As subject says, inspired by "favourite book" thread. (Where there is positive, there is negative. And I am always the negative - not to mention proud of it.) This is my blacklist of books that range from "never read again" to "run run run far away" to "bloody godawful; please burn":
Daggerspell by Katharine Kerr - I only read this book, the first in the "epic" whatsitsname series, and I don't intend to pursue the sequels. The basic premise is good, but the execution is dirt-poor. Kerr writes like an amatuer, with awkward prose, repetitive dialogue, repetitive storytelling, and a bad attempt at Ye Olde English that mixes modern and archaic bits together to create a deformed bastard child. The characters are unmemorable, except perhaps Nevyn who is half-decent. What's with all the "keening" and substitution of "something" with "somewhat", anyway? (Referring to the deformed linguistic bastard child.)
Rhapsody: Child of the Blood by Elizabeth Haydon - Another first in a series, and whose sequels I will never pick up. Meet Rhapsody, the most beautiful woman ever, with endless compassion and an endless empty space between her ears where a brain should have been. The book is not bad: setting is okay, plot is half decent, there are interesting secondary characters, but all of these are ruined by the presence of Rhapsody. She is perfect, period (a fact that is mentioned in the book at every opportunity): a skilled swordswoman, a powerful "Singer" who apparently can alter just about everything, an embodiment of virtue, a former prostitute (although the profession, of course, leaves no scars on her perfect psyche). Her beauty is such that men go mad with lust at the sight of her, and many of them are all but groveling for her attention. Traffic accidents occurred because the cart-drivers were staring at her. And to make things worse, Rhapsody thinks people look at her like that because she's a freak of nature. (Transparent attempt on the author's part to make the character sympathetic, which fails miserably, by the way.) According to people who have read the sequels, it only gets worse as Rhapsody proceeds to become a queen of a pseudo-elven race, kicks some demonic behinds, and in general makes Superman look tame.
Spellfire by Ed Greenwood - The whole book consists of very little apart from action scene to action scene to more action scene. The characterization is close to nil. Shandril Shessair, a runaway barmaid, finds that she has an inherent super-power of spellfire (oh-so-original!) and is hunted down by evil buffoons who manage to be less intelligent than Shandril herself. Shandril is accompanied by a wimpy mage named Narm whose only purpose is to be her TWU WUV (true love), to have her worry over him and vice versa. The characters in this novel all have the depth of a tissue paper. You think Forgotten Realms/D&D novels are pulpy? Spellfire brings out the worst of them all. The prose is a bore, bloody tedious to read. (And please don't tell me I'm not intellectually advanced enough or have short attention span. I have read books like Mists of Avalon and The Silmarillion, kthx.)
Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore - Salvatore's style is not really my cup of tea in the first place, and all his books are all about action scenes after other action scenes. My gripe with his books is not with the style, though, but with the character. Drizzt Do'Urden is an uber swordsman who has defeated a dragon, a balor, among other things, and has never lost in a "fair fight". Combat scenes are described in excruriating details which, while not bad in itself, are repetitive as hell. "Dance of death" this, "dance of death" that. I didn't know that "swordsfight" is synonymous with "tango"! Basically, Salvatore keeps producing more and more Drizzt books, and all of them are about the same, with all the suspension of watching a Powerpoint presentation of growing grass. To add to the tedium, Drizzt is one really big angst puppy. He angsts about, oh, everything. Everything also seems to remind him of his homeland and its Omg!Evil!People!, and he entertains so with his pretentious monologues and journal entries. I pray that some orc will eventually skewer him with a rusty spear.
Earth's Children by Jean M. Aules - The first book was fairly interesting. I made the mistake of picking up the second one, where the story became some sort of bizarre Caveman Harlequin-esque pr0n. The painfully purple and overly elongated descriptions aside, Ayla ranks just below Rhapsody on the Perfect Superwoman scale: she is beautiful, she's tragic, she's abused and raped, and she thinks (in the first book) that she's ugly. Her TWU WUV, Jondalar, is also just as perfect to match her. I'm sure they'll end up producing litters of perfect children. The length of Jondalar's, ah, manhood is mentioned several times. Plus the fact that Ayla is the only woman ever to be able to accommodate him whole.
