What is the worst fantasy/sci-fi book you've ever read?

> CREATOR OF CONAN ROBERT E HOWARD'S OTHER GREAT HERO CORMAC MAC ART
> THE UNDYING WIZARD
> ANDREW J. OFFUTT

That's a lot to decipher.

Planet of the GAWFs wasn't great, but still kinda fun.

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Worst book ever by someone who could afford a ghost writer. The actual writing down words part was adequate, but 70's cartoons had better thought out stories.

There is a rule somewhere that the more made up words are in the title, the worse the book is.

Shannara books, the first was ....ok. After that, lame snoring.
The Xanth books quickly tuned horrid. probably the worst series that I read too many of.

There should be categories:
Worst ever made into a movie
Worst series that kept getting written
Worst book written by an published author who should know better.
A struggling writers first book should be given a little slack.

Caliphate. I don't even care about the politics, the writing was just laughably bad.

Everything by Mercedes Lackey. I do not believe that I will ever find a more rancid, stale, shallow, self-righteous and schizophrenic body of work. She is absolutely the worst fantasy author ever.

Well, I have read more mediocre stuff that truly shitty stuff, but I'm easy to please.
Still, I guess it would be between Eragon, Shannara or Ewilan. But I may have banned some books from my memories.

Never actually read any of Terry Brooks, but if he's as bad as Harry Turtledove I'll make sure not to.
The bloke makes aliens invading during ww2 into such a boring snooze fest I'm actually impressed.

No.

Btw, was there anyone who couldn't stomach reading pic related anymore after it turned into magical sex adventures with succubus fairy or whatever she was?

I mean I really fucking loved the books up until that point, think the worldbuilding is fantastic and love the magic system, but alas, once it got there... I kind of lost interest. It's sad that I read through a book and half in two days and now its just sitting on my shelf, untouched for about 3 years.

Unfortunately, I read Eragon when I was 12 and had shit taste. I know it's bad, but now nostalgia stops me from giving it the hate it deserves.

Except for the last book. That was a shit smoothie, even through nostalgia goggles.

Space Wolf by William King, hands down.

In hindsight, it's clearly a warning.

The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Most Mary Sue protagonist that ever existed

>I mean I really fucking loved the books up until that point
puking loli.png

It's not the worst I've ever read, but seriously.

topkek, what an autist

Came here to post this

Fucking Kvothe

Any particular reason? I mean besides all of the characters being fairly boring caricatures?

Ragnar's Claw was a hundred times worse.

- "The hood, like a sail filled with the wind, was inflated by the brains splattered into it"

A quote from the book and a natural consequence of reading it.

>constantly lauds Kahlan as so intelligent and wise
>literally everything she says is ignorant, uninspired, and just plain wrong in every situation

One of the Gor titles I guess
Decidedly unsexy

I've got you covered, fampai

But yeah, I've never had any luck with fantasy books. I've read so many dreadful stuff that, trust me, it makes Kingkiller seem amazing in comparison.
On that topic, can anyone recommend anything worth a read?

ah Inheritance, when the author spent the last book tying up most of the story threads and so can just faf about in self indulgence.

Chronicles of Amber.

Jim Butchers Codex Alera is a nice read

Hah, I was gonna post to say that The Black Gryphon is the worst fantasy book I've ever read.

The two main plot arcs are "gryphons that are sentient constructs of THE GOOD WIZARD who is at war with the BAD WIZARD demand their reproductive rights!" And "Amberdrake is a paradox - a ripped beefcake with strong hands who's also a long haired bishie! Along with his lizard house-nigger (don't worry, his species has an inborn compulsion towards secretarial work seriously, he uses the power of massage therapy and literally being a man-whore to melt the icy heart of Winterhart, who though she is a STRONG WOMAN, is a mean stinky fash bigot who just views Gryphons as weapons! Oh well, it's just because she's in an abusive relationship (because all the officers in THE GOOD WIZARD'S army fuck each other, canonically) abd has a slipped disc from being thrown by a Gryphon! Nothing that Amberdrake's training as a kestra'chern, which combines the duties of magic healer, masseuse, and fuccboi can't cure!"

It's just... horrible shitty shalllw contemporary fantasy with a massive sloppy vagina, written by what I can only assume is what fat Wiccan high school girls eventually metamorphose into.

This. Whole series is just a test to see how long the reader can stand the protagonist being a massive asshole and still getting treated as the biggest hero the world could ever hope to have.

I still can't believe that shitshow managed to get a TV series based on it.

Easily this load of piss.

With a single spell and everything in that setting is great. I assume you know that Pratchett is great. Warbreaker was interesting, and worth reading.

Joe Abercrombie's First Law series is great, though it is mostly LotR fantasy were magic is rare but powerful. I would almost class it in the same genre of GoT, but it is significantly better.

Obviously the Connan series is great, at least the few I have read. If you like more modern fantasy, and possibly even if you don't, the Cabal the Necromancer series is pretty great.

If you can stand "coming of age" stories, the nightangel series is pretty great as is the dark prism series by the same author. The latter largely for the magic system.

Sabriel or just the Abhorsen series in general, great magic system, great world building, great story. Don't touch the 4th book though, it's piping hot shit.

Fritz Lieber's short stories about Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser.

More on the end of pulp sword and sorcery than contemporary high fantasy, but that's one of the reasons I'm recommending it to you. Contemporary high fantasy is universally unreadable garbage.

Anyway, Fritz uses language in a joyous, playful way, his stories are more often than not humorous, Terry Pratchett is directly homaging Fritz's city of Lankhmar with Ankh-Morpork, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser are endearing, the stories are cozy and episodic. You'll laugh, there will be a breddy gud episode of dungeoneering, and then the boys will set off for wine, whores, and their next adventure.

The Book of Mormon.

I couldn't even get past the first page without wanting to throw it halfway across the room into the fireplace.

>Tfw Sabriel goes full tsundere in the bathtub

Keys to the Kingdom is hilariously silly and over the top in a fantastic way.

are you me? except I was 17 and had not excuse for my shit taste.

Wow, all those memories are coming back to hit me full force. And I *still* don't think The Black Gryphon was the worst book she wrote, although it certainly is a microcosm of all the things wrong with her stories. The later books in the gryphon series were the ones that actually made me angry, though.

I actually used to be somewhat forgiving toward her, because I assumed she was some teen whose parents paid to have her shit published, but now that I've looked her up, I realize that she was in her late 30's when she started writing. And her morals still change with every fucking book! The only message that remains constant throughout all her books (of which I have experienced depressingly many), is that it's perfectly fine to murder anyone she doesn't agree with.

Skimming the thread...
>Chronicles of Amber.
What the fu-
>On that topic, can anyone recommend anything worth a read?
Oh, okay then.
For a moment there, I thought Wayne Brady was gonna have to choke a bitch.

Oh sweet fucking Jesus that shit was bad. The writing style, the characters, the setting, the story everything about those door stoppers was bad.

And people bought it by the million. And it got a TV series. Why? How?

I must disagree. I got my hand on those books last year, and they were the most 5/10 thing I have ever read.

Admittedly, that's still better than most fantasy...

waifus

>Tfw Sabriel goes full tsundere in the bathtub
when was this? Did I miss it?

>And it got a TV series. Why? How?
Something to do with sexy lesbian dominiatrix assassins I guess

>Abhorsen
Seriously in the running for worst fantasy ever. I gave up halfway through the first book, even though it was an audio book, and even though it was voiced by fucking Tim Curry.

The entire book was: problem comes out of nowhere, magical solution comes out of nowhere, rinse, repeat.

All I remember from the White Gryphon was the sadomasochistic serial rapist who it was obvious Lackey was flicking her rancid bean to because of her obvious tendencies towards dominant men. Like seriously I don't even remember what they were DOING in the book other than establishing their new genderqueer seaside cliff utopia or whatever.

>Tim Curry
Where is this user? Did you have to pay for it? can you link it?

I remember the first book starting out all right, and then devolving into a hundred page bdsm sequence. I did not continue reading after the first book.

When they get to the Inn at the city and she gets in bathtub, then hears the person in the room beside hers getting a bit lewd with one of the maids, and she think's it's the dude.

The cat then comes in and points out that the guy's room is the one on the other side, likely with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Wait, what? You mean Sabriel, right? Because her not actually being able to solve the big problems is a bit of a theme.

The white gryphon triggered the fuck out of me. It starts with this long speech on how 1. when children are sent out on missions and die or disappear, we don't go to save them, and 2. how the king sends out his son to do this, and how he's gonna be the same as everyone else, how he knows the danger and how he's not gonna send anyone for his son if the kid disappears.

This is treated as right and just, and everyone admires the king for his strength of will and discipline. Obviously, the king's son goes missing. He responds to this by immediately threatening to murder all of his best friends unless they change the law and send out everything they have to go save the little shit. This is treated as right and just, and everyone admires the king for the strength of his love for his son. Even the best friends who he, again, threatened to murder (and they made it obvious that he meant it), think that all of this is totally fine, and don't bear the slightest grudge for it.

That was the worst part. Everything else was also bad, including the weak-ass, clichéd torture villain you mentioned.

Actually, that's one of the worst part of the Valdemar books in general, that if you're "good" you get a bunch of magic for free, you get slaves both mortal and elemental, and even if you break all your oaths and go on a murderous rampage, it's still okay because you're one of the good guys.

If you're "evil", though? Your magic just disappears. There's never any challenge for the good guys, because in every single book they're already set up to be vastly superior to the antagonists in every way.

I wish I had done what you did. I got as far as book 4. I kept expecting it to turn good at some point. I was foolish. The books were shredded and used by birds to make their nests.

Never read, so I went wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Sword_of_Truth_characters#Kahlan_Amnell

>[..]She has a kind and generous soul, remarkable for its resolution and devotion to her people, but only the brutal Mord-Sith have less pity for their enemies than does the Mother Confessor.[..]

>[..]She fearlessly leads them in the night while painted with white paint, and completely naked, and they are able to deal serious damage the Order's numbers. She is an extremely modest person[..]

>[..]When she returns from the initial fight, she leads the captain to believe that she was not really of any assistance in battle. Captain Bradley Ryan caught her in a lie[..]

DAFUK

was book 4 where he is in communistan and aids them via randian objectivism?

Wait till you get to the bit about the Ultimate Evil Chicken.

Don't remember where I got it.

Turns out I still have the whole series, though. Even though I hated it, I can't say no to a fellow Tim Curry fan. I'll see about uploading it somewhere.

I don't remember the details. All I know is I was bored out of my skull within a few chapters.

I like that you're offended by her shallow and hypocritical morality. I like that THAT pisses you off, more than the cringing elements that make it very clear the books are written by a sex-starved middle-aged woman with an obsession for new-age Wiccan hippy-dippery. That shit triggers the shit outta me.

PI Garrett is some decent stuff if you like hard boiled detectives, fantasy races, and magic and shit. Also same author as The Black Company which is way grittier faire that even has its own RPG book.

It was years ago when I read it and they're all blurring together into on shit BDSM singularity. I think it was the one with the magical plague.

I mean, again:

>Zedd's wizard powers are restricted to the additive side of magic and as a result, he is limited to adding to elements that are already present in the world (i.e. he can change one coin into 10 coins). He cannot negate elements; for example, he cannot make a coin disappear into true nothing; he can only move it to another location thereby making the coin only appear to disappear.

Emphasis on RESTRICTED
Completely balanced for a protagonist.

Or the hero:
>spent most of his life in the woods so that he would know ALL the plants by name or by sight.
>quoted by several women in the books that he is the most handsome man they have ever seen

Every time I read it, I get the whole OC-vibe

This.
There are certain voices that are worth hearing awful things said by them.
Tim Curry is such a voice.
Not sure I could listen to a whole book, but I might attempt it.

I once saw Christopher Walken reading Mama June quotes.
It was marvelously insane.
I might have watched that show.

Any sexiness that might have bee evinced by that was lost by how fucking lame and retarded it was.

...

Discwordl is always an option user.

Alright Anons, this seems like a good enough thread to get it out there. I want to write a book, a High Fantasy one to be precise, and I want to get the main points down pat first.

>Typical races with Humans, Elves, Orcs, etc.
>Elves and Dwarves are barely ever seen by humans, dwarves are only mentioned in the first while elves do have important roles
>Orcs are populous like humans, only geographically cut off a bit, though they're the two most commonly seen in human towns
>Races don't particularly hate each other, and tend to deal with their own issues by themselves, outside of some rare occasions.

>Elves all live high up in the mountains, lots to do with Lightning and Storms, lots of magic, led by demigods made by their Pantheon using the souls of great Elven heroes, a bit of Norse influence with Einherjar and Valkyries. Low-tech
>Dwarves are extremely secluded and almost always underground, no magic at all bu they utilize more conventional technology mixed with chemistry to make up for not having magic
>Orcs are all warring clans in plains and swamps, over usual resources and land, though it rarely spills out onto non-Orc lands. Lots of traditions, losing clans will typically be absorbed by the winners, though some will split off to become mercenaries or form their own clans.
>Humans are the most adaptable when it comes to magic, largest Pantheon of gods, and a solid hold on traditional resources, most populous race.

Back to the drawing board or should I go on?

sounds okay. What is your plotline?

My NaNoWriMo entry

Don't get me wrong, I hated that part too, just not as much. Her story structure, foreshadowing, characterization and so on are also awful, but not as fun to rant about.

>ZIPPERS
>I
>P
>P
>E
>R
>S

The visible not even a token effort to hide them zips on the costumes trigger the ever loving shit out of me.

One of my first excursions into fantasy as a kid was Tamora Pierce. Specifically, her series "The Immortals Quartet". Made a big impression on me as a kid.

Thinking back to what I remember, I'm so scared that if I ever re-read them, it'll turn out like Mercedes Lackey. I think just back then I was too young to tell.

At the very least, the protagonist is a massive Sue.

I loved the magic circle by here. I read it twice once when I was 13 once when I was 16 and I think it held up then. Whether it would hold up now is a different story

Paladin for the human God of Death (Typically Lawful Neutral, agents are typically called Shade Knights) goes rogue and begins slaughtering villages, one of which is the main character's who's a child at that time. He survives by hiding away, only for an Elven Warband to show up as he crawls out of his hole, led by one of their Demigods. He's blessed by her and told where to go to be safe (A neighboring village) as the elves resume chasing the Shade Knight. Years pass and the Shade Knight's antics have stopped for a time, only for him to suddenly reappear with an army of orcs, and a group of undead.

The Protagonist then gets involved in a group of soldiers trying to track down the Shade Knight and put an end to things, though the Elves get involved once more and it turns out the SK has a lot more going on that he's hiding from the world.

>written by what I can only assume is what fat Wiccan high school girls eventually metamorphose into.
My fuking sides

...

Isn't that the game with "Hunts-in-Packs" or whatever that blatant OC wolf-woman thing was called?

I have similar fears about my childhood fantasy loves.

Buddy, this isn't worldbuilding general. Most readers don't give a fuck about what your setting is like, they wanna know what the *story* is like.

>All these recs
You're all too kind, anons. Damn, there's so much interesting stuff I don't even know where to begin. I know I'll be buying some books real soon.

The first was just star wars. Not great, but not offensively bad. The rest was trash though.

I will say that the parts that follow the cousin Roran are actually pretty good. A normal man beating the ever loving fuck out of monsters and magicians with a hammer. Sure he has magic boosts from others at times, but it's mostly him. The scene where he makes a wall of bodies to force a choke point? Kinda neat

free the darkness.
Got the audiobook recently due to good reviews and a seemingly interesting premise (the lone hero raised to be a warrior actually turns into a 'sperger due to lack of social contact), and Jesus Christ it was awful.
Without hyperbole, it contains the single worst Mary Sue I've ever seen in literature.
Yes, that includes Eragon.

Every single character bar one, who later comes round, is divided into three categories
1) character to fawn over the MC
2) character to be effortlessly humiliated by the MC
3) Character to be a cheerleader for the MC
ONE character in the entire book ever gives him pause, fucking one. Even he gets promptly worked around.
Every single token flaw is ignored when it could cause inconvenience.
For example, as mentioned earlier, he was supposed to barely understand social interaction, but then he pulls a mastery of mercantile and economic knowledge out of his ass to take over and manipulate a criminal gang.

I know a title like Free the Darkness was a massive red flag, but I expected funny campy edge, not the author masturbating in my face for hours on end.
It took me months to buy a book after that, and even then I had to cross check it endlessly.

>A normal man beating the ever loving fuck out of monsters and magicians with a hammer.
I'm surprised. Most of Veeky Forums seems to explode in fits of rage if you imply that a martial character does anything superhumanly badass.

I enjoyed everything by Brandon Sanderson. Give Mistborn or Elantris a shot

I present to you, Tim Curry: ufile.io/vzuxr

100% agree. The last half felt like bad eroticism written by a 13 year old boy.

God, I almost hope he never releases the third one, especially after his piece of shit novella.

The Orcs was horrible but I think it's my number two.

"Die Bedrohung" - "The Threat"? by Wolfgang Hohlbein was worse.

Series should be on Audible.
Curry's voicing of the undead in particular is absolutely God Tier; you feel like his larynx is actually rotting during it

Eragon was okay. Not amazing, but okay.

Everything after that devolved into shit. Showing that anyone can produce even one passable book with a good editor and passion.

Don't mind me, just posting one of the best YA Fantasy series out there, that's aged pretty well regardless.

Don't know how the anime was, though.

It was pretty autistic "COLLECT THE MAGIC GEMS EACH WITH THEIR OWN POWERRRR" but breddy gud nonetheless.

Had an artbook as a kid from a book fair that was a catalogue of all the monsters - definitely liked that one.

Came here to post this. It's a fucking terrible book -- wait a second
It got a fucking TV series? What? How?

>can anyone recommend anything worth a read?
Red Rising trilogy is amazing.

>It got a fucking TV series? What? How?
Legend of the Seeker, user
Only ran for two seasons

I only read one of hers, and I also found the "slavery and genocide are just dandy if you're Good" thing fucking horrifying.

The black company series is pretty good. Covers a band of mercs from the POV of the company annals- medium fantasy I think- mages and magic stuff exist, but they really aren't that common.

Warbreaker is my favorite of his.

Fuck you
>tfw I will never be a shadow shifting Trump card communicating Prince of Amber or Chaos

The Eye of Argon