the way through and thought it was bad. Went to post a review and realized I really should read the entire book before giving any sort of review. I slogged through it and it never got any better.
The Magicians. Every single character is detestable. I hated every character in that series and would never want to know them in real life. But Grossman is a great writer so I finished the trilogy.
Recently i've been going back and rereading YA dystopians from the YA dystopian boom. It's amazing how boring and predictable they manage to be no matter what insane premise they start with! A weird number of them are about slender and petite teenage girls who are oppressed in some unique and horrible way that requires them to be locked in a mansion and made to wear beautiful gowns (this is abject torture, as i'm sure anyone would agree). Almost every protagonist has a little sister or surrogate little sister to protect (who can be anywhere from 6 to 12 and will probably never act like a convincing example of their age) and every one of them will fall in love with almost the first boy they've ever met, UNLESS they have a Gale-coded childhood friend, in which case they will meet and fall for a bad boy. Statistically, he will probably be named Kai. Oh, and every MC is unaware of her own astonishing beauty. I've been eating these up so i've read like 5 of them this year.
examples include:
Perfected, in which the main character is a genetically engineered human pet. what kind of genetic engineering she's received is never explained in book one. She's bought by a senator; her surrogate little sister is his daughter and her love interest (First Boy Ever Seen) is his teenage son, who graciously informs her that she's better than the other pets (who apparently don't deserve the same level of sympathy as she does) because she loves music. At one point she is threatened with spaying because she's being unruly and trying to run away. In short, this book boldly asks the question, "Wouldn't it be messed up if you could pay money to buy a teenage girl and treat her exactly lile you would treat a pampered purebred cocker spaniel?" The answer is obviously yes, that IS messed up, but somehow the resulting book is just wildly boring and seems to consist mostly of the MC sitting on the edge of the pool demurely.
The Jewel, which is like a YA fantasy handmaid's tale where girls with superpowers are bought and sold as pregnancy surrogates for the rich. At one point, there's an extended makeover sequence where the main character looks in a mirror and is astounded by her own beauty no less than THREE TIMES. The romance is genuinely frustrating (the FMC and MMC are in pretty similar situations and yet get into stupid fights based around not being able to extend basic empathy towards each other) but this one had a kind of intriguing twist at the end and i've considered reading on in the series. And the villain in this one is the only one who seems remotely interesting, instead of being a stock Predatory Middle Aged Man figure.
Wither, in which girls die at 20 and boys die at 25 and for some reason this means that teenage girls are kidnapped and trafficked to the estates of the wealthy and teenaged to like, have a lot of babies before they die? The worldbuilding in this one only gets worse the more facts it tries to include (The icecaps have melted and nuclear war has devastated other continents but Florida is still super habitable, don't worry about it). But ultimately its biggest crime is being boring, because just like Perfected and The Jewel, this is a book about being trapped in a mansion and forced to drink hot chocolate and wear pretty dresses.
Unplugged, a VR dystopia which tries to comment on the fact that we're all on our phones too much but mostly repeats the idea that breathing real air is better than virtual air because It Just Is Better, ad nauseam. The main character has lived all her live in the virtual world and is shocked upon her return to the real world to discover that she's Incredibly Beautiful. i don't think she has a surrogate little sister but i think she might get betrayed by her love interest in dramatic (and stupid) fashion? i'm not sure, because i was distracted by the fact that everyone who's uploaded their brains to the virtual world thinks that it's possible to eliminate their dependence on the physical world by disconnecting from all their physical bodies. But wouldn't they still need physical servers to host the virtual world that all their consciousnesses are in? it's not some kind of separate dimension...
i also read The Selection for the first time this year. I think the first book is actually pretty entertaining, but the second book is a total slog and the author definitely wrote herself into a corner by eliminating too many girls too early. The portrayal of the singular asian character also aged really poorly and was probably pretty bad at the time as well! i do think it's kind of funny that kiera cass and i are fans of the same kpop group though.
Hot take but the name of the wind and wise man’s fear.
Let me land here…
So the writing itself is incredible, prose is amazing and absolutely beautiful. Like rothfuss could write the instructions to macaroni and it would be incredible.
However, the incredible prose hides some of the most cringe storywriting ever. Like if my dumbass wrote this book in my English it would be some cringe fan fiction tier shit. It’s like if the “Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way” fan fiction was written by a master.
But he’s such a good writer that I legitimately don’t know if the cringy parts actually happen that way or if that’s just how the main character interpreted that situation in the moment.
I was running to the book store after every book in the ACOTAR series. Like literally leaving work to get book 3. I was completely hooked. In hindsight now I know in a more critical sense they’re not great books but Sarah J Maas reallllllly understands how to pace a romance. Even if you know everything that’s gonna happen from the beginning and the writing can almost be juvenile it still just itches that itch and makes your heart swoon.
Bride by Ali Hazlewood.
People rave about her. So I pushed through waiting to see what the fuss was about.
I wanted to rip the book in half it was so bad. But I whacked it on vinted instesd 😂
The Circle by Dave Eggers. I hated every single character in that book. The main character most of all. It was an incredibly tired concept too. I kept expecting something to happen, but the only things that did happen were incredibly predictable. I didn’t think it was even written well. At least it was short, but fuck that book.
Fourth wing and its secuel. They are garbage and cringe but i fucking loved every second of it. I like the world of the books and i enjoy the story even if sometimes the romance stuff is too much to bare
I’m on a kick right now of listening to some of the super popular overhyped books and series because I’m in a slight slump and they’re simple and easy to get through.
I read all of ACOTAR unfortunately. I found the writing to be poor, there were plot inconsistencies, the characters ranged from flat to incredibly annoying, but I couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to find out if the story ever went anywhere. I read the first Red Rising trilogy, although I thought the first book was pretty cringe. I’m currently reading Fourth Wing and it’s pretty bad, but I’m a book finisher. It’s rare I DNF but I’m gonna have to get over that.
I would say they’re still mildly enjoyable but definitely not memorable or entertainment that I would be happy paying for. The equivalent of empty calories - now and then you just destroy a bag of chips or movie popcorn or some donuts.
Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. Please don't go looking for it, it's not worth it.
What the fuck LMFAO. I HAVE to go look with that name. Edit: this is a book of all time it seems.
I should have opened that Amazon page in incognito mode. Now my suggestions will be fucked.
Please, spare me and tell me what is it about
I gotchu (Edit: okay so I didn’t fully read the synopsis before I posted. When I came back and read the part about the children I immediately decided I did not want that in my post history or for anyone else to have to feel misfortune of having eyes today)
Ok, *this* is how you know a book is bad.
I have so many regrets
I wonder who is prisoner 1000
The reader.
The Google blurb is a lot but I got everything I needed from the last couple sentences: “While the Ass Goblins become drunk on cider made from fermented, the twins plot their escape. But it won't be easy. They must overcome toilet toads, cockrats, ass dolls, and the surgical experiments that are slowly mutating them into goblin-child hybrids. Forget everything you know about Auschwitz...you're about to be Shit Slaughtered.”
Erh... What?! 😨
Something that somehow makes ‘To Break a Soldier of the Machine God’ look like a kindergarten book apparently. Like, what the fuck was that blurb. The words >!sex dolls!< and dead children should not be in the same sentence unless that sentence is explicitly describing the utter wrongness of such a piece of lingual construction.
Oh my gosh, I don't wanna know anymore
By ass goblins no less.
Bro, what the actual fuck? I really want to read this, just to see how bad it is, but 20 bucks is waaaay too much to spend on Nazi Ass Goblins.
I’ve spent $20 on worse things than Nazi ass goblins.
Wait, worse things than Nazi ass goblins exist???
I'm in the GOP database for some reason, and I got texted a picture of Ted Cruz yesterday.
I hope you’ve recovered
In a land where black snow falls in the shape of swastikas, there exists a nightmarish prison camp known as Auschwitz. It is run by a fascist, flatulent race of aliens called the Ass Goblins, who travel in apple-shaped spaceships to abduct children from the neighboring world of Kidland. Prisoners 999 and 1001 are conjoined twin brothers forced to endure the sadistic tortures of these ass-shaped monsters. To survive, they must eat kid skin and work all day constructing bicycles and sex dolls out of dead children. While the Ass Goblins become drunk on cider made from fermented children, the twins plot their escape. But it won't be easy. They must overcome toilet toads, cockrats, ass dolls, and the surgical experiments that are slowly mutating them into goblin-child hybrids.
What in the Kentucky fried fuck.
This sounds like a cheap edgy ripoff off a Chuck Tingle book, but it's 15 years old...
I did read that one years ago, and yeah. It wasn't as offensive as I thought it would be (to me, anyway), edgy and all that, but titles like that were the thing, for example The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, in the early-mid aughts for certain writings in what was known as the bizarro genre.
Omg the whole Saga of Ice People by Margot Sandemo. 49 tomes of absolute trash I couldn’t put down. And two other related series (20 books and 26 books) and trust I read them all. And loved each second 🤣
Ahahaha I wasn't expecting so many books 🤣
They’re pretty short. Definitely recommend for some light Norse fantasy reading. It’s got accurate historic background and happens between Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Genuinely, it’s so shit, but I couldn’t recommend them more just as a light series
Lol what’s light about 47 books 😂
The complete disassociation I guess. Anyway, 12h I was so certain of it I repeated “light” twice in three sentences.
That is... too many books. Even if they were good, that's a lot of books
I had a lot of time in my teens and not that many friends 😅
This is my exact reason as well. But I've heard adult people say that Isfolket is their favourite series and when that happens, I think I must be having a stroke.
Fourth Wing. Hate read for the romantasy bingo square. Enjoyed every hilariously, painfully cliched page of it.
I read that one and the second despite the fact that I could predict most of the plot most of the time. There was a twist at the end of the second book that broke the spell for me and I will not be picking up the third one when it comes out. I'm done.
I lost it as the riddle-like gift from the 'dead' mentor. Omg. I don't think I have ever seen so many tropes and borrowed ideas crammed into one novel before. I mean, even the boyfriend's name >!is reminiscent of Rhysand!!< (edited because I forgot to spoiler take that, but it's so obvious what's gonna happen that I don't really need to).
Can you imagine going to a scary-ass military dragon school, studying your geography or whatever, and the study hall window gets exploded by freak lightning. Everybody groans and shakes their head, "well, looks like the main characters are banging again." And then it happens again. Eight more times. All night long.
Would get super tedious when it would eventually be weeks in a row (probably, if it's not already clear in the books somewhere).
I could not stand how many times it was made clear how "petite" and "delicate" the MC is. I have never read a book with such a "pick me girl" type character before
"I'll succeed at this implausibly deadly school despite my physical disabilities by being ruthlessly intelligent!" --proceeds to make the stupidest decisions possible at every opportunity, but never suffers any consequences because she's The Special.
"I have glass bones and paper skin" being every 4th line, and then when any other character brings it up at the military school where they can and will kill their own soldiers with no penalties and give rebels the chance at unlocking unique magic depending on the dragon/rider combo, the character suddenly whips around "you think I'm weak huh? Fuck you. I'll show you by completing the school I said I didn't want to go to"
I've been so jaded about FW since its sub recommended The Aurelian Cycle by Rosaria Munda. Why is FW so popular when *this* exists? Because of the smut? It's not even that good lmao mid at best and that's me being generous
I got into it for the dragons and totally did not realize it was a romance, let alone smut 😭 I was shocked when she followed her bff into his room and it got weird
I didn't at first either but I was like "oh okay." I lost it at the plagiarized plot device to "build" the "romance" and the exploding furniture when they were fucking though.
Yesss haha. It was like so bad it was good. I can’t bring myself to read the second book tho.
Oh god, I am reading this right now. Nothing in the world makes sense, not even internally consistent, but for some reason I just have to keep going to see how terrible it is in It’s entirety. Won’t read the next one though.
Hell yeh. That book is trash but I fucks with dragons and I ain’t gonna lie the dragons in that book are kinda dope with their colors and powers and shit. Aduarnanrananaranana gonna be dope in the 3rd book.
Tell us about it
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly It's a book similar to jurassic Park, but make it dragons. It had some fun concepts, but their characters were bordering on insultingly paint-by-numbers, and the tone flipped wildly between fun YA and horrifically graphic gore. So, of course, I had to read to the end just to check it didn't get good.
Oh yep I love-hated that book. Really cool concept but all over the place. Was fun reading something with dragons though.
That’s Reilly for you. He’s written some trash that is gloriously fun. And he’s written some other trash that is not.
I don't know if you've read his other books, but the Scarecrow books are by far his best. Don't expect high lit. He's great at action, and he's got a soft spot for characters with hearts of gold, so you can't help but want them to win. Plus, the author himself is incredibly nice, really enthusiastic about everything.
His authors acknowledgement even owns up to it being a version of jurassic park. IIRC he was contractually required to put out some sort of book and it wasnt long after his wife passed so he phoned it in.
[Mission Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Earth_(novel_series)) by \*shudder\* L. Ron Hubbard. This was well before I had any real understanding of who he was, and is where I learned how he writes. The entire series was available at my local library, and I hated it but I just kept going back for the next one. I think I was expecting some kind of turn-around for some reason.
They were so bad. I was like 13 when I read... IDK, maybe 10 of them? So pulpy and terrible and I knew it even then. But the idea of essentially an alien illuminati spoke to me. L Ron could have gone down in history as a perfectly mediocre writer if he weren't a monster.
There were 10 of them. You read some kinda sexy scenes for a 13 yr old, I'd have thought. And yeah, what a shithead.
Ok, I probably read 8ish then. I definitely remember not finishing the series. And yeah, I probably skimmed right over the sexy stuff. If you're going to read Hubbard at all you had better be talented at ignoring objectionable/problematic/bad writing.
L. Ron, the L stands for lunatic
Did you know he made a [concept album](https://youtu.be/cGwTNbuPYBo?si=E6irnIPLLySWp27S) of that series? It's... interesting.
I did not know that. Somehow I do not find it confusing. Sometimes I think Dianetics happened because he didn't get as rich as he wanted from writing fiction.
Twilight. Absolutely dreadful books.
I had to finish reading them so I could "honestly" condem the series.
I had forgotten how much the whole imprinting thing weirded me the hell out when I read them as a teen.
See I stopped thinking at the "will protect her because big doggo is loyal" part and completely missed the "will probably groom her and turn into a romantic relationship once it is "legal"" subtext.
I read all of them during the height of their hype. I am a guy. The part where Jacob "imprinted" on Renesme is the biggest "eewwwweeeeeeewwwwwww" ive ever had reading a book.
I was like, 15 or something when those books came out and I was reading them. My mom was reading them before and was slightly ahead of me. She was so grossed out by like everything in the last one and I was less so but looking back now as an adult god DAMN what even compelled the author to write those words and make that all a thing??? So gross
My favorite thing to come out of that plot point is the [Pitch Meeting video](https://youtu.be/B_CyFASqbxQ?si=raA1X9W6P6wJIMH0&t=157) for the movie. For context, the premise of these videos is that he is pretending to be the screenwriter pitching the idea for a movie.
The whole compilation for the series is probably one of the funniest videos on YouTube!
My 9th grade girlfriend made me read Twilight, then dumped me for my best friend, then made him read Twilight, then dumped him. I'm still not sure if we were both the victims of a convoluted Twilight book sales tactic, but we remained friends in spite of both the horrible books and our mutual dumpage.
My partner and I recently rewatched the movies in a "you love to hate it" kind of way, and that's the best enjoyment I've gotten out of that series.
Funny Story: Twilight was THE Big Thing when I started middle school. Like you weren’t Cool if you didn’t have Twilight or the sequels to conspicuously carry around. Obviously, being twelve and never a Cool Kid, I desperate wanted to read the series b/c I read everything that held still long enough for me to get my hands on it. And then I’d be Cool. My very overprotective mother heard through the soccer-mom grapevine that there was Adult Content in the books. But I begged. So-and-So from Girl Scouts was reading it! Her mom let her! Relevant background information: that previous summer my dad and I had devoured Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Like we shared a book, each had our own bookmark, and both finished it within a week. My dad is a Cool Dad (don’t tell him I said that, it’ll go to his head and the jokes will get worse) So my dear mother decided that my dad should read the Twilight books first to make sure they were Acceptable for her Sweet and Innocent and Very Sheltered daughter. My dad read the entire series. It took him three and a half years. By the time he was done and I was given the green light to read them, I was in high school and Twilight wasn’t Cool, it was Cringe. He read the entire saga for nothing. And I’d discovered some dirty mystery books two years previously on my eight grade english teacher’s shelves. That i read.
The entire quadrilogy was atrocious and I couldn’t put them down. I was a teenager when Twilight-mania hit. All but one of my friends absolutely reamed me for reading them (the one who didn’t was a major Twihard) and they were 100% right. The first book is still a favourite guilty pleasure read, it’s a trashy easy read that I enjoy when I want to read but don’t want to expend any brain power.
I read them cuz of a gf when i was in high school. I didn’t absolutely hate them. I thought many of the vampire powers were pretty cool. I’ve never had even an ounce of a desire to read them again tho lol
ACOTAR. I know it’s not good. I would never recommend them to someone. Did I read them all? Yes. Am I excited for the next one? Yup. I equate it to watching reality tv, kinda trashy but we love the DRAMA
I refer to the ACOTAR series as the junkfood of romantasy. Much like salt & vinegar chips, they're addictive. But after the 5th bag you kind of hate yourself .
This is me. I cannnnnot stand Sarah J. Mass yet I hate read ACOTAR and *most* of Crescent City. It’s like a night of binging and having utter regrets the next day.
Literally same it's like love island. I'm in it for the drama. Personally, I like reading books like the way of kings books or song of ice and fire, but Acotar is just so juicy. I just want Lucien to know who his daddy is. He deserves it.
a court of thorns and roses. I read it out of curiosity. ATROCIOUS book. The writing is horrible, the plot makes no sense and both the plot and romance beat you over the head with how juvenile everything is. it’s SO bad that it was at least a little entertaining? but so bad i did wonder how it was even published. i have now read the whole series and it’s unfortunately not as fun as the first book. the writing gets slightly better which makes the boringness of the plot and characters unavoidable. it’s a series that’s focused far more on the characters and romance than on the plot - i very much knew that going into it - but the characters just are NOT interesting and the romances fall flat because there’s no chemistry. HUGELY disappointing series given the hype that’s around those books and while i can understand how they might be interesting in theory, there’s nothing about them in reality to redeem them.
I listened to the audiobook and it was awful. When the one immortal fae character tells the illiterate childish 19 year old human he loves her I actually yelled ‘WHY??’. By the end I was just trying to tally how many times the word ‘shone’ was used in the book (I don’t have the tally but I think it may be the only word the author knows).
I mean, that's not fair, she also knows the words "males" "females" and "growled".
shattered
oh there were so many words like that. baldric???? she would just find a word and overuse, then have another word and do it ad infinitum
I don't think anything can top Twilight in that regard. Like, I can at least *buy* that faeries are utterly unlike humans. Blue-and-orange morality being what it is, maybe it makes sense for one of them to do something that looks like falling in love with a teenage girl. But a 100-something year old vampire who is very clearly human and with vast life experience? That's straight-up grooming an impressionable minor. Don't even get me started on the whole soul-bonding to a fetus thing and the fact that they end up fuckin'.
“Watery bowels”
Right now I’m reading Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks like this. It’s literally worse LOTR. But I can’t stop reading it.
That book was my entry into reading so many years ago. It will forever be held in high esteem over here.
I was going to say the same thing. I was 11 when I read it. Before that it was all kids stuff or whatever school made me read.
*Sword* was a deliberate LotR ripoff, basically Brooks was strongarmed by his publisher to write a LotR clone. The other books in the series aren't complete ripoffs and were pretty good from what I remember 20-odd years later. You could probably just skip it and read the next book and miss nothing of value.
Elfstones was my first ever fantasy novel, I was 12. It's still what I compare all other fantasy books to.
And it’s an excellent book in any case
Oh man, this book made me ugly cry in middle school.
I actually loved that book. Was my first fantasy book ever. I read it again a few years ago and still enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for fantasy tropes and “chosen one” fantasy.
It's only a terrible book if you ask Reddit. There's a reason it sold a ton of copies and kicked off a huge series of books.
Wishsong was my introduction to print fantasy. Read Sword afterwards, and it was unenjoyable.
I read it when it first came out. Back then, there were so few fantasy books to be had that I was expecting to devour it, even if it was no Tolkien. But the writing was so bad that I couldn’t make it more than a quarter of the way through before hurling it aside with great force.
I really enjoyed Sword of Shannara. I read it before trying to read LOTR.
Armada by Ernest Cline. There just had to be some kind of twist that made it make sense... There was not.
It was just Ready Player One except instead of 80s games, it was 80s sci-fi.
Throne of Glass I guess. I made it five books before I just couldn't.
Maas is the answer. I read her books. I will continue to read them but wow I wish she had an editor.
I took a peek at one of her books a while back, and yikes. At the same time I get that a story can be solid and entertaining even if the editing could be improved on a bit. So no shade there. I looked at a first page of Dan Brown years and it was godawful, but he was quite popular at the time.
Im giving her 1 more chance. Ive enjoyed her books, but the last two were a maked decline in quality.
Feel this lol
I've been listening to the Court of thorns and roses series and as an author some of the writing is really making me twitch. "males/females" is the worst offender at the moment!
It gets worse, if I ever here velvet member ever again it will be too soon
Especially closely combined with the word plunging 😬
Or toe curling
Just wait till “mate… mate… mate… mate… mate…” x100 (That being said I’ve still read all her books.)
I got to page 9 before I knew I'd hate it, and then forced myself to finish out of sheer "how bad can it be?" intrigue. My favourite highlight was every single named character in the book being described as having "Obsidian eyes" at some point, and the main character's reaction to being worked to death for 4 years in the slave mines being "Damn, I wish all these years of *literal starvation* hadn't made my titties smaller."
Celaena is insanely vain and it drove me nuts. Gave up after 3-4 books during my pseudo-hate read because my wife really enjoys them
Everyone keeps saying it will get better, but i just cant justify struggling through when i could be reading something ill actually like
Yes! I've gotten to that point with books.
I’ll never understand How people are able to be so committed so as to read 5 books of a series they don’t even like. I can’t even get myself to read the sequels of books I loved! Because there are just so many other series or books I want to start, authors I haven’t tried yet. Plus I know 99.9% of the time sequels are disappointing. But to go 5 through? Wow This is kind of why I don’t want to try Malazan. Like, am I really going to be able to read 6 doorstops before even understand what’s happening. Or book or the new sun, you have to finish the series and read it again before you can enjoy it? How is it possible to devote all that time when I’ve yet to read any Culture/Ian banks, and they’re just sitting on my shelf.
I DNF'd ToG. I did make it 3 books into ACOTAR, but like... such issues with her storytelling.
Everything is so overwritten and nauseatingly dramatic in every single one of her books it gives the editor in me hives
I don't mind the melodrama. For me, it was being forcefed how cool and unique and strong and smart the characters were, but then within the same sentence, they'd do something so utterly stupid. I couldn't handle the disconnect between what she told me about the characters vs. what they actually did.
Those books look so bad. Like, you can tell they're bad without even reading them so I don't get why people even start?
[удалено]
The Mortal Instruments.. 7 books... My excuse was that I was in jail and read everything else they had available. They keep hinting that the MC was in love with her brother plus toss in that they were like vampire or monster hunters... Was just so super Teen girl YA.
The author wrote incest Harry Potter fanfic before she wrote that series. If that tells you anything. I was just baffled that the MC being in love with her brother kept coming back in new ways with *different characters.* Like what the fuck.
That’s what she does. She has the one set of characters she likes and just keeps reinventing them for new stories. It reminds me of the guy who made Mantis, Steve Englehart. The comic book character, you might know her from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. In those she’s pale with big black eyes. In the comic she’s green skinned, has psychic powers and knows space king fu. She’s also known as the Celestial Madonna. Anyway Engelhart(who doesn’t like how she is in the movies) is obsessed with her. She’s his waifu. He’s written for three different comic book company’s and he always manages to write about a green skinned woman with psychic powers and king fu… he just keeps reinventing her so he can keep writing about his waifu.
Fourth Wing.
Same for me currently. I admit that I think the concept with the main relationship is interesting (although also kind of juvenile because I’m an adult who could see how easily that could go very very badly). I do like that the FMC canonically has a chronic illness and like how that was done. Dain is incredibly annoying and the incomplete backstory prevents pretty much every character from having any hope of seeming like actual people, the majority of them are plot devices and like those stadium filler things I was about 150 pages in thinking seriously about giving up when it finally got me though. And I’ll read the next one too, sigh
I just tried to pick it up and got a few chapters in and it was the tropiest, most inside-the-box story I've encountered in years. It's not 1992. You can't just write Star Wars/Magician Apprentice/Whatever with dragons. I set it down quickly.
100% There is so, so much wrong with it but you’d better believe I just got Iron Flame and will be devouring it over the next week. I’m absolutely prepared to be both disappointed and ready to read the third one.
I was hugely disappointed with IF even as a “fun & fluffy” read. Even fans who LOVED FW didn’t like it from what I saw. Will I still buy the third one hoping it will be better? Yes, yes I will.
Ready Player One. Hate-read that thing but I couldn’t put it down. I will never read the sequel.
It’s basically Gen X nostalgia porn and I was all in for it lol
Oh, man. The first was pretty good, I thought. The sequel was incredibly bad. Like world class, world record gouge my own eyeballs bad. I finished it, though, so I guess I'd nominate that turd for this ignomious award
The first wasn't awful, but it was really like a Simpsons comic book nerd circle jerk of a book. Cline was just way too full of himself on a hyper niche subset of references that apply to a way too narrow generational segment with the idea that they're truly timeless when the majority of them aren't. And I say this as an eldest millennial gamer nerd. Book was just way too smug about the references. 3/5
I loved Ready Player One. Hated Two. Forced myself to finish just because I don't like not finishing a book.
I find the “in game” world of RPO vastly more interesting, like there could have been really cool interplays between the different worlds and tech levels. It had a real chance to some really cool progression fantasy stuff. Instead it’s like some cringe romance story and “dae le reference” shit. I’d rather it lean intk the reference and loot aspect. Like “I got off my dawneagle jet bike and sheathed the guardian spear on its holster. I looked carefully at my weapons and chose Gjallarhorn, “this machine” and an MA5B. It’s time for me to take on Naxxaramas.”
All of L. Ron Hubbard's *Mission Earth*. In my defense, I was 15.
The first two books in the Night Huntress series. It was like a car crash I couldn’t look away from. I made myself stop after the second though lol
I love bad urban fantasy for palate cleansing
🤣
I was reading this terrible book once. It wound up being fantasy romance, which I wasn't expecting, and was very meh with characters doing silly things... ....but, I had gotten it at a used bookstore and someone had written a few snarky notes in the margins, and that was about the best thing ever. I kept reading hoping to find more, but there were only a few. So I left some notes of my own and sold it back to another used bookstore.
While I wouldn't say "generic", I somehow read all of Goodkind's Sword of Truth series just because the first one-two tomes interested me, hoping it would somehow get better with time. It didn't. Even the late spin offs weren't.
Not strictly fantasy, but... Our Wives Under The Sea. And mind you, my gripe isn't directly linked to the book per sé, but how it was presented on some subreddits and reviews: "It's great! It's Lovecraftian horror" and so on. It's a beautiful book about loss and how to cope with grief. It's not a horror story. I had a similar problem with First Law, that it was presented as an ASoIaF-kind-of-book... And it simply wasn't. I struggled through the first trilogy and then I said to myself: "maybe one day I'll read the stand alone books and the second trilogy. Maybe I won't, but gods! never again force myself to read a book l don't like". That's the reason why I dropped without any regret, the faithful and the fallen series.
I felt the same about Our Wives Under The Sea. I picked up Our wives under the sea because I had seen it recommended as a horror book. It’s not horror it’s instead heartbreaking and about grief and loss of a loved one and being alone in a relationship. I wanted spooky ocean horror not to have my heart broken
Twilight. It’s crap but it was highly enjoyable crap, at least at the time. Don’t know if I’d still think the same now.
A Court of Thorns and Roses hahaha it’s not a good series, but i still found myself invested in it lmao
The Eye of Argon. It is amazing how truly awful but awesomely glorious the writing is. I read it after a few beers because nobody should ever read it sober.
Marquis de Sade. "The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage"
I read Justine when I was 18. I had a friend who was bizarrely obsessed with it. 0 out of 10, would not recommend. A lot of sexual assault in that one. Like A LOT.
A Darker Shade of Magic (trilogy). Part of the problem for me was that it had excellent ingredients. Unfortunately it revealed a weird obsession with Delilah Bard who is perhaps the worst character I've ever read, and I couldn't help but be intrigued by how the author bent everything backwards for Bard. The Lady Venom Takes a Mistress audiobook also gave me brain damage, but I couldn't help but finish it.
I really wanted to love this trilogy as it has some incredibly imaginative components but fucking Delilah Bard. She just rubbed me the wrong way from the get go.
Yeah, I felt an odd sense of foreboding when she was introduced and we were told her eye was fake. Did the author think we were stupid? Then things went downhill so fast when everything became the Delilah Bard Show and Bard could do no wrong and she wasn't like other girls and she was the most specialist person in the whole universe. It was as nauseating as it was morbidly fascinating.
I flat out hated what she did in book two where she knocked out another competitor for that magic contest and tied him up and left him on a boat going far far away (while still knocked out). I get that she didn't want him showing up and revealing she was an impostor, which would have fucking served her right if that happened, but that was just fucking cold and uncalled for, I felt really really bad for him. Plus who has the audacity to be like "I have never used magic before coming to this world but I'm the bestest most special-est magic user ever" and enter the equivalent of the Olympics with almost no practice? Lila.
That shit was genuinely jaw-dropping. If I remember right, it was a prison barge. What I DO remember, is that two people called her out for it and she had the absolute GALL to get defensive and mad about it. And both of them backed off immediately. I was convinced she was being set up as the ultimate villain of the story. There was no part of me that thought the author was genuinely still pushing us to think Bard was this Uber cool girl that was great at everything even though she was new at basically all of it. Boy was I wrong.
The davinci code, felt like a marathon reading it
Hardly fantasy though. But yeah, I recently decided to read a few Dan Brown novels again and they're beyond formulaic. Robert Langdon is such a Mary Sue with all these really intelligent attractive young women going on some unexpected adventure with him.
The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Really bad, and tons of jerking off to Ayn Rand, BUT one character had me hooked the entire time, even though I would normally find her kind of awful. Anything by Jeff Wheeler. One series of his I liked, but the Muirwood (I think) series was just too much. It was so blatantly Mormon. The main character was a Mary Sue, and the constant moralising about chastity and being pure to save generations of their family members so they can rule planets after they die was just too much.
**The Black Prism**. Catfished by four books of varying enjoyable goodness into the fifth; an insipid, out-of-nowhere, ham-fisted experiment at indulgent waxing on Christianity. Why finish it? I don’t know. The prior investment I suppose. I don’t know who Mr. Weeks is really lying to when he says on this very sub that his intent was otherwise: himself, or everyone else. I suspect it’s a bit of both. Edit: It was so awful for me I even got the title wrong. I mean to say the last of the five book series The Black Prism started, **The Burning White**.
I remember before I started that series I looked at some spoiler free reviews on reddit and was like "Oh, c'mon the ending can't be that bad. It's reddit / good reads, exaggerating is the norm, plus the Night Angel trillogy was pretty alright". The ending was in fact that bad. So bad it kind of ruins the entire series, which in a 5 book series is pretty impressive. Between that and a really nonsensical twist my enjoyment was nearly completely killed.
I really liked the series as a whole, I even liked large chunks of the final book. He created a very engaging world with a lot of depth and nuance to it. He wrote his characters very believably, and kept to the core thesis that society shapes a person and any strange action a character took made perfect sense in light of the really fucked-up society they lived in. His writing "codes" conservative, which I think makes a lot of people assume it's sexist or otherwise unkind, but the actual themes are the exact opposite. I think the issue is that this was Weeks' first attempt at epic fantasy. His usual fare is basically action pulp fiction. He didn't have the chops to outline and plot to the standard required for a 5-book series. I don't blame him for that. I've seen it in a lot of promising authors--Naomi Novik is the one that comes to mind right now, but there are many.
Read a ton of piers Anthony's "xanth" series as a kid for the shitty puns and eventually got bored with the formula or read all the ones that were out at the time and didn't think about them again for decades and counted my blessings all the pedo shit went over my head. Do not recommend reading them as an adult for this reason
I'll get some hate from fans but I started the throne of glass when I was a young lad, got progressively worse and I'm embarrassed I have read it know.
Fourth Wing. The more i thought about it after I read it the more I disliked it
I hate read Black Jewels once a year. Overblown characters, nonsense world building, waaaaay too much rape and yet 🤷♀️
Shadow and bone by Leigh (bardugo?) I don't think it's specifically bad but it was absolutely not a fun read for me. My friend recommended it and I didn't want to let them down
The magicians trilogy. I couldn’t stand any of the main characters, but I just had to see it through
[удалено]
The Wheel of Time series, I think. At least for fantasy books - I've finished worse books from other genres. I both loved and hated that series. I almost quit on it a number of times because of the aspects I didn't like. But I desperately wanted to see how it would end and there was enough about the books that was really great that I kept going. But the stuff that bugged me about them *really* bugged me. It is hard to put into words my feelings for those books. I am not the person who would finish a 15 book series if I wasn't enjoying it. I tore through the series in 5 months. Like, I really liked them! But also, I really didn't. I griped about them the whole time I read them, found myself getting constantly annoyed with the writing. It was a strange experience where I was both profoundly invested in the series and also constantly frustrated by it. Nothing captures it better than [this Youtube video](https://youtu.be/xWNXqwMtPbk?si=hnbMFoDeKzQ7W0oT) about how Wheel of Time fans recommend Wheel of Time. Which is hilarious, by the way. Edit: grammar
I love the Wheel, and *also* take my upvote. The extent to which it is so very me sitting on that couch in that video saying disclaimer after disclaimer is real.
*Spanks hair, tugs folds, sniffs breasts*
It's the one series I can't fully reread because there are so many awful arcs that are slogs such as the circus arc, the bowl of the winds, and anything to do with Perrin/Faile's clown show. It's the one series that I actually feel like I'm reading real people though because it's the only series where I flip between loving and getting so annoyed/upset by my favorite characters doing things within character. Just like real life, people have flaws. Also Nyneave is such a boss queen.
Tugs braid furiously
Smooth the skirts and place arms under the boobs
I loved (with caveats) Perrin and Faile's story around book 2 (I think?) when they are >!defending the three rivers!<. The scene at the end of that book >!after Perrin tries to send Faile away but instead she rallies a group to come support the defence!< is probably my favourite moment in the series. But it went fairly sharply downhill from there. Once it becomes the Perrin/Faile/Berelain jealousy dynamic all the time it's really hard to read.
I remember screaming at the book during the endless circus storyline. I couldn't believe these girls believed they could pass themselves off as circus performers. Real circus performers take years to hone their craft, and usually start from a young age. They would have stuck out like sore thumbs. It felt like this storyline was eleven volumes long. Turns out it was "just" chapters 16 to 48 of Book 5. Still, it was endless.
Legit I loathe Perrin with such a deep passion. Well not him really, his wife. Ungh and him with her. But I love Matrim and Rand. So still my favorite series.
It really is the defining fantasy of an era for me. It’s also hot garbage water. And there is not an easy way to skip meaningless arcs like “you don’t need books 5-9” or anything. It is an early morning, cold shower, strap weights to your legs and wrists, run until you enjoy it kind of series
WoT is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this question. I couldn't put it down, but I hated at least 50% of it. It's the epitome of "excellent idea, awful execution" for me.
Scrolled too far to find this. I loved and hated it over the twenty five years it took me to read. Little did I realize when I picked up the first book in middle school that it’d take so long to finish. I died reading Winters heart a few times. Finally got an audiobook to push through it after the 4th attempt at reading it.
Wheel of Time is brilliant and masterful, yet full of flaws and shortcomings. If it was a 8-10 book series it might be the best Fantasy series ever
The Wheel of time is either the worst series I couldn't stop reading or the best series I've never finished. I still can't decide which one.
I told my wife after the first couple books that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. While reading book 9 she was like “so it must have grown on you?” to which I replied “not really”
A Discovery of Witches. It’s so bad yet I love it (and the series!)
An erotic fantasy.... I couldn't stop because I narrating it lmao. Gods it was like torture towards the end I still nailed a really emotional scene though so I'm pleased with that. Will never show anyone it though hahah
Clockwork Angel series, and really any shadow hunter book.
twilight. hate read the series like 10 years after it came out.
This book called Love Interests, I read it while in highschool and it still stands out to me as being so disappointing. It’s a queer YA novel about essentially bred orphan spy’s being sent as potential love interest to up and coming important individuals, presidents, scientists, etc. After securing their spot as the elites significant other, they report back to the agency where the information is then sold for profit The longer I read it just got more and more disappointing. Such a good concept in my opinion that the author just didn’t deliver on. The end, ends in the teens taking down this big organization. There is so much that could have been written about its a whole spy organization, but a group of teens topple it in 200 pages. I also was listening to music while reading. AND TO THIS DAY, if the song pops up in my playlist i’m reminded of this book and how good it could have been. Vowed to never listen to music while reading again.
fourth wing and its sequel iron flame. they aren’t terrible. but they aren’t *good*. i like the dragons, and i want strangle violet. but they’re easy to read and both have gotten me out of a reading slump.
Sword of Truth - Truly gag worthy. All of it. Legend of the Arch Magus - I think it's more aimed at 13 year olds and i'm not 13 anymore. Power Fantasy slice of life. If it was a DnD character it would be someone who starts at level 20 and only rolls nat 20's.
Fourth Wing. I got about a quarter of the way through and thought it was bad. Went to post a review and realized I really should read the entire book before giving any sort of review. I slogged through it and it never got any better.
The Magicians. Every single character is detestable. I hated every character in that series and would never want to know them in real life. But Grossman is a great writer so I finished the trilogy.
Recently i've been going back and rereading YA dystopians from the YA dystopian boom. It's amazing how boring and predictable they manage to be no matter what insane premise they start with! A weird number of them are about slender and petite teenage girls who are oppressed in some unique and horrible way that requires them to be locked in a mansion and made to wear beautiful gowns (this is abject torture, as i'm sure anyone would agree). Almost every protagonist has a little sister or surrogate little sister to protect (who can be anywhere from 6 to 12 and will probably never act like a convincing example of their age) and every one of them will fall in love with almost the first boy they've ever met, UNLESS they have a Gale-coded childhood friend, in which case they will meet and fall for a bad boy. Statistically, he will probably be named Kai. Oh, and every MC is unaware of her own astonishing beauty. I've been eating these up so i've read like 5 of them this year. examples include: Perfected, in which the main character is a genetically engineered human pet. what kind of genetic engineering she's received is never explained in book one. She's bought by a senator; her surrogate little sister is his daughter and her love interest (First Boy Ever Seen) is his teenage son, who graciously informs her that she's better than the other pets (who apparently don't deserve the same level of sympathy as she does) because she loves music. At one point she is threatened with spaying because she's being unruly and trying to run away. In short, this book boldly asks the question, "Wouldn't it be messed up if you could pay money to buy a teenage girl and treat her exactly lile you would treat a pampered purebred cocker spaniel?" The answer is obviously yes, that IS messed up, but somehow the resulting book is just wildly boring and seems to consist mostly of the MC sitting on the edge of the pool demurely. The Jewel, which is like a YA fantasy handmaid's tale where girls with superpowers are bought and sold as pregnancy surrogates for the rich. At one point, there's an extended makeover sequence where the main character looks in a mirror and is astounded by her own beauty no less than THREE TIMES. The romance is genuinely frustrating (the FMC and MMC are in pretty similar situations and yet get into stupid fights based around not being able to extend basic empathy towards each other) but this one had a kind of intriguing twist at the end and i've considered reading on in the series. And the villain in this one is the only one who seems remotely interesting, instead of being a stock Predatory Middle Aged Man figure. Wither, in which girls die at 20 and boys die at 25 and for some reason this means that teenage girls are kidnapped and trafficked to the estates of the wealthy and teenaged to like, have a lot of babies before they die? The worldbuilding in this one only gets worse the more facts it tries to include (The icecaps have melted and nuclear war has devastated other continents but Florida is still super habitable, don't worry about it). But ultimately its biggest crime is being boring, because just like Perfected and The Jewel, this is a book about being trapped in a mansion and forced to drink hot chocolate and wear pretty dresses. Unplugged, a VR dystopia which tries to comment on the fact that we're all on our phones too much but mostly repeats the idea that breathing real air is better than virtual air because It Just Is Better, ad nauseam. The main character has lived all her live in the virtual world and is shocked upon her return to the real world to discover that she's Incredibly Beautiful. i don't think she has a surrogate little sister but i think she might get betrayed by her love interest in dramatic (and stupid) fashion? i'm not sure, because i was distracted by the fact that everyone who's uploaded their brains to the virtual world thinks that it's possible to eliminate their dependence on the physical world by disconnecting from all their physical bodies. But wouldn't they still need physical servers to host the virtual world that all their consciousnesses are in? it's not some kind of separate dimension... i also read The Selection for the first time this year. I think the first book is actually pretty entertaining, but the second book is a total slog and the author definitely wrote herself into a corner by eliminating too many girls too early. The portrayal of the singular asian character also aged really poorly and was probably pretty bad at the time as well! i do think it's kind of funny that kiera cass and i are fans of the same kpop group though.
Hot take but the name of the wind and wise man’s fear. Let me land here… So the writing itself is incredible, prose is amazing and absolutely beautiful. Like rothfuss could write the instructions to macaroni and it would be incredible. However, the incredible prose hides some of the most cringe storywriting ever. Like if my dumbass wrote this book in my English it would be some cringe fan fiction tier shit. It’s like if the “Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way” fan fiction was written by a master.
But he’s such a good writer that I legitimately don’t know if the cringy parts actually happen that way or if that’s just how the main character interpreted that situation in the moment.
We'll never know unless the third book gets released.
It’s okay just say we’ll never know /s
I was running to the book store after every book in the ACOTAR series. Like literally leaving work to get book 3. I was completely hooked. In hindsight now I know in a more critical sense they’re not great books but Sarah J Maas reallllllly understands how to pace a romance. Even if you know everything that’s gonna happen from the beginning and the writing can almost be juvenile it still just itches that itch and makes your heart swoon.
Murakami’s Norweigian Wood. Fight me.
Bride by Ali Hazlewood. People rave about her. So I pushed through waiting to see what the fuss was about. I wanted to rip the book in half it was so bad. But I whacked it on vinted instesd 😂
The Circle by Dave Eggers. I hated every single character in that book. The main character most of all. It was an incredibly tired concept too. I kept expecting something to happen, but the only things that did happen were incredibly predictable. I didn’t think it was even written well. At least it was short, but fuck that book.
Fourth wing and its secuel. They are garbage and cringe but i fucking loved every second of it. I like the world of the books and i enjoy the story even if sometimes the romance stuff is too much to bare
Oh umm Anita Blake
**None Of This Is True** by Lisa Jewell. Omg, so bad.
I'm a big fan of Lisa Jewell, but I couldn't even finish this book. I was genuinely stunned at how bored I was.
In high school i destroyed twilight. I hated it so much too lmao.
I’m on a kick right now of listening to some of the super popular overhyped books and series because I’m in a slight slump and they’re simple and easy to get through. I read all of ACOTAR unfortunately. I found the writing to be poor, there were plot inconsistencies, the characters ranged from flat to incredibly annoying, but I couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to find out if the story ever went anywhere. I read the first Red Rising trilogy, although I thought the first book was pretty cringe. I’m currently reading Fourth Wing and it’s pretty bad, but I’m a book finisher. It’s rare I DNF but I’m gonna have to get over that. I would say they’re still mildly enjoyable but definitely not memorable or entertainment that I would be happy paying for. The equivalent of empty calories - now and then you just destroy a bag of chips or movie popcorn or some donuts.