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What newish novels made you throw the book at the wall or worse- made you quit the novel halfway (or wish you had!)?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Anything written by Kevin J. Anderson. The man is an unoriginal hack, in my opinion. He's the reason I stopped reading the Star Wars EU novels.
Registered: Feb 2004
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Agreed about Kevin Anderson. I think that Timothy Zahn wrote his "Hand of Thrawn" duology mainly as a giant middle finger to how Anderson messed up his characters. (Even if you gave up on the Star Wars EU novels, definitely read the Hand of Thrawn books. I consider that to be the "true" ending of the Star Wars story.)
However, I decided to give him a chance again with the Butlerian Jihad trilogy Dune prequels that he wrote with Brian Herbert. I was surprised at the depth and complexity of the story and could see the patterns that would eventually form the factions that we knew so well in Dune. Definitely worth reading.
However, the "Dune 7" sequel stories were really disappointing. Plot-wise they wrapped everything up, but the storytelling was in no way comparable to Frank Herbert's style. They may have been using Herbert's notes to fill out the plot, but it just felt like going through the motions. And it was gimmicky anyway. The revelation of who the mysterious people from the end of Chapterhouse were made no sense. And all the gholas just got annoying.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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This reminds me of the type of antagonist (novel or film) that is really rich or powerful but is cooking a soufflé with their niece or tending to roses, while spouting philosophy as the protagonist is being held by burly henchmen. They know the truth of things, they know what really matters in life. And if held at gunpoint by protagonist, they have to be all "Either kill me or walk out of here, but stop wasting my time. Perfectly ok to kill me tho! I don't care whether I exist or not! Why should I?! First of all, I'm better than you in any way, shape or form. Secondly...PHILOSOPHY! ^^"
Registered: Aug 1999
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In all fairness, I think Anderson is a *competent* writer but not a terribly engaging one. It's been ages since I've read his Star Wars novels (seriously, probably not since they were published) so I can't fairly judge their quality from half recollections but I do remember that 'Darksabre' was a huge disappointment and had some very odd plot elements.
With the Dune books it's hard to judge because he gets a co-author credit with Brian Herbert so it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins...still, I don't think either are very good storytellers and nowhere near the same league as Frank. The prequels were *passable* but had an awful lot of seemingly unnecessary retconning going on while the Butlerian Jihad and the "Dune 7" books read like they were paint by numbers. Not sure if it was because they don't have the chops to do subtlety, subtext...or pacing for that matter but the results felt like they took all of Frank's background notes and just squeezed every last drop of ink from them.
With Frank, he'd often spend the most time in the books are spent in characters' heads and "exciting action scenes" were more often than not completely bypassed (and all the better for it.) With the KJA/BH books every single step was spelled out in extraneous detail and every character told you *exactly* what was going through their head at any given moment. Seriously, several times while reading the Dune 7 books I thought to myself "you know, Frank could have summed up this whole chapter in a single sentence and it'd be infinity more interesting." Hell, most of the first volume Frank could have probably covered in a paragraph. I mean it wasn't like he bothered to tell the reader everything that'd happened between the books. Typically there'd be a significant jump in time and the readers are presumed to have the intelligence to keep up. Indeed, I think several plot threads just dead ended and needn't have existe at all. If I had to guess I'd say Frank would have started Dune 7 on the no-ship a significant period of time *after* most of the gholas had been grown and may not have even bothered with the Honored Matres/Bene Gesserit side of things.
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DIES THE FIRE. by S.M. Stirling was the single biggest turd I have ever read. The premise is that some big worldwde event suddenly kills all technology more advanced than a bow and arrow. The story starts off nicely with thte protaganist (a pilot) in a plane crash as his plane cies while he's tranportng a family to their vacation home.
Then things slide off the rails as first, one of the girls that survives the crash just happens to be an expert marksman with a bow- which she just hapens to have with her. Oh, and did I mention the lead is a cross between John McClain and Conan? As the book plods along, they just happen to meet up with someone that makes swords and armor for a living (I shit you not) and another guy that happens to make bows...it gets more contrived from there untill it's worse than an old Dungeons & Dragons module.
I kept thinking- there's some big twist to this that'll explain why all these impossible plot devices are lining up- the lead is being manipulated by higher powers or it's a simulation gone wrong...something.
Nope.
I bought this at an airport while flying cross-country and wanted to incinerate the book and it's author by the time I landed in San Fran.
Somefuckinghow this is rated very highly in reviews and many people over at SSM think this author walks on holy water.
Anyone else read this?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Foundation's Fear. What a mess. If you're going to write a book in someone else's fictional universe, you don't change important details just for the hell of it. It's just disrespectful. Further, you should probably write a story that is in some way relevant to the characters and events of the series in question. Unfortunately, this book was the first of a trilogy, the other two of which (by Bear and Benford) were rather good. I expect many potential readers were put off by this one. I own every bit of Asimovia I can get, except this book. It does not exist.
But worse, worse by so far, is Beyond the Fall of Night. Utter train wreck. It totally missed the thematic points of Clarke's Against the Fall of Night/The City and the Stars. In fact, it went out of its way to contradict them. The story was horribly boring, and basically an excuse to show off some random new vision of the solar system. Which included a terraformed moon. He spent pages, boring horrible pages, describing this wonderful terraformed moon that had no relation to the plot at all. The moon itself, however, was related to the plot of the original novel, in a rather important fashion.
It had been blown up. Death star to the head. Gone.
[ October 04, 2011, 03:06 AM: Message edited by: Fabrux ]
Registered: Mar 1999
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What? You dont wnat to read about Alderan in the post-Jedi novels? As utterly inexcusable as thst is, it's equally his editor's fault for allowing it to happen.
A lot of "big name" writers have editors that barely skim the material, which makes for godawful stories. I'm convinced thst this has allowed more bad Stephen King novels to plague the bookstands than any drugs he did in the 80's (and I rather love a good King book).
[ October 04, 2011, 05:04 AM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
Registered: Aug 2002
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Y'see, Omega made a point about a planet having been blown up, and I responded with a humorus quip and then somehow you missed the context, dispite the emoticon and now I'm responding to your confustion...
It's a mess.
A mess only another beer can solve! (10:19AM EST)
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Now I remember, the second book to get thrown into the wall was "Dark Winter" by Andy McNab, not really a sci-fi book but as you asked before, Jason, I wanted to answer. Be careful what you ask for. ;
$$$$$$$$$$
While it has no bearing on my appreciation of the author, I've always thought the pseudomym Andy McNab sounds like he comes from Duckburg ("näbb" is swedish for beak). McNab could be Scrooge's psychotic cousin, lost during the Falklands War and reappearing when Donald goes to fight diamond smugglers in South Africa, helping Donald by staying two steps ahead and killing boers with his bare hands. Cover art by Tim Bradstreet. I digress.
I enjoyed reading McNab's first (autobiographical) novel "Bravo Two Zero", the setting was exciting (first gulf war), the prose sober and the action very deft. I haven't seen Sean Bean's movie version, but I will some day. However, "Dark Winter" is a fictional work in McNab's "Nick Stone" series of novels. Nick Stone, yes. The name alone contains more hackneye than even master Clive Cussler.
McNab is famous for adding realistic battle descriptions and technical details of weapons and tactics to his novels, but those details were for the most part laughable in "Dark Winter". There were two tech details that stuck out. First, Nick Stone's pistol of choice is the FN Browning Hi-Power (good choice), a gun which he's described as having shoved down the front of his pants for his entire adult life (that's right, no holster, that's how hardcore he is). As a result, he has a permanent open lesion where the gun safety lever protrudes from the top of the slide, digging into the flesh under his belly button. For 20 years. He claims the little lesion still bleeds and produces pus. I suppose he could've filed down the pointy part of the safety lever, or bought plus-size square band aids to put on his belly, but no. I suspect that he thinks this blood-poisoning-waiting-to-happen strengthens character.
The second tech detail that stuck (and how could it not) was the operation of the MP5 submachinegun's safety lever (what can I say, the man likes his levers). Stone uses a suppressed HK two or three times in "Dark Winter" when on the prowl, and in every scene he does it's written like this: Stone visually checks that the gun safety is on, walks down a hallway, checks that the gun safety is on, approaches the hallway bend, checks that the gun safety is on, then switches gun safety OFF (gasp!), walks slowly around the corner, confirm no enemies in sight, switches gun safety back on, walks two meters down this new stretch of corridor, checks that the gun safety is on, repeat until mission is over. For a guy that carries a pistol aimed at his dick and balls even when going to the grocery store, this anal behavior is a bit hard to consolidate, no matter how "by the book" SAS it is.
But that's not my main beef: Nick spends the major part of "Dark Winter" depressively brooding over the outcome of the previous novel, wherein his best friend and friend's wife were savagely murdered by terrorists, the wife raped and decapitated with a bread knife IIRC. Yeah, McNab is almost Kevin-J-Andersonian in his crude, teenage-level attempts to provoke empathy in the reader (compare with the absurd fate of Gurney Halleck's sister. I'll wait). Now, the rape, mutilations and executions happened in the presence of their little daughter, who survived. Nick Stone has since become the guardian of this girl, Kelly, now 14 years old. Thin and blonde, typical Dakota Fanning character. Let's go through that again, a chronically depressed, PTSD-ridden teenage girl being in the care of an international Black-Ops agent, I WONDER WHAT HER NARRATIVE FUNCTION WILL BE? Damn right she gets kidnapped, by asian terrorists bent on releasing a super toxin in the UK. But that's not my main beef either. In the final encounter, where Stone locates the terrorist hideout, both the little girl and Stone's female partner and love interest gets garrotted, stabbed and shot until such a time as they don't have a pulse anymore. Stone shoots the remaining malaysians, checks that the gun safety is on (in my mind), then lies down inbetween their corpses and holds them close, calling them his "little angels". I don't think he cries, McNab isn't big on male emotions.
I am not categorically opposed to "bad endings", if done skillfully, but investing 300 pages in the emotional value of the girl and the female lead, then killing them off just to beat you over the head with "THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS LIKE, IT IS NOT LIKE IN THE MOVIES" is to cheat the reader on a four-act payoff. I don't care if this amoral, cop-moustached wreck of a man goes on to kill more foreigners in ten future books, I was more interested in that little girl getting a chance. So I dutifully finished the chapter, and the afterword about gun safety levers, then I held up the book and said "Fuck you, book" and the book responded "Nonono - fuck you", and then it took a flight into the wall. Easy peasy.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Teh PW
Self Impossed Exile (This Space for rent)
Member # 1203
posted
A Bonfire of shit Evertime, for every like 1 'OK' book, there was a dozen pieces of shit. The Mechwarrior: Dorkage line totally killed people's interest in books about giant robots. EVERY fucking time i'd be into the fighting, i'd see a giant, fat-fingered hand from a 300lb fat kid grab one of the mechs in my mind, and turn a dial.
the very worst? one of the Jade Falcon books with the evil Khan wanna be lip locking her foe, IN SPACE, before leaving her to die.
Though i was cool with the whole idea of the JF invading and KILLING EVERY MOTHER that wasnt a JF... i thought that was uh, excessive but plausible considering what occured to them in the late 3070's & 80's. just more stupid than legit. i sorta really feel bad for the folks at Catalist having to unfuck the timeline when they gotta fit in Clickytech. Ive read that they plan to boost the time for the next version of Battletech to the 3150's or so...
Registered: Jan 2004
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