Basically, title. On my side, it might be unpopular, but I was quite disappointed with the Mistborn Trilogy. The world is interesting, I like the concepts, but I could just not connect with the characters? I finished the first book and started the second but could not finish it.
TBH I had the same experience. I was excited to read it since I had heard so much about it but the characters just felt sort of flat to me.
Malazan probably. So many people love it, and it looked like something I'd like, I even had a friend also reading it with me. I wanted to like it so much. After one and half books, I realized I couldn't care less about what happened to any of the characters and I didn't understand anything about the magic stuff, so I stopped reading.
Ya, I can see that. I really had to stick with grinding through the first two books. Top notch writing and characters (imo), but the confusion about what was going on was a tough slog to get through.
Still became one of my favourite series though. If you’re ever stranded on a beautiful tropical island and happen to have this book, I do encourage you to try it again.
Malazan is one half of my answer here. Though I did like it. I just expected to love it, especially early on. My disappointment was immense in going from thinking it was one of the best series I'd read to thinking it just barely was enjoyable enough for me to be glad I read it.
The series started off so strong for me. I loved the first four books, book five lost me with it meandering off entirely. Then book six won me back. Books 7-10 were an absolute struggle for me. I barely finished the last two books and have no interest in returning to the world with the side books that exist.
For my tastes, Erikson dialed up the philosophical and sadistic elements way too much in the latter half of the series. I think if books 1-4 and 6 were released as a stand alone set of five, with the rest not existing, it would have been one of my favorite book series of all time.
Also I'm still annoyed that the whole Silverfox plot just... completely disappeared. Such a monumentally important character and she just suddenly ceases to exist in the story.
I suppose it is the 3rd book in the Seeker series. The 2nd one was already not great, but the 3rd was an incomprehensible piece of trash, a waste of paper and ink. I have never read something so bad, before or after. Goodkind is crystal clear when writing out his rape fantasies, and blabbers incoherently for every other part of the book. I strongly dislike rape and torture themes, so there was nothing of value in the book for me. Years later when I read the Wheel of Time series, I discovered that Goodkind stole all of his ideas from Robert Jordan and then made them significantly worse. What a hack.
I tried to reread the books as an adult and was horrified that my younger self liked them so much. I must have glossed over so much.
I've found that Goodkind did have a talent for creating characters, which is what drew me in as a middle schooler--but all the worldbuilding around them is pretty trash.
Like, I'm not entirely against magical femdom pain warriors...hell, I'm a fan of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series with its holy courtesans. But there's a right way to do it and a wrong way, and he chose the wrong way.
And like you said using Jordan as an example, he was also a very blatant thief of things he thinks are cool (like Jordan's stuff), and was pretty up his own butt about his philosophies--acting like they're smart and well-thought-out without actually showing any glimmer of understanding of how real people work.
Jordan's Wheel of Time. Inside that massive stack of dead trees I think there might be a pretty decent trilogy struggling to get out, but I wasn't willing to read the rest of the stuff in order to find it. Dropped it somewhere around book four or five and never looked back.
It took me two years to finish the series, including a 6 months break during the slog, but I'm glad that I did. It is one of the most epic fantasy stories of all time. An absolute accomplishment.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I don't consider "long" to be either necessary or sufficient for something to be "epic"—long is just, well, long. When a narrative with a single continuous plot gets longer than half a million words, I start to suspect it needs a better editor. When it passes a million, I know it does. There were rumours as early as the publication of the third book that Jordan was padding the thing out in order to keep his cash cow going.
(Expecting more downvotes from this, so don't be shy—I can take it.)
Yeah, WoT lost me too.
I actually do like Big Fat Fantasy, but I could never get through Wheel of Time by Jordan, or George R. R. Martin's stuff. And this was back in the late 90s when I was devouring ANYTHING that was Big Fat Fantasy. There was just something about the writing that lost me. Never got through Tolkien either. I think I need some spark of "character" if you will...some sort of cleverness, or truly new and interesting idea? Long and convoluted without having either a stand-out character to hook me, or a clever idea, seems to lose me.
I find, of the 90s BFF, I liked Robin Hobb, Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott best. In more modern times, I like Seth Dickinson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Tamsyn Muir.
Damn, you didn't even make it to the truly awful books.
I dropped WoT around the same spot. The story itself wasn't bad, but if I have to read about one more person straightening their skirt or tugging their braid I was going to explode.
Ditto. Same spot, same issues.
The Dark Tower series for me. I enjoyed Stephen King as a teenager, but had never read any of the Dark Tower books until a few year ago when a friend gave me a copy of The Gunslinger. And I really enjoyed it! It's a quick read, I thought it was compelling enough to start working through the rest of the series. I made it through book 2, a little slower of a pace but I made it, book 3 was the same I feel like, maybe it dragged a little more even. By the first few chapters of book 4 , I just wasn't having fun with it any more and put it down.
I made it to almost the end of the series and then out of nowhere it switches to the most boring flashback for an entire book. I couldn't slog through it and have never looked at the series again.
You got out at the right time. Biggest reading regret ever is bothering to read the last book.
I tried to read it a few years ago and it reminded me rather quickly why I don't like King. He writes like a coke addled alcoholic, because that's what he is, and it shows.
Ed Greenwood's Elminster series. It gets so much word-of-mouth for being the basis of the Forgotten Realms but it's honestly some of the worst fantasy writing I've ever forced myself through.
A lot of early DnD stuff was awful. Even as an adolescent I could tell it was bad writing.
The only good DnD writer I've ever run into was Raymond E. Feist, specifically his early books, and they weren't even officially part of DnD. (He also got worse as he went along. I honestly only think the first 5 books plus the ones with Janny Wurts are worth it...and I admit I have not done any rereads of late.)
Anything by Tad Williams.
I mean I loved (LOVED!) his stories, but my disappointment comes from never being willing to read them again. He paints beautiful worlds, with a rich detailed filled story….But, somewhat ironically, he is the driest author I have ever read. I just can’t do that to myself.
I'm starting to realize I bounced off most of the male 90s-era big fat fantasy authors, mostly due to their work being so dry.
Most of my favorites were by woman authors, because by and large they wrote the better characters.
Dragon Riders of Pern. I read them as a kid. Tried to reread them as a 50 year old man.
I just couldn't do it. It made me question what my young self was thinking.
It's still one of my favorite series/authors--but MAN, none of it aged well, and I totally recognize that.
(Todd McCaffrey hasn't his mother's gift of style or voice--but even he recognized some stuff was shitty and tried to fix it.)
I still want a movie or TV show. The general idea is sound, so if you modernize it and tackle some of the shitty stuff head on, you could do some amazing things with it.
(I write fanfic and have been playing with this...just straight-up changing the stupid parts of canon, or at least having characters confront it head on as part of their arcs.)
Mine was the Elric Series by Michael Moorcock. It's the only book I've ever returned. I went back and tried to re-read the series years later and they are such a jumbled mess of things happening for no reason just to progress a plot that I couldn't stand them.
I'm slowly reading them now, and its my first experience with them. Damn they're philosophical. And Elric is a sad boy
Good luck, I really hope you enjoy them. I wanted to enjoy them so badly, but I can't stand his writing.
Assassin's Apprentice :( It was a recommendation from one of my managers at work. I loved the other series he recommended (Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling, and Kristen Britain's Green Ranger books) so I was super excited to start. I have never read such a depressing book... I think I made it to the beginning of the third book, but I wasn't enjoying them, and I realized they were putting me in a weird mood, so I stopped.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It just did not resonate with me in February slightest and didn’t get enjoyable until the final few chapters. I can appreciate it from a literary standpoint. The prose is lovely and the tone is spot on for what she was trying to achieve, but my goodness did I feel annoyed while making my way through it.
The Night Angel trilogy. I got about half way into the 3rd book and realized I was just forcing myself to read it. The characters sucks. The MC was either OP or didn't know wtf to do. The authors description of women is mildly sexist. Every girl was some bombshell or ugly as a foot and their only relevance was to be some kind of sex symbol. The book series seems like a neckbeard's paradise
Omg same! Glad I wasn't alone with this thought. Another point I strongly disliked was the resolution of Kylars hand it was literally resolved first thing in book 3.
Wise mans fear. Jesus christ what a trainwreck.
Name of the wind has a lot of issues as well, but god damn I was hooked!
I am not even sad that the third book is probably never coming out, the second book killed all my interest.
I read the first book because I kept hearing how great it was supposed to be. I didn't even make it halfway through the second book, lol.
Rothfus was like "meh, I'm already rich and famous, why struggle through a third book? I'm done!" Half of the 2nd book was stolen from Wheel of Time anyways.
Out of the Dark by David Weber. Book dragged on forever then did a complete √-1 degree turn and gave the equivalent of a literary rickroll for an ending.
