Books you really hated?

[Incanus]

A book I hated and was super disappointed about was Name of the Wind. What a major disappointment for me. I was so engaged in the writing… and then… nothing. Literally nothing. Kvothe was a total Gary Sue, he was great musician, then… what? He went to school and did some stuff, then saved a village from a dragon… hundreds of pages of nothing.

This was very much my assessment as well. Started off interesting, and with pretty good writing. But the character was just a little too awesome at everything he did and he was smarter than his teachers. So, for hundreds of pages, the only real source of conflict was that he had trouble scraping up enough money. Boring, boring, boring. But since my expectations were realistic going into it, I didn't suffer much in the way of disappointment. No more Rothfuss for me, thank you very much.

 

[Heliotrope]

Thank You!

so weird, since GRRM had a blurb on it, and I kept hearing how good it was.

What I really wanted to see was his true character. I kept hoping that the story he was relating to the Chronicler was actually not the true story at all… merely his 'media' story. I felt like Rothfuss was hinting at this… He is so great and perfect because this is actually not the true story, this is just the story he tells everyone… Or something. I wanted to find out that really he was a villain or something… I don't know. Something….

 

[Gurkhal]

I dislike pretty much everything that David Eddings have written. I find Harry Potter to be more interesting than anything publushed under the name Eddings. While there are many things that could have been good or great in these books, they always amounts to, at best, nothing of interest for me.

 

[Devouring Wolf]

I loved Hatchet I like those sorts of wilderness adventure stories. And I liked the repetitive writing style and the combo-descriptions fell-ran stuff.

I'm not much for wilderness adventures, so that might be part of it, but that books honestly scarred me for life. For me it didn't do a single thing right. Not the writing, not the characterization, not anything. To be fair, I might hate it more than I should because my fifth-grade teacher who had it in for me forced me to read it, so I didn't go into it expecting to like it, but it just ended up so much worse than I had expected.

I do actually like repetitious writing when its done well.I recently read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian which really utilized repetition well in my opinion.

A book I hated and was super disappointed about was Name of the Wind.

I didn't like this book either. What killed it for me though was the characterization of Denna, his love interest. She earned herself a spot on my list of most annoying female characters list (yes I do actually have a list. It reminds me what not to do when writing my story). We just kept getting told how mysterious and special she was, but she never did anything particularly likable in my opinion, and certainly never anything to justify Kvothe's almost instant infatuation with her.

 

[Mythopoet]

ooh, ooh, ooh, I've got lots!

Witch World by Andre Norton. I have NO IDEA why this book and this author gets praised. It was the most boring fantasy novel I have EVER read. By a long sot. Just dull, dull, dull. Maybe other books she wrote were better, but being introduced to her through this, one of her most famous books, I am not willing to take the risk.

The Magic of Recluce by L. E. Modesitt. I guess if you're an adolescent boy who needs a hero who's always ogling girls and imagining that they all want to have sex with him just because they smiled while serving his food at an inn, this book might be for you. If you're literally anyone else, the MC is just a pathetic excuse for a character who refuses to think for himself, doesn't actually care about anything, and spends most of the story being bored up until he's suddenly not. This might be the second most dull fantasy novel I have ever read.

Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. This book pisses me off because it begins with this absolutely fascinating prologue that is moving and intriguing and makes me want to know more.... and also takes place like thousands of years before the main story which instead decides to follow a group of boring, stupid, adolescent country oafs as they proceed to make a mess of everything until the 11th hour. There are startling passages full of amazing potential... that are totally squandered on all the stupid banal pov characters. I hate them all and wish they would all die, but I know they won't because the series drags on for literally forever.

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. This one is more a matter of personal taste in that I don't argue that Peake's writing skills are, for the most part, fine. (Though his prose can get overly descriptive and spend far too much time in describing action scenes in ridiculously minute detail.) But the subject matter of this book is just thoroughly repulsive to me. There is nothing good in his world, every person is so thoroughly flawed as to be completely crippled by it. There is no ray of light anywhere. Everything is dark and weighed down in darkness. There isn't even any purpose for this. No thematic resonance that I could feel. Perhaps this works with some people. But it didn't work for me.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. Unlike some others here, I liked The Name of the Wind well enough. I certainly found its mysteries intriguing. Though I agree the character of Denna was lacking. (Honestly, I never expected her to come back after her first appearance. I think that was a mistake. She worked as this mysterious girl he had a crush on after a brief meeting and a haunting memory. She did not work for me at all in her expanded "I'm the girl you'll never be able to forget because even though I don't show the slightest consideration for you as more than another of my pawns I'm really hot and I'll never leave you alone" role.) Anyway, it was The Wise Man's Fear that really failed epicly for me. It pretty much ignored every interesting mystery the first book had introduced and instead focused on Kvothe gaining worldly experience from superhumans. I mean, it's great that Kvothe was taught to sex real good by some fairy goddess, I'm sure Denna will be thrilled. But this book spent so much time on tedious political intrigue followed by interludes of weeks of sexcapades and training from super special awesome fighter people and more sex and just none of it had anything to do with the interesting stuff the first book introduced. It was just a whole book of filler. It made me so frustrated. And somehow, even though it was focusing on Kvothe's development, he became so much less likable to me in this book. So... full of himself. Which is probably the point, but that doesn't make it fun to read about in first person. And what compounds the negativity of the whole experience, I read this book YEARS ago, a whole book of pointless filler, and the next book STILL isn't out. This was only supposed to be a trilogy! What the hell is the problem? Rothfuss, you really need to jump off the George "I can take however long I want to write my next book and you all can suck it" Martin bandwagon.

Speaking of which: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. Didn't get farther than that. Obviously this is also a matter of taste, but I just really dislike all the characters and everything they do. There was nothing in these books that I enjoyed reading about. I kept saying to myself, "everyone loves these, it has to get good somewhere", but no it didn't. Not to my taste. I can't imagine wanting to read or write about such a dark, degenerate world.

I think I'll stop there for now. Thinking about all these books I hate is souring my mood.

 

[Banten]

People here really dislike kingkiller chronicles, don't you? I loved the first book, thought it was wonderful. The second book had some weird aspects like the Felurian thing, but overall i think it was a solid book as well with beautiful writing. I really don't understand why it keeps showing up here.


Onto the books that i hate.... I only read fantasy books that have had solid ratings, so i can't say i hate any book that i've read.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

People here really dislike kingkiller chronicles, don't you?

Not this guy. I'm a fan.

 

[Mythopoet]

People here really dislike kingkiller chronicles, don't you? I loved the first book, thought it was wonderful. The second book had some weird aspects like the Felurian thing, but overall i think it was a solid book as well with beautiful writing. I really don't understand why it keeps showing up here.

Because it's way over hyped and overrated so a lot of people go into it with high expectations that are disappointed because it's just not as good as people say it is.

 

[Russ]

People here really dislike kingkiller chronicles, don't you? I loved the first book, thought it was wonderful. The second book had some weird aspects like the Felurian thing, but overall i think it was a solid book as well with beautiful writing. I really don't understand why it keeps showing up here.

I am on the fence. I enjoyed the first book. I love his prose, like the MC and enjoy the world.

I found the second book just too slow. Not enough happened to move the plot along for me at all. I found the second book a little too full of adolescent wish fulfillment rather than good character development and plot. I still loved his prose and the world.

The first book to me seemed to make a lot of promises to the reader. I don't think the second book moved us far enough in the direction of fulfilling those promises. The third book had better deliver a lot of good plot that resolves a few things if he wants me to remain a fan.

 

[Banten]

Sure i agree the second book is overhyped (i won't say that about the first though), but is that enough reason to put it on a books you hated list? I mean it is your opinion and i can't really argue against it, but even with the hype it is still an at the very least acceptable series up until now.

 

[Banten]

I am on the fence. I enjoyed the first book. I love his prose, like the MC and enjoy the world.

I found the second book just too slow. Not enough happened to move the plot along for me at all. I found the second book a little too full of adolescent wish fulfillment rather than good character development and plot. I still loved his prose and the world.

The first book to me seemed to make a lot of promises to the reader. I don't think the second book moved us far enough in the direction of fulfilling those promises. The third book had better deliver a lot of good plot that resolves a few things if he wants me to remain a fan.

Yeah, i can understand that. I think the second book was pretty good while the first book was fantastic. Both books are at the positive side of the Book Quality Spectrum (that is a thing now), but the difference in quality is still big. I have high hopes for the third book though, considering that it will most likely be about the downfall of Kvothe so that we will finally see this slightly Gary Stu-ish character at his lowest.

 

[Russ]

Sure i agree the second book is overhyped (i won't say that about the first though), but is that enough reason to put it on a books you hated list? I mean it is your opinion and i can't really argue against it, but even with the hype it is still an at the very least acceptable series up until now.

I think you are correct that Wise Man's Fear is a victim of it's own expectations. NOTW was really, really good and therefore hard to follow up. Plus it is always tough to avoid the "sagging middle" in a trilogy. But based on my assessment of Rothfuss as a writer I thought he could have done so much more in book two. I expect a lot of him because he has shown me how good he can be in book one. It is the kind of problem I think many writers wish they had!

 

[Mythopoet]

Well, I didn't read NOTW when it came out. I read it sometime later after hearing it highly praised from all quarters. And I did think NOTW was a very promising book. I enjoyed it for the most part, though I think it has some huge flaws, namely Denna's characterization and the whole weird, stupid climax episode. So I was looking forward to WMF when it came out and digging more into the more promising aspects that were introduced in the first book. However, WMF induced severe boredom and disappointment in me because it was mostly filler and fluff and non sequitur and everything I liked about the first book was pretty much gone while the things I didn't like got even worse. So yes, I hated it. It was NOT, in my opinion, an acceptable follow up to NOTW by any measure I apply.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, I LOVED Rothfuss' prose. Loved it. It was some of the most beautiful writing I have read in a long time…

But the dragon sequence at the end? Wtf? That just ruined it for me. It had nothing to do with anything… I just didn't get it.

 

[Tom]

Eurgh. Rothfuss.

I tried, I really did. But for me, reading Name of the Wind was the literary equivalent to having teeth pulled.

 

[Incanus]

And then there was A Farewell to Arms--Hemingway. I don't think I read even fifteen pages of it. Couldn't find a single thing I liked about it. He must have done something right, though--just for others, not for me.

 

[Velka]

Heh, I loved A Farewell to Arms. I adore Hemingway's austerity of prose, probably because it is a 180 from my own writing.

A book that still gives me a visceral response of disgust is Blindness by Jose Saramago. Lack of periods, no quotation marks, and no character names (just descriptors like The Doctor or The Dog of Tears) drove me insane. Some of the scenes were really, really hard to read and made me feel almost physically ill.

 

[Incanus]

That's kind of funny. For me it is because Hemingway is 180 degrees opposite to my style that I loathe the prose austerity.

The other book you describe sounds pretty tough to deal with. Without knowing more, it sounds like 'modernist' writing to me.

 

[Mythopoet]

That's kind of funny. For me it is because Hemingway is 180 degrees opposite to my style that I loathe the prose austerity.

See, this is why we need all kinds of styles. Me, I'm in the middle. I tend to dislike both dense and sparse prose and prefer a middle ground.

 

[Zadocfish]

I forget which one, for I listened to them a long time ago, but either The Land that Time Forgot or The People that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs.. Whichever one introduced the "evolution pools." Referring to "less evolved" human features as "Negroid" and portraying beautiful white people as the pinnacle of human evolution was far, far too much for me. I know you have to take these things in historical context, but there's "fair for its day" and then there's just plain icky.