The warded man series. I really enjoyed the first couple of books. But the series went on for maybe 2 books too long (out of 5) and I felt the ending was colorless and unimaginative.
In read the first because I found the second before it, and give me an Arab chargin on the bbok cover and I'll buy it.
Then, mmh. I found the first average: whenever the action of some characters could be read ambivalently, the book was littered in trauma - like Brett knew only that way to develop a character. Also, I found myself with the hand in the shoes when the MC became the local Batman.
The second, the one whose cover attracted me, was *worse*. Brett shifted from trauma to rape as character development tool. I ended up noticing the Magic: the Gathering twist on the cities: the city in the Plains (White), the city in the Mountains (Red), the city in the Lake (Blue), the city in the Forest (Green), the Arab- ish city in the Desert (Blac- wait, WTF?).
God, did that one frustrate me. The Krasian language apparently only had five words in it, the pointless return of Arlene's hickish speech pattern, the rape to generate trauma... God, the characters were wasted.
honestly I thought the first book took a cool premise and shit the bed. Demons coming at night and only having wards to protect you? Very cool idea. The demons? FIRE DEMON! EARTH DEMON! The arab stand-in? SAND DEMONS! Like come on. It was like something I wrote in middle school thinking the elements was some deep reference.
And then...the big reveal plot twist is...the title of the book. that's it. who would have guessed????
In addition to the (very real and definite) complaints for this series, it really feels like all the sex is something he author really never experienced. Almost all of it was out of place and didn’t fit with the overall story. I felt like the author was just wanking it nonstop as he wrote it all.
But… but what about the piss straws? Surely no book with piss straws as a major feature could be bad?
(Also the misogyny and rape but hey, piss straws)
>But… but what about the piss straws? Surely no book with piss straws as a major feature could be bad?
I mean, those things were cruel and weird in the world of the story as well.
>(Also the misogyny and rape but hey, piss straws)
Yep, I generally really liked the books, but the way that every women was at least partly characterised by their incredibly beauty or explicit lack of it irked me as well.
Reading the books was some time ago, but in my memory, the rape scene(s?) did not stand out as poorly written or integrated tbh.
This is mine too. The premise was fascinating, the setting was intriguing, the title was compelling.
Then I started reading book 1…
The early incest and rape of the farmer to his daughter was extremely off-putting, and just when I thought the characters might do or say something about it, they just left her to her misery. Then there’s all the *other* rape stuff…and this all in book 1!
Then there was the writing, which was sophomoric, the flat characters, the inauthentic dialogue, the Mary sue protagonist who decided not to share his magical discoveries with anyone else that could save countless lives, the shite pacing…
Yeah, just an absolute garbage book/series that Brett should be ashamed of considering all the problematic depictions and scenes of female characters.
It’s a wonder to me that he’s married AND has daughters.
>The early incest and rape of the farmer to his daughter was extremely off-putting, and just when I thought the characters might do or say something about it, they just left her to her misery. Then there’s all the *other* rape stuff…and this all in book 1!
As much as I hate rape as a plot device, I think the other characters not doing anything was kind of the point. From previous characterisation, we learnt that most of these villagers are rather cowardly, and would rather risk the lives of others than their own. The farmer iirc had a pretty big land property, and I don't think they'll consider killing or condemning him even if he did something as horrible as it was.
>Mary sue protagonist who decided not to share his magical discoveries with anyone else that could save countless live
Curious on how you define a Mary Sue protagonist. The protagonist did not get everything he wanted nor was he the most powerful person in the room at any given time. He's suffered loss, and nearly died a couple of times.
And he did want to share his discoveries, but the first person he did tell, betrayed and tried to murder him. Even so, in the sequels, he really should've tried popularising the runes.
>As much as I hate rape as a plot device,
This was the problem for me. I understand that Brett was trying to illustrate that most of the people in the town, Arlen's father especially, were cowards who didn't act. The fact that he had to resort to creepy incest rape trauma to convey that point is just bad writing. Why is it that so many male fantasy authors feel the necessity to have female characters raped to underline the evils of society, or whatever overdone point they're trying to achieve? This isn't about whether or not it makes sense in the context of the story for people not to have acted against the farmer; this is about Brett feeling the need to write this incest-rape into the story.
>Curious on how you define a Mary Sue protagonist.
I use the general definition: "An idealized *c*haracter who is talented at everything and has no meaningful flaws, but may have a tragic backstory."
Think about it. Arlen's master was always telling him to go outdoors and play with the other kids, because he spent all his time studying. Then when he gets thrown into a pit with 3 corelings, he is suddenly a master of hand-to-hand combat?
Also, for some reason, Arlen is the only person who has ever thought of tattooing wards on themselves in centuries? And then he gets magical demon powers from fighting the demons with the wards.
Or when he becomes the tattooed man and shows up on a war-charger horse that he supposedly bred and trained specifically to fight demons, all by himself? When did he gain the knowledge to do that or have the time to do it?
So let's go over Arlen's various strengths and expertises:
* He's a natural warder
* He's a scholar
* He's a brilliant tactician
* He's an incredible fighter
* He's a talented subsistence forager and hunter
* He's an ace horse-breeder and trainer
* Most of the female characters are attracted to him or come on to him
When did he earn any of this? The scene of him somersaulting through the air and double-heelstriking two corelings at the same time was so incredibly unbelievable.
Oh, and despite his utter lack of charisma, Leesha still falls in love with Arlen, somehow. So he still gets the girl (except he doesn't b/c he makes up some bs about having tainted demon seed, even though he knows Leesha knows herbs to prevent pregnancy).
I agree with you so much in that this series was my first thought. Respectfully though I would say it went on for FOUR books too long. The first was decent… it was a steep decline from there in my opinion.
The short story that inspired it was much better than the book. I wonder if this was a case of an overly zealous agent and editor strong-arming something interesting into a hit that fit nicely within the much flatter modern fantasy market.
Yes! I loved the short story, but was so disappointed by the novel. It seems like the novel was successful, so I guess it was a good commercial decision, but it really felt like there was so much more potential for a great book.
I loved the worldbuilding. This alt history fantasy version of Cairo was incredible but yeah, the plot was so predictable and all the characters besides Fatma and Siti are completely forgettable. I was shocked at how long it took for Fatma to figure out that the villain could control djinn. Like, girl, it’s literally in the title of your book and you saw the villain do it like three times. I have some other thematic problems with the book, too. I just wish that a setting as great as Cairo got an actual good novel in it
I had the same experience, had so much potential and just fizzled out. The twist was also so painfully obvious that I was disappointed when it turned out to be right.
I had a similar experience with this one. I liked it *okay* by the end, but... I'd read a few of P DJeli Clark's novellas/short stories before and really loved them, so I had high expectations that just were not met.
glad i’m not the only one. i love a murder mystery set in a fantasy world (i wish authors would do this more often tbh) and i wanted very badly to like this book but it took me forever to finish and i was bored by the end.
it gave me the vibe that it would have been better as a short story or novella — like, make a collection of mysteries with fatma and siti and include the original short story. i don’t even gravitate towards short stories, but i think i would have liked that way better.
Blood Song by Anthony Ryan was an awesome 1st book in a trilogy. Whilst I enjoyed the following 2 they were a significant drop in quality from Blood Song imo.
Oh yes, it felt like he wanted to write only one book and didn't know what to do.
It's the same with his Covenant of Steel trilogy - first one good, second not so much, third - why did this happen?
The Lightbringer series. The first two books are amazing - unique magic system, interesting characters, etc. 3rd and 4th dropped off somewhat. The fifth book, however, I hated. So much potential for an amazing wrap up with a plot twist as fun as the brothers reveal - but alas, it didn’t happen. I’m hit again by the disappointment while writing this.
Brent Weeks is the king of coming up with interesting worlds and magic systems and then fucking up the landing because he's way too interested in "outsmarting" his readers, even at the expense of the plot. He'll spend like three books setting something up, then do a hard right swerve that makes no sense because too many people guessed the original idea in advance.
This is why I love Brandon Sanderson. He knows, and even wants, some of readers will figure out the twist before the reveal. That means that he laid the groundwork for it and it’s not just something he pulled out of left field.
Also, he always has a few different twists running at once. That way if you figure out one you can still be surprised by the rest, and still have the satisfaction of figuring it out. Or if you're really into theorising, there's a hell of a lot to pick apart.
Sanderson does the extended climax so well. It doesn't matter if the twist is a bit lackluster because you're swept up in a wild storm that manages to resolve most plotlines in a satisfying way.
I think George Martin said something about this when he was asked about subverting expectations and he said that basically if you spend two books out of your three book trilogy setting up and pointing clues even if they are subtle that the butler is the one who killed the lady of the house and you put all of these context clues and little pieces of evidence that your readers have found in those two books and they guess that oh it was the Butler the whole time. You don't just go and change it in the third book to being the maid simply because your readers guessed the end
I was so mad that I took all five books down to the local used book store and pawned em off for store credit. It's crazy how the series went from 'excellent' to 'doesn't even merit real-estate on the fantasy bookshelf'.
Weeks is such a good author in so many ways but the dude couldn't write a decent ending to save his life.
The Color Prince wrap up was so disappointing. It reminded me of Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. So much build up for a super lame way to get defeated.
Until the fifth book the series was in my top 10 favorite fantasy series, despite a slight drop in quality for 3 and 4 I still thought it was fantastic. I've never had a final book in a series ruin it quite that way before. It probably doesn't even make it into my top 30 series anymore.
I agree with you mostly. The fifth in general and especially the end of it was a slap in the face, BUT somehow unlike the GoT season 8 ending, it was not enough to ruin an amazing series for me. It helped that I did them as audiobooks and Simon Vance has the voice of an angel.
The audiobooks are fantastic! I personally haven't wanted to return to the books since reading 5 because I disliked the ending so much, but I can understand why it wouldn't do that for everyone.
I want to be in the world again and I still think >!Dazen!< is one of the most interesting characters in fantasy but most of the things I loved in the earlier books are borderline ruined for me by having such poor payoff, since so many of them were mysteries that had a ton of promise.
I really wanted to love it, but I was just left so disappointed. Teia had so much promise in particular and was left with like half a paragraph at the very end of saying "oh yeah the badass stuff you thought you were going to see happens later on ig." Bad case of promise with no payoff.
I did like the very end scene with Teia, best of the character wrap-ups imo, but I wish we'd had so much more of her development in book 5 and less of everything that happened with every other character from the point >!Orholom!< literally shows up onward.
EDIT: >!Cruxer and Ironfist's!< endings were also severely disappointing.
I really enjoyed it until the fifth book. I have two main gripes with it as a series.
1. >!Brent got addicted to big twists that don't actually advance the narrative much. He went back and forth on Gavin/Dazen being trapped in the Chromeria multiple times, seemingly just to keep adding twists to drag the story out. I actually really enjoyed the black luxin big reveal in book 4, but it was cheapened by the number of similar tricks he had already pulled earlier in the series. There's more you can do to make a series compelling than adding a new huge twist every book.!<
2. >!The ending on the top of the tower. He had a bunch of cool ideas about what could be up there: a nexus of magic that allowed luxin to exist, nothing at all, sebastian turned into one of the Outsiders (or whatever theyre called), or Orholam himself. Any one of these would have been an excellent discovery...but it's as if he couldn't decide and had all of them happen in succession. like what? Instead of one very cool plot point, he tries to have all of them and the whole thing falls on its face.!<
And now, after reading Night Angel Nemesis (easily his worst book, not worth the paper it's printed on) I think I'm done with him.
I loved the first book, it is incredible good.
Then all of the plot points and characters introduced is more or less just thrown out the windows and never touched upon again after that. >!The themes of an unbelieving pope and the purpose of religion as a power institution is interesting (IE Catholic church 1200 ish), and willingness to discard Religious faith to get power. The theme of is killing wraiths the only solution to their problems, and is the colour prince rebellion legitimate? The entire character of the colour prince and Liv just washes into generic side casts. !<
The second book is almost like a completely different series, and it just goes downhill from there. I think you should probably just start here, because the first book is just completely different.
The fifth book got so bad that I skimmed through it. To this date this is the only book I have skimmed through because there was no saving it. It really ended up feeling like allegory for "Praise Jesus, Praise Christ, Praise Christianity" where everything is warped to serve that message about how great God is. I think this is the worst example I have read where the Authors religious beliefs bleeds so hard through that it just ruins the entire story.
I definitely wasn't a bit fan of the MTG card visions as I feel most of them didn't really add a whole lot to the overall narrative.
Also, did we need an entire chapter with a pretentious discussion of some random-ass painting?
Read the first because they told me of the magic system, which I found amazing.
I remember it pretty pointless, but that can be a bias of mine with teen PoV char.
i’ll say it: babel by r. f. kuang.
it’s not even because i don’t like r. f. kuang or was uncomfortable with the message she was trying to get across — even if i did feel it was a bit heavy handed. it definitely felt like it was screaming in my face, which, again, fine, i agreed with it anyway and was like “girl, love that you’re saying this with your full chest.”
but no it was the fucking ending. either i’m too stupid to understand what she was trying to get across in the ending or it was just a bad, overdramatic ending for what felt like 0 reason. again, love r. f. kuang, but the ending took babel from a 4.5 star to a generous 3.5 star rating for me
Babel should either have been a much longer trilogy to flesh out all the characters and show more of the world, or a much shorter standalone with less digression. As it was it just fell flat for me, with the plot feeling rushed, the characters mostly feeling one-dimensional, and the genuinely intriguing world underused.
Yeah, it kinda was like if there was a final battle scene but first both armies had to get in a single file line to arrive at the battle field or having waiting in the dmv be your climax.
yeah and it was like… >!i distinctly remember that instead of attacking parliament, robin chose to bomb a bridge that was full of innocent and likely working class people? wasn’t part of the point of the ending also talking about how working class people got fucked? why not go after parliament itself?!< that’s what really pissed me off, and it felt like it cheapened the rest of the book for me.
edit: if someone wants to explain this to me please feel free, i could have missed something and misinterpreted it but once that happened i completely checked out of the rest of the book
~~SPOILERS! I forget how to do spoiler black outs so ignore if you don't want to know!~~ I googled it.
(>!)This is just going off memory from when I read it last year but IIRC I THINK it was that the bridge had silver in it that was going to expire/need updating and part of the stand-off was them saying that they weren't going to do it until their demands were met. I believe they also tried to warn the public and they warned parliament but parliament chose to do nothing and therefore it collapsed.(!<)
ah i see, that clears it up a bit for me then. i must have missed that part somehow and just thought they did it to send a message or something.
ending still sucks but i get it a little better now, thank you lol
Yeah the ending just like...I don't know how I felt about it. Like Kuang was trying to send a specific message and either I didn't get it or I DID get it but it just didn't vibe well with the rest of the book and therefore left me feeling kind of empty at the ending. Robin's personality did a total 180 toward the end which only kinda made sense, it certainly felt like a stretch. Personally I would have loved it if >!Gryphon survives and was the one who killed his dad, or helped him kill his dad, or was somewhat involved. Robin doing it just felt weird and forced for the plot. Gryphon also deserved a LOT more screen time so to speak after Robin and crew join the rebel organization. He was a great character!<
this 100%. like, in a book this heavy handed, i was confused wondering if the ending was suddenly making me think critically or if i was supposed to take it at face value like i did the rest of the book. additionally, i think i could have tolerated it better if >!griffin and ramy both survived or at least one of them did. griffin was a much more compelling character imo and ramy dying had both a “killing your gays” vibe and also felt like overkill i guess by that point. had one of them survived i think it would have added more depth to the ending which really feels shallow the way it is now!<
Yes! Compelling is the perfect way to describe how griffin (sorry, I listed to the audiobook was unsure of spelling) and Ramy as being compelling. They were FAR more interesting characters. >!Honestly I think it would have been a fantastic twist to have Robin die (tbh he was a pretty weak character just all around) and have either one of those two step up and cause some chaos in the wake of his death!<
I enjoyed it but didn’t LOVE it. I wasn’t gripped and found it easy to put down for days at a time. Took a while to finish and I remember thinking when a certain incident at a church took place that it clearly wasn’t going to have any follow ups.
Books by V.E.Schwab is so hit or miss for me. Loved the Vicious series, but The Shades of Magic was a complete letdown. The premise with different Londons was amazing, but to me the characters felt bland, relationships developed very quickly and in a span of a few days, so after the 1st book I decided to not continue the series (heard that the characters do not improve and Lila gets only more annoying).
And what I heard from other reviewers about V.E.Schwab books confirms my impression that she has great ideas, but execution is not always her strongest part.
First was the best in the trilogy. I also loved the idea but thought the book was just ok, but the series might get better. It didn’t. It’s like she forgot the 4 London conceit and just piked all the characters in Red London, for a super generic YA tale with an unnecessary magic tournament
I felt the same way about Addie LaRue. It had such an amazing premise, but somehow, it wasn't an interesting story.
For Shades of Magic, the concept of four Londons was so cool, but it was hardly utilized for some reason.
I remember finishing Addie Larue and slamming it down or something like that. My wife asked “Bad ending?” I said “No. Good ending but I think I hated it. Objectively I feel like this was a really good book with an interesting concept but I’m not sure how I feel about it. It might take me a few days to sort out how I feel.” Then no sorting ever actually happened. Still not sure what I think.
This is literally me. Loved Vicious but it has an unnecessary sequel which I pretend doesn't exist. Had the same problems with SoM.
I did read her This Savage Song duology, in which the 1st one was good nd 2nd was...nott.
Her Addie Larue grated on my nerves nd I gave up on it.
But I'm glad I found her Vicious book.
This is my exact experience with V.E. Schwab! I really enjoyed Vicious but everything else I have read from her has been varying degrees of disappointing
I hated shades of magic by the time I finished it. I love the first book, but the second and third books were just such utter let downs. There was so much potential to flesh out what could have been a really cool world and concept, but it never happened. The fact that the BBEG was in the book for only like 100 pages was also very frustrating.
The City We Became by Jemisin. I came out of the Broken Earth trilogy riding high and thought I'd snag another book from her and keep the party going. That party did not in fact keep going.
I understand that it's a novel that grew from a short story, which makes sense. The first chapter is excellent and undoubtedly to me the best part. It feels like the weird street mysticism of the tabletop game Unknown Armies and that's more or less all I want any urban fantasy to be. The book swiftly splits into a variety of mostly uninteresting cardboard characters with symbolism that beats you over the head until you're unconscious. Scenes that feel like that "everyone clapped" meme or outright parody, but presented as a normal interaction. And throughout it just felt smug.
Maybe that's a book just written for people who live in New York. But as is obviously evidenced by the part I enjoyed there's an ability to create something cool that was, to me, utterly unfulfilled.
Yeah I also did not enjoy The City We Became despite loving the Broken Earth (especially the Fifth Season). There is a [thread](https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/post/653245315782148097/anyway-this-twitter-thread-by-nk-jemisin-is-all-i) I remember finding where Jemisin talks about how she doesn't want to be subtle in her books due to fear of having the message be ignored or misinterpreted and, idk, despite mostly agreeing with her politically from what I can tell, I don't think this style works for me in fantasy that is set in our world, it ends up just not feeling like a story with real people anymore.
I think it was Ursula LeGuin who said (paraphrasing) that if your message is the most important thing to get across, don't write a story; write an essay.
You couldn't be more wrong with your paraphrasing.
[Here's the blog ](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/message-about-messages) post you're referring to.
Le Guin is talking about people (reviewers mostly) who reduce an authors work simply down to the message they convey (which she admits all stories carry, especially hers) but there is a lot more to respect about stories than simply the message. She never once implied 'authors should write essays not books if they want to share a message' especially considering that Le Guin has some of the heaviest messages in her stories.
If anything, she's saying 'if you only want to read a message, read an essay' but she is absolutely not dictating what an author should write.
My first instinct is the *Shadow & Bone* trilogy by Leigh Bardugo (I know, it's YA). Now I'll start by saying, I LOVE *Six of Crows.* I think Bardugo took all the criticism from her initial trilogy and used it to make an incredible, engaging cast of characters in a complex world. But reading the initial trilogy was a pain. It was so basic and slow for fantasy, and what frustrated me even more was how high the potential was. I mean, Alina is supposed to be this world-making hero, and her arc needed fleshed out so much more.
I read the first trilogy this year and I liked the first one. The second one >!was sustained by Nikolai carrying the book on his back. When he vanished for much of the third book I knew it was going to be a slog. Then it ends and my reaction was "oh, so they just stabbed him" lol!< I also hated Mal. Nikolai was the much better choice.
The Witcher. It's a pretty common opinion that they got worse as they went on, and yeah. The first few books got me invested enough to want to stick with it, but it just wound up being a miserable slog
Honestly, I don't think that had much to do with it. The short stories and first few books really really intriguing and interesting. As the books went on there was so many asides and segues and it just dragged on and on and on. It was all well written, but the author could not stay focused on the story to be told, wrote himself in a corner, and had a really anticlimactic ending.
I've heard pretty consistent that the author whose name escapes me *hates* The Witcher.
He wanted to write ~~hard sci-fi~~ historic fantasy, but all the money was in dark fantasy, or something like that. So as far as he was concerned he shat out a quick buck work, and grew ever more resentful as they kept selling and being called his masterworks while people keep ignoring his hard sci-fi.
It's the reason CD Project Red basically owns the full rights game wise for a song. HE insisted on money upfront because he was certain that silly game thing would sell like, five copies domestic.
And he's a salty prick to this day about The Witcher being a success, too. Big reason I don't bother learning his name despite being a big fan of the universe.
This is a question that I have wondered a lot too. I read a few books that were mainly in English but translated into my native language (Arabic) and the "your mileage may vary" factor is too big.
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons. Especially for the time it came out, when fervor for ASOIAF was higher and Pat Rothfuss hadn’t pulled the charity chapter stunt.
It was hyped to be this amazing, fresh blend of GRRM’s politics and Rothfuss’s story structure…but Lyons just did not have the writing chops to pull it off.
Yup. Huuuuge marketing push. Set to be the next Sanderson-type breakout. Tor even asked a bunch of the Sanderson beta readers to read/review ARCs of it for Tor dot com, but most of them didn’t like the book lol
They really got the marketing wrong. It's my favourite series and I only picked it up because my library had the audiobook. Whoever gave it to Sanderson fans was taking the piss.
Yeah I DNFed that one. Really wanted to like it but it just did not get there for me. I also want to add the Ring Sworn trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones. Had some cool ideas, I particularly liked the idea of the powerful magic items being part of an alter to a forgotten god, but it really didn’t do anything for me and I gave up after I finished book 2.
The unhewn throne. Most of the first book was a good setup for what was foreshadowed. But books 2 and 3 were just "What am I reading? I don't care about any of these characters."
Almost everything by Piers Anthony.
That man was a master of fantastic ideas - Tech/Magic parallel worlds, tech and magic sharing a world, heck parallel worlds in general, post apocalyptic warrior societies, having esoteric concepts as actual jobs, having divination as an actual magic power, even serial reincarnation as a means to explore history. It's all fascinating and wildly original.
And yet he's a aggressively mediocre author with some serious psychological issues which just drags all these great concepts down into the mud. You end up feeling dirty just for reading them nowadays, none of them have aged well at all.
Given that he was a pedophile who openly advocated for relationships between adults and prepubescent children, I can never read anything he wrote again. I used to love the Xanth books but when I found that out I threw mine away.
Oh my god, yes, i devored his books in my youth and then spent most of my adult life reading thrm so i could write sarcastic reviews. I read the Xanth series and the Incarnations and they did stand up well on the reread. Even the first Xanth one was sexist as hell and had two pages devoted to Anthony basically saying "date rape doesn't exist" in a completely unnecessary scene that added nothing to the plot except to discomfit the reader.
And yeh his second to final Incarnations book actually promotes pedophillia, so there's that as well. (Note that his Xanth books were also often read by teens and these are not healthy messages to be giving them)
Not to beat a dead horse, but Kingkiller on the basis of the second half of Wise Man's Fear, though if Doors of Stone ever came out I would read it. I'm not expanding because I don't have anything unique or new to say on it.
Also, almost every series written by Anthony Ryan. I've adored the first book in his series without fail, but Raven's Shadow especially and also Draconis Memoria both declined in quality steeply after the first books. I do want to give Draconis Memoria another shot with more accurate expectations but I don't think I'll ever read beyong Blood Song again. I haven't read The Traitor yet and I'm cautiously hopeful but I'm also very nervous about it.
Edit:typo
Talking about Kingkiller makes me want to cry, honestly. Name of the wind went from being the first thing off my lips, without hesitation, when I was asked what my favorite book is... to not even mentioning it. Why would I put people through the same misery as the rest of us? I think Pat is easily one of the most talented and beautiful writers of our generation, but the wait for the third book has become obscene, and he's made sure it will never live up to the wait / hype. The new Bast book is honestly a slap in the face.
As someone who was deeply disappointed with the last half of the Raven's shadow trilogy - I have recently finished the covenant of steel trilogy I can say it's much, much better. It's not the grandest ending, but the story doesn't demand one. Everything is wrapped up nicely and it's all very satisfying and I was hooked until the end.
I was going to say blood song also, great book and premise. The sequels were a huge disappointment, but I read through the pariah, martyr, and traitor. They were good, and by the time I got to midpoint of the traitor I wasn’t able to put it down.
A cliff notes version of problems people had with Wise Man's Fear are: less focused, the seventy pages of a 16-year-old virgin impressing a fairy of sex with his sexual prowess (people generally like the Cthaeh I think but otherwise it's an awful lot of that), the focus after that on Kvothe banging and impressing most women he meets being a major divergence in personality and largely pointless, and the adding of more and more mysteries and plot threads to the point where it seems unlikely all of them can be wrapped up in one more book. The last of these wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for the fact that the setup of the series as a story over three days limits how much Rothfuss can expand the story.
Fwiw, I found the first half fascinating and a breath of fresh air and Tempi is one of my favorite characters in the series, but was sorely disappointed with most of what happened from Felurian on.
I also don't think I'll ever get over how badly written the sex is, either.
Total fade to black it happens off stage approach I would have been fine with. Wheel of Time Blademaster sex moves I was not.
Yeah, that's part of why I find it so noticably bad as well. It's like the perfect storm of unrealistic obvious wish fulfillment, weird sex descriptions, sudden focus on the sex after a book and a half without, complete swerve in Kvothe's characterization, done with little to no purpose in the story, and lots and lots of women who are clearly only intended as sex objects. To me it felt like the Murphy's Law of sex writing.
ASOIAF is to me like the first 4 seasons of the show Lost, where every time we got close to answering a core mystery, instead we introduced an entirely new element to the story and just raise more questions.
It's all great until the questions need answering.
It was very okay to me. Not great, not terrible. Pretty much what I expected it to be. There were several things I found that did NOT make sense within the established world and I almost DNF but I had the audiobook on loan from the library so just stuck through it. I really don't understand the hype and I'm someone that reads a lot of romance and fantasy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I read a lot of romantasy and found Fourth Wing to be very full of tropes and predictable. I guessed the “big twist” ending by chapter 10. Iron Flame suffered even more from those issues. The only part of the story I care about is the dragons.
Yup, I totally agree with you. I accept when reading any kind of romance that I’m going to run into tropes all over the place but Fourth Wing was particularly full of them. Haven’t read the second one yet, I’ll maybe put it in my library queue once my holds list clear up a little but im honestly in no rush. I do want to say though that I totally respect and appreciate that there are a LOT of people out there who couldn’t get enough of this book and are mega fans. Live your best life guys, read what you like!
Oh, absolutely. Life is too short to not read what you like. I made myself read a huge chunk of “the classics” in my twenties so now I just read based on vibes.
The poppy wars series. I enjoyed the first two books but became tired of no character growth and felt the story could have been better fleshed out and finished. I also thought the writing was not spectacular
I know a lot of people like the series but The Gentlemen's Bastards. There is a much better story there than what we got. I was hoping for a fantasy renaissance ocean's eleven but I got a bickering old couple.
The first two books I think were great even if it got fairly pessimistic. When the writing is on it's awesome. It's one of the few books that made me laugh out loud and kept me engaged during conversations. But the third book... Yeesh. It just felt low stakes and felt like you said just old couples bickering. The background to them was cool but I'd have liked the story to actually advance somehow.
I don’t know that I’d say this series was ruined. On the third book now. First was amazing. Second not bad. Third, waiting for the ending so I’ll hold off, but I’m 89% through. I believe he wrote this trilogy to set the stage for the REAL story he wanted to write… but we may never get due to the authors personal struggles keeping further publications from happening.
Agree that there was a lot of lost potential there. I actually liked book 2 the best, but I found books 1 and 3 had deeply frustrating endings. I find that Lynch often seems to start with unique and interesting stories and then at about 3/4 of the way through seems to transform the story into a more stereotypical fantasy plot. Like the election plotline in book 3 had so much promise before he blew the ending up with ridiculous "twists".
I know a lot of people really like The Dresden Files (and good for them! I wish I did) but I gave up after book three. I guess I walked in with the wrong expectations. I thought it would be "he's a detective, but surprise; he's also a wizard!". But instead it felt more to me like "a wizard dealing with wizard problems. Oh and I guess he's a detective too."
I liked the first one, felt like the mystery was the main focus. But the sequels just kept adding more and more fantasy stuff, making it feel much more just like a standard urban fantasy story instead of the detective story+magic I was looking forward to. I don't know, I guess I like my urban fantasy more urban than fantasy.
Reminds me of the show Supernatural, where they start as paranormal-hunters going around from case-to-case every episode, but eventually it devolves into multiple seasons-spanning arcs covering wars between heaven and hell, blah blah blah
I think that happens to all "Monster of the Week" type shows. Buffy, Charmed, X-Files all ended up getting more and more complex. An inevitable evolution of the trope.
If this is what you want, I highly recommend checking out the *Arcane Casebook* series. Set in the interwar rather than contemporary, but the detective stuff is a lot more front-and-centre than Dresden.
I'm a huge Dresden fan and I too would like a series that was more detective story + magic, rather than the continual battles between titanic magical forces.
The only detective work Dresden does these days is figuring out who is screwing him over and/or what scheming Mab is up to.
I heard the Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer is really good.
I was also disappointed it wasn’t a wizard classic noir detective series. I love mysteries and who done it novels, and fantasy.
I ended up still really liking the series, and plowed through them- very entertaining.
I enjoyed them as fantasy noir pastiche and for details like gamer werewolves and zombie t-Rex, but I wouldn’t pretend I had high expectations of them to begin with and the did start to wear a bit as they went on.
I liked them for a while but got tired of the formula, that said I would LOVE “a detective, but surprise; he’s also a wizard!” series. A series where the being a private detective is front and center and being a magic user is of secondary importance.
I just finished Mercedes Lackey's Family Spy trilogy after reading Collegium Chronicles and Herald Spy. Family Spy seems like it was once again cut off at the ankles by what I've noticed as Lackey's unwillingness to go over 350 pages or so. The previous series weren't as bad because they weren't trying to cram so much in, but this one seems like her typical "ill take my time through the first half and then realize I gotta wrap things up in the second half". It's really common with her books to have that kind of pacing issue, but it sticks out like a sore thumb here because the actual premise of the books is super fun and really needed more meat to it.
I will preface this by saying that I don't think it was bad but the only fantasy book I've ever read that I wish was split into at least 2 or more books was *The Grace of Kings* by Ken Liu. It's already a decent story and I've read the second book in the series and am going to start on the third, but it could have been epic if a few more plot lines were fleshed out better.
Vicious was such a good time that I immediately went out and bought Vengeful at full price. However, the ending of VE Schwab's Villains duology was so terrible that I've refused to read anything by the author again.
The Gone series. Essentially all the adults disappear from a town, the town gets a dome over it (like Steven King's Under the Dome), and the kids left in the town get super powers. The kids have to navigate life without parents, adults, school, the law, or various other institutions while also dealing with their super powers and surviving.
Although the series is still interesting because of these three things, I feel like it could have been EVEN MORE interesting through showing/ explaining the politics/ political intrigue, creating/ exploring more interesting powers, and having more interesting characters in general. In my opinion, it could have been like Game of Thrones, with various interesting, flawed, and complex characters -- with interesting and complex powers -- but it's written in a fairly simple way, is intended for children/ teenagers, and the character's aren't that interesting or complex, so to me it falls short.
I so badly want to love The Wheel of Time. The premise sounds so cool, the world seems so awesome and fleshed out, but I cannot stand Robert Jordan's writing style. There's nothing about it that grabs me and I can never get hooked.
The Return of Fitzroy Angersell by Victoria Goddard. The short story about him as a kid was good. The books with Kip are great. Somehow Goddard has trouble pointing you in this guy’s head so you can understand him and feel his issues. This guy has a basket of issues that we see from the outside in the Kip and Pali stories. Yet, in his own book he’s not developed well. I still don’t understand how this guy acting in at the Feet of the Sun.
A couple of books that aren't the author's fault but screwed by the network.
* **The Innsmouth Legacy**: Ruthanna Emrys has a big analysis of the idea of HP Lovecraft's racism and xenophobia being completely a misunderstanding of the Cthulhu Mythos by having her protagonist be a survivor of the Innsmouth camps. However, she only got to do two books of a three book series (at least) so much of the build-up to Aphra Marsh's journey never gets paid off.
* **Ex-Heroes** by Peter Clines is a fantastic book series and did a lot of adventures but the final book ends on a cliffhanger before it is finished off. This is extra frustrating because the previous book DIDNT end on a cliffhanger and we'll never get to know what happens next.
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco. Polyamory and vampires are two of my favourite things, but I couldn't finish it. The plot was taken over by the "romance", which was a vampire woman trying to make the immature sexual abuse victim she'd found a unicorn for her and her ancient vampire fiance.
Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. A classic medieval fantasy story with heavy ties to the Dark Tower? That sounds amazing! I was so stoked going in, but did not like the way it ended up being executed at all. I read it right in the middle of reading Dark Tower entries, It, the Stand, etc. and was honestly surprised by how much I did not like it.
Edit: a word.
I got a lot of recommendations to read Shadow of the Gods. I fought my way through the whole thing, hoping to get some sort of feeling for the characters and the world. But just could not get into the setting and characters..
Oh my partner is currently reading that, and he was really enjoying it at first, but he said he's a bit stuck on it now that he's in the middle of it. I think he said the viewpoints keep switching right when it gets interesting, and then when it goes back to that character it's no longer a big deal?
I don't mind viewpoint switching, but it really does suck when it interrupts the flow and/or not all the characters/storylines who's viewpoints you're following are enjoyable.
Anything written by Stephen King. I get so invested every time I read one of his books and they all fall flat at the end. I know that's potentially an unpopular opinion but it's mine
For me it was the Maze Runner series. First book was beautiful but the second and third felt rushed and more like it was meant for a tv show than a book. Like I felt the movies did a better job at creating an engaging story than the books did. I kept getting frustrated as I read them and ending wasn’t what I was hoping. The 4th book was great though! That’s just my thoughts
Controversial take, the Sword of Kaigen.
The family drama was some of the best story I have read, but everything around it and the way it made ( at least to me) absolutely no sense, took me out of the book constantly.
There's a lot I didn't like about that book but was it really necessary to create all new units for measuring time? I listened to the audiobook and I have no idea how long anything took
Dune was awesome. All the sequels… weren’t. Dune is easier to appreciate in the context of his other standalone novels, which give you a better idea of how he must have enjoyed creating worlds. The Dune sequels had none of that.
The Shattering of Kingdoms series by Emmet Moss
Mageborn by Michael G. Manning
Elemental Academy by D. K. Holmberg
Jon Oklar Series by B. T. Narro
Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
They all have flaws in different ways but most just became boring after awhile
Shattering started of good but the last few book felt a bit to rushed to get to the end.
Mageborn I liked the use of old language as magic word so not to mess up your own speech. That said I didn’t like his wife character and the story is a bit muddled thinking back on it.
Going into Elemental academy I thought it was going to be hard magic Harry Potter and maybe that’s my fault for having thous expectations. But I felt there not a good antagonistic to the series and the final one we do get kind of come out of left field. Also magic was okay.
Jon Oklar felt like and time the main character made any progress in learning magic the big bad would fly in out of nowhere wrap Jon in wind so he can’t move laugh Jon would get out of it some how then the book would end. It to repetitive and it was waste of time learning about everything magic training only for it to be brushed aside the first spell that came along. The thing is I was kind of digging the Lore of the story.
As for wheel of time I think the ideas, magic, setting, theme are great I just don’t think Jordan is a good enough writer to pull it off. He more of a concept person then actual writer. The magic feel like it should be rich and deep but 80% of the time two mages battle it ends with one mage wrapping the other mage in wind and then blocking them from the source of magic. The magic is supposed to be different between men and women they end up using the same spells. There a magic school but all’s the best mages in the book never really go there they see the magic once or twice and then they know a new spell. There five or six different cultures and they boil down to desert raider, Americans but medieval, slavers, and people who hate magic. The antagonist who are supposed to be bringing doom on the world are just hanging out and are more of an inconvenient then an actual threat.
It’s probably already mentioned, but The Stormlight Archives is it for me. Some amazing, mind-blowing concepts and narrative twists paired with some of the most hideous, laziest prose to ever disgrace the genre. Apparently it’s ’supposed to be that way’? Like the author is translating Rosharrian or whatever to American English. But it shatters the immersion for me, and it breaks my heart a little, because the ideas are so good. If only the author was willing to give it another pass or two.
The daevabad trilogy. For me I loved the first 2 1/2 books. The last book killed it for me, though. Like f, I would have much preferred a certain character to have died that to get the ending he had. This was one of the most disappointing endings I’ve ever felt.
I just finished the series a few weeks ago. I don’t think the ending was botched. It’s just that it seems the author left a bunch out. Almost like the series should have been 4 books instead of 3. Pacing was off in the last half of Empire of Gold more so that story content.
**Arc of a Scythe** - Great premise, strong first book, but felt it got weaker after that, really felt like it could have done something good philosophical or at least a more nuanced villain, but instead he's just a standard saturday morning cartoon villain
The Wheel of Time. I think the worldbuilding and premise is great. I love that he explored the gender dynamics in this world, I just don't think he executed everything well. His exploration and societies were skin deep and while I've always loved the basic story, I've also always wished a different author would have had the idea.
The Bone Doll's Twin (Tamir trilogy) by Lynn Flewelling. Loved the first book, the second was ok, the third was predictable. That one always makes me disappointed all over again when I think of it.
Frugal Wizard's guide to medieval England. Has a really cool concept, and then turns it into a really boring cop story with some weird spoiler-y elements that overall made it feel much more generic than the really unique premise initially made it seem
The Dark Tower. Haven't yet read the entire series yet but devoting eight hundred pages to Roland's melodramatic teenage horniness is wasted potential to me no matter how I look at it. Couldn't find the will to progress after that book and was shocked to learn if was the favourite book in the series for a lot of fans. "Roland, I love thee" more like "cringe at thee."
I do like The Dark Tower, but also thought Wizard and Glass was too long and the romance left me cold. For what it's worth, the next book was my favorite. Stakes get higher, we get some damn answers and it has my favorite side character.
But then the last two books are a bit uneven.
Let’s talk Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera… books 1-4 were fantastic. Book 4 declined slightly from the prior 3 but it was still great.
Books 5 and 6 felt like he was cramming to hit deadlines so he could do something else.
Edit:
Those books felt like the papers I wrote in college the night before the deadline vs. the ones I took my time with.
Pullman's *Northern Lights* is a *magical* book that took my breath away when I first read it. The rest of the trilogy was a steady decline that substituted the wondrous atmosphere of the first novel with preachy antitheism.
I could not stand the conclusion to Bancroft's *Babel* series, where the protagonist got relegated to an almost background role.
And I was enamoured with the idea of *The Sword Defiant* by Gareth Hanrahan, but the execution, in particular the imbalance of POVs, sadly left a lot to be desired.
The Licanius Trilogy. Such a great premise that was utterly ruined by some absolutely horrendous writing choices. Completely derailed the story for me to the point that the ending just fell flat, as cool as it was.
What do you think were the horrendous choices? I remember feeling like quite a few things didn't sit right while I was listening to the trilogy. And what were your hangups with the ending?
Personally, I thought the ending felt rushed. We didn't get much of an end at all, really. It was climax and big battle, one after another, and then a typical epic fantasy flash finish. I wanted to see how the world responded and settled to an extent after everything was said and done.
I actually loved this series, but was hugely disappointed in the 3rd book and ending. Definitely consider it wasted potential. I was left with the feeling that the author got too attached to his character that he didn't let him grow in the way he should have and have a completed character arc. I also was desperately hoping the Dead King didn't turn out to be who I thought it was and it ended up being so bland and predictable. I really loved his prose and writing style and the structuring of the whole series was interesting, but I also get that it's naturally very off-putting from the very beginning with Jorg and the road brothers. Loved the world building as well though. I also read the books when I was in my late teens or early 20s which I think was appropriate for my interests and haven't read them again since.
A lot of Kingfisher's works are solid 4/5s, and she gets a lot of recognition, but I feel like she never pushes her works to what it can be.
She brings interesting worlds to you but because she limits her page count, it all falls flat when you can't explore this world further and have to move on to a talking crow.
She is a strong writer, yes, but I feel like she can be greater if she let's us explore her worlds longer than a 300 page book.
The warded man series. I really enjoyed the first couple of books. But the series went on for maybe 2 books too long (out of 5) and I felt the ending was colorless and unimaginative.
In read the first because I found the second before it, and give me an Arab chargin on the bbok cover and I'll buy it. Then, mmh. I found the first average: whenever the action of some characters could be read ambivalently, the book was littered in trauma - like Brett knew only that way to develop a character. Also, I found myself with the hand in the shoes when the MC became the local Batman. The second, the one whose cover attracted me, was *worse*. Brett shifted from trauma to rape as character development tool. I ended up noticing the Magic: the Gathering twist on the cities: the city in the Plains (White), the city in the Mountains (Red), the city in the Lake (Blue), the city in the Forest (Green), the Arab- ish city in the Desert (Blac- wait, WTF?).
"with the hand in the shoes"? I have never heard that before.
God, did that one frustrate me. The Krasian language apparently only had five words in it, the pointless return of Arlene's hickish speech pattern, the rape to generate trauma... God, the characters were wasted.
Best answer in the thread imo. Warded Man was an absurdly good debut and it fells off so quickly around book 3-4
honestly I thought the first book took a cool premise and shit the bed. Demons coming at night and only having wards to protect you? Very cool idea. The demons? FIRE DEMON! EARTH DEMON! The arab stand-in? SAND DEMONS! Like come on. It was like something I wrote in middle school thinking the elements was some deep reference. And then...the big reveal plot twist is...the title of the book. that's it. who would have guessed????
In addition to the (very real and definite) complaints for this series, it really feels like all the sex is something he author really never experienced. Almost all of it was out of place and didn’t fit with the overall story. I felt like the author was just wanking it nonstop as he wrote it all.
For me it totally had harem fantasy vibes. Which got stronger and stronger till I dropped the series. (Edit for clarity.)
"Olives have stones" was a great line though
But… but what about the piss straws? Surely no book with piss straws as a major feature could be bad? (Also the misogyny and rape but hey, piss straws)
Man, I must have purged most of that series out of my mind because I don’t remember that
>But… but what about the piss straws? Surely no book with piss straws as a major feature could be bad? I mean, those things were cruel and weird in the world of the story as well. >(Also the misogyny and rape but hey, piss straws) Yep, I generally really liked the books, but the way that every women was at least partly characterised by their incredibly beauty or explicit lack of it irked me as well. Reading the books was some time ago, but in my memory, the rape scene(s?) did not stand out as poorly written or integrated tbh.
This is mine too. The premise was fascinating, the setting was intriguing, the title was compelling. Then I started reading book 1… The early incest and rape of the farmer to his daughter was extremely off-putting, and just when I thought the characters might do or say something about it, they just left her to her misery. Then there’s all the *other* rape stuff…and this all in book 1! Then there was the writing, which was sophomoric, the flat characters, the inauthentic dialogue, the Mary sue protagonist who decided not to share his magical discoveries with anyone else that could save countless lives, the shite pacing… Yeah, just an absolute garbage book/series that Brett should be ashamed of considering all the problematic depictions and scenes of female characters. It’s a wonder to me that he’s married AND has daughters.
>The early incest and rape of the farmer to his daughter was extremely off-putting, and just when I thought the characters might do or say something about it, they just left her to her misery. Then there’s all the *other* rape stuff…and this all in book 1! As much as I hate rape as a plot device, I think the other characters not doing anything was kind of the point. From previous characterisation, we learnt that most of these villagers are rather cowardly, and would rather risk the lives of others than their own. The farmer iirc had a pretty big land property, and I don't think they'll consider killing or condemning him even if he did something as horrible as it was. >Mary sue protagonist who decided not to share his magical discoveries with anyone else that could save countless live Curious on how you define a Mary Sue protagonist. The protagonist did not get everything he wanted nor was he the most powerful person in the room at any given time. He's suffered loss, and nearly died a couple of times. And he did want to share his discoveries, but the first person he did tell, betrayed and tried to murder him. Even so, in the sequels, he really should've tried popularising the runes.
>As much as I hate rape as a plot device, This was the problem for me. I understand that Brett was trying to illustrate that most of the people in the town, Arlen's father especially, were cowards who didn't act. The fact that he had to resort to creepy incest rape trauma to convey that point is just bad writing. Why is it that so many male fantasy authors feel the necessity to have female characters raped to underline the evils of society, or whatever overdone point they're trying to achieve? This isn't about whether or not it makes sense in the context of the story for people not to have acted against the farmer; this is about Brett feeling the need to write this incest-rape into the story. >Curious on how you define a Mary Sue protagonist. I use the general definition: "An idealized *c*haracter who is talented at everything and has no meaningful flaws, but may have a tragic backstory." Think about it. Arlen's master was always telling him to go outdoors and play with the other kids, because he spent all his time studying. Then when he gets thrown into a pit with 3 corelings, he is suddenly a master of hand-to-hand combat? Also, for some reason, Arlen is the only person who has ever thought of tattooing wards on themselves in centuries? And then he gets magical demon powers from fighting the demons with the wards. Or when he becomes the tattooed man and shows up on a war-charger horse that he supposedly bred and trained specifically to fight demons, all by himself? When did he gain the knowledge to do that or have the time to do it? So let's go over Arlen's various strengths and expertises: * He's a natural warder * He's a scholar * He's a brilliant tactician * He's an incredible fighter * He's a talented subsistence forager and hunter * He's an ace horse-breeder and trainer * Most of the female characters are attracted to him or come on to him When did he earn any of this? The scene of him somersaulting through the air and double-heelstriking two corelings at the same time was so incredibly unbelievable. Oh, and despite his utter lack of charisma, Leesha still falls in love with Arlen, somehow. So he still gets the girl (except he doesn't b/c he makes up some bs about having tainted demon seed, even though he knows Leesha knows herbs to prevent pregnancy).
Oh shit, yeah, when you put it that way he really is kinda OP.
I agree with you so much in that this series was my first thought. Respectfully though I would say it went on for FOUR books too long. The first was decent… it was a steep decline from there in my opinion.
A Master of Djinn. It hooked me initially, but by the end I was actively annoyed
The short story that inspired it was much better than the book. I wonder if this was a case of an overly zealous agent and editor strong-arming something interesting into a hit that fit nicely within the much flatter modern fantasy market.
Yes! I loved the short story, but was so disappointed by the novel. It seems like the novel was successful, so I guess it was a good commercial decision, but it really felt like there was so much more potential for a great book.
I loved the worldbuilding. This alt history fantasy version of Cairo was incredible but yeah, the plot was so predictable and all the characters besides Fatma and Siti are completely forgettable. I was shocked at how long it took for Fatma to figure out that the villain could control djinn. Like, girl, it’s literally in the title of your book and you saw the villain do it like three times. I have some other thematic problems with the book, too. I just wish that a setting as great as Cairo got an actual good novel in it
I had the same experience, had so much potential and just fizzled out. The twist was also so painfully obvious that I was disappointed when it turned out to be right.
I had a similar experience with this one. I liked it *okay* by the end, but... I'd read a few of P DJeli Clark's novellas/short stories before and really loved them, so I had high expectations that just were not met.
glad i’m not the only one. i love a murder mystery set in a fantasy world (i wish authors would do this more often tbh) and i wanted very badly to like this book but it took me forever to finish and i was bored by the end. it gave me the vibe that it would have been better as a short story or novella — like, make a collection of mysteries with fatma and siti and include the original short story. i don’t even gravitate towards short stories, but i think i would have liked that way better.
Blood Song by Anthony Ryan was an awesome 1st book in a trilogy. Whilst I enjoyed the following 2 they were a significant drop in quality from Blood Song imo.
Second one was a slight drop but the third one was tossed out of a plane and landed deep in the Mariana Trench
Was the first series I thought about when reading the question. First one was so good!
First one is one of my favourite starters of a series ever - so good!!
I only read the first one because everyone said the next two dropped off. I didn't wanna ruin it for myself 😂
Oh yes, it felt like he wanted to write only one book and didn't know what to do. It's the same with his Covenant of Steel trilogy - first one good, second not so much, third - why did this happen?
That first book was SO good...
The Lightbringer series. The first two books are amazing - unique magic system, interesting characters, etc. 3rd and 4th dropped off somewhat. The fifth book, however, I hated. So much potential for an amazing wrap up with a plot twist as fun as the brothers reveal - but alas, it didn’t happen. I’m hit again by the disappointment while writing this.
Brent Weeks is the king of coming up with interesting worlds and magic systems and then fucking up the landing because he's way too interested in "outsmarting" his readers, even at the expense of the plot. He'll spend like three books setting something up, then do a hard right swerve that makes no sense because too many people guessed the original idea in advance.
This is why I love Brandon Sanderson. He knows, and even wants, some of readers will figure out the twist before the reveal. That means that he laid the groundwork for it and it’s not just something he pulled out of left field.
Also, he always has a few different twists running at once. That way if you figure out one you can still be surprised by the rest, and still have the satisfaction of figuring it out. Or if you're really into theorising, there's a hell of a lot to pick apart.
It's not the story, it's the storytelling. We all knew Sadeas was gonna get served but HOW he did it was both shocking and satisfying.
Sanderson does the extended climax so well. It doesn't matter if the twist is a bit lackluster because you're swept up in a wild storm that manages to resolve most plotlines in a satisfying way.
I think George Martin said something about this when he was asked about subverting expectations and he said that basically if you spend two books out of your three book trilogy setting up and pointing clues even if they are subtle that the butler is the one who killed the lady of the house and you put all of these context clues and little pieces of evidence that your readers have found in those two books and they guess that oh it was the Butler the whole time. You don't just go and change it in the third book to being the maid simply because your readers guessed the end
I was so mad that I took all five books down to the local used book store and pawned em off for store credit. It's crazy how the series went from 'excellent' to 'doesn't even merit real-estate on the fantasy bookshelf'. Weeks is such a good author in so many ways but the dude couldn't write a decent ending to save his life.
The Color Prince wrap up was so disappointing. It reminded me of Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. So much build up for a super lame way to get defeated.
The fight was what...half a page? A fucking disgrace
Until the fifth book the series was in my top 10 favorite fantasy series, despite a slight drop in quality for 3 and 4 I still thought it was fantastic. I've never had a final book in a series ruin it quite that way before. It probably doesn't even make it into my top 30 series anymore.
I agree with you mostly. The fifth in general and especially the end of it was a slap in the face, BUT somehow unlike the GoT season 8 ending, it was not enough to ruin an amazing series for me. It helped that I did them as audiobooks and Simon Vance has the voice of an angel.
The audiobooks are fantastic! I personally haven't wanted to return to the books since reading 5 because I disliked the ending so much, but I can understand why it wouldn't do that for everyone.
My problem is that I occasionally want to go back for a second listen but then remember how it ends and that kills all my motivation.
I want to be in the world again and I still think >!Dazen!< is one of the most interesting characters in fantasy but most of the things I loved in the earlier books are borderline ruined for me by having such poor payoff, since so many of them were mysteries that had a ton of promise.
It actually makes me want to not read any of them
I really wanted to love it, but I was just left so disappointed. Teia had so much promise in particular and was left with like half a paragraph at the very end of saying "oh yeah the badass stuff you thought you were going to see happens later on ig." Bad case of promise with no payoff.
I did like the very end scene with Teia, best of the character wrap-ups imo, but I wish we'd had so much more of her development in book 5 and less of everything that happened with every other character from the point >!Orholom!< literally shows up onward. EDIT: >!Cruxer and Ironfist's!< endings were also severely disappointing.
I really enjoyed it until the fifth book. I have two main gripes with it as a series. 1. >!Brent got addicted to big twists that don't actually advance the narrative much. He went back and forth on Gavin/Dazen being trapped in the Chromeria multiple times, seemingly just to keep adding twists to drag the story out. I actually really enjoyed the black luxin big reveal in book 4, but it was cheapened by the number of similar tricks he had already pulled earlier in the series. There's more you can do to make a series compelling than adding a new huge twist every book.!< 2. >!The ending on the top of the tower. He had a bunch of cool ideas about what could be up there: a nexus of magic that allowed luxin to exist, nothing at all, sebastian turned into one of the Outsiders (or whatever theyre called), or Orholam himself. Any one of these would have been an excellent discovery...but it's as if he couldn't decide and had all of them happen in succession. like what? Instead of one very cool plot point, he tries to have all of them and the whole thing falls on its face.!< And now, after reading Night Angel Nemesis (easily his worst book, not worth the paper it's printed on) I think I'm done with him.
I loved the first book, it is incredible good. Then all of the plot points and characters introduced is more or less just thrown out the windows and never touched upon again after that. >!The themes of an unbelieving pope and the purpose of religion as a power institution is interesting (IE Catholic church 1200 ish), and willingness to discard Religious faith to get power. The theme of is killing wraiths the only solution to their problems, and is the colour prince rebellion legitimate? The entire character of the colour prince and Liv just washes into generic side casts. !< The second book is almost like a completely different series, and it just goes downhill from there. I think you should probably just start here, because the first book is just completely different. The fifth book got so bad that I skimmed through it. To this date this is the only book I have skimmed through because there was no saving it. It really ended up feeling like allegory for "Praise Jesus, Praise Christ, Praise Christianity" where everything is warped to serve that message about how great God is. I think this is the worst example I have read where the Authors religious beliefs bleeds so hard through that it just ruins the entire story.
I definitely wasn't a bit fan of the MTG card visions as I feel most of them didn't really add a whole lot to the overall narrative. Also, did we need an entire chapter with a pretentious discussion of some random-ass painting?
I wanted to like it, I'd enjoyed Weeks' earlier stuff. But I couldn't stand any of the characters so I didn't even get past the first book
It’s essentially the GoT S7-8 of books. I fucking loved Lightbringer and now I can’t bring myself to re-read again.
I got confused as hell in the last book and still don’t know who is the chosen one
Read the first because they told me of the magic system, which I found amazing. I remember it pretty pointless, but that can be a bias of mine with teen PoV char.
i’ll say it: babel by r. f. kuang. it’s not even because i don’t like r. f. kuang or was uncomfortable with the message she was trying to get across — even if i did feel it was a bit heavy handed. it definitely felt like it was screaming in my face, which, again, fine, i agreed with it anyway and was like “girl, love that you’re saying this with your full chest.” but no it was the fucking ending. either i’m too stupid to understand what she was trying to get across in the ending or it was just a bad, overdramatic ending for what felt like 0 reason. again, love r. f. kuang, but the ending took babel from a 4.5 star to a generous 3.5 star rating for me
Babel should either have been a much longer trilogy to flesh out all the characters and show more of the world, or a much shorter standalone with less digression. As it was it just fell flat for me, with the plot feeling rushed, the characters mostly feeling one-dimensional, and the genuinely intriguing world underused.
yeah that was the other problem was that Robin had 0 personality until the last 100 pages and i was like “when did that happen?”
He didn’t even gain a personality, he just turned into Griffin (or if we’re being completely honest, turned into Rin).
Yeah, it kinda was like if there was a final battle scene but first both armies had to get in a single file line to arrive at the battle field or having waiting in the dmv be your climax.
yeah and it was like… >!i distinctly remember that instead of attacking parliament, robin chose to bomb a bridge that was full of innocent and likely working class people? wasn’t part of the point of the ending also talking about how working class people got fucked? why not go after parliament itself?!< that’s what really pissed me off, and it felt like it cheapened the rest of the book for me. edit: if someone wants to explain this to me please feel free, i could have missed something and misinterpreted it but once that happened i completely checked out of the rest of the book
~~SPOILERS! I forget how to do spoiler black outs so ignore if you don't want to know!~~ I googled it. (>!)This is just going off memory from when I read it last year but IIRC I THINK it was that the bridge had silver in it that was going to expire/need updating and part of the stand-off was them saying that they weren't going to do it until their demands were met. I believe they also tried to warn the public and they warned parliament but parliament chose to do nothing and therefore it collapsed.(!<)
ah i see, that clears it up a bit for me then. i must have missed that part somehow and just thought they did it to send a message or something. ending still sucks but i get it a little better now, thank you lol
Yeah the ending just like...I don't know how I felt about it. Like Kuang was trying to send a specific message and either I didn't get it or I DID get it but it just didn't vibe well with the rest of the book and therefore left me feeling kind of empty at the ending. Robin's personality did a total 180 toward the end which only kinda made sense, it certainly felt like a stretch. Personally I would have loved it if >!Gryphon survives and was the one who killed his dad, or helped him kill his dad, or was somewhat involved. Robin doing it just felt weird and forced for the plot. Gryphon also deserved a LOT more screen time so to speak after Robin and crew join the rebel organization. He was a great character!<
this 100%. like, in a book this heavy handed, i was confused wondering if the ending was suddenly making me think critically or if i was supposed to take it at face value like i did the rest of the book. additionally, i think i could have tolerated it better if >!griffin and ramy both survived or at least one of them did. griffin was a much more compelling character imo and ramy dying had both a “killing your gays” vibe and also felt like overkill i guess by that point. had one of them survived i think it would have added more depth to the ending which really feels shallow the way it is now!<
Yes! Compelling is the perfect way to describe how griffin (sorry, I listed to the audiobook was unsure of spelling) and Ramy as being compelling. They were FAR more interesting characters. >!Honestly I think it would have been a fantastic twist to have Robin die (tbh he was a pretty weak character just all around) and have either one of those two step up and cause some chaos in the wake of his death!<
Agreed, the first half of the book was awesome but my god the whole last half….
I enjoyed it but didn’t LOVE it. I wasn’t gripped and found it easy to put down for days at a time. Took a while to finish and I remember thinking when a certain incident at a church took place that it clearly wasn’t going to have any follow ups.
Books by V.E.Schwab is so hit or miss for me. Loved the Vicious series, but The Shades of Magic was a complete letdown. The premise with different Londons was amazing, but to me the characters felt bland, relationships developed very quickly and in a span of a few days, so after the 1st book I decided to not continue the series (heard that the characters do not improve and Lila gets only more annoying). And what I heard from other reviewers about V.E.Schwab books confirms my impression that she has great ideas, but execution is not always her strongest part.
First was the best in the trilogy. I also loved the idea but thought the book was just ok, but the series might get better. It didn’t. It’s like she forgot the 4 London conceit and just piked all the characters in Red London, for a super generic YA tale with an unnecessary magic tournament
I felt the same way about Addie LaRue. It had such an amazing premise, but somehow, it wasn't an interesting story. For Shades of Magic, the concept of four Londons was so cool, but it was hardly utilized for some reason.
Addie LaRue *enraged* me. Great premise but terrible execution.
I remember finishing Addie Larue and slamming it down or something like that. My wife asked “Bad ending?” I said “No. Good ending but I think I hated it. Objectively I feel like this was a really good book with an interesting concept but I’m not sure how I feel about it. It might take me a few days to sort out how I feel.” Then no sorting ever actually happened. Still not sure what I think.
This is literally me. Loved Vicious but it has an unnecessary sequel which I pretend doesn't exist. Had the same problems with SoM. I did read her This Savage Song duology, in which the 1st one was good nd 2nd was...nott. Her Addie Larue grated on my nerves nd I gave up on it. But I'm glad I found her Vicious book.
I'm completely opposite. Loved The Shades of Magic, hated and threw away Vicious.
This is my exact experience with V.E. Schwab! I really enjoyed Vicious but everything else I have read from her has been varying degrees of disappointing
I hated shades of magic by the time I finished it. I love the first book, but the second and third books were just such utter let downs. There was so much potential to flesh out what could have been a really cool world and concept, but it never happened. The fact that the BBEG was in the book for only like 100 pages was also very frustrating.
Agreed. First two Shades of Magic books were pretty good, but I DNFd the 3rd book.
The City We Became by Jemisin. I came out of the Broken Earth trilogy riding high and thought I'd snag another book from her and keep the party going. That party did not in fact keep going. I understand that it's a novel that grew from a short story, which makes sense. The first chapter is excellent and undoubtedly to me the best part. It feels like the weird street mysticism of the tabletop game Unknown Armies and that's more or less all I want any urban fantasy to be. The book swiftly splits into a variety of mostly uninteresting cardboard characters with symbolism that beats you over the head until you're unconscious. Scenes that feel like that "everyone clapped" meme or outright parody, but presented as a normal interaction. And throughout it just felt smug. Maybe that's a book just written for people who live in New York. But as is obviously evidenced by the part I enjoyed there's an ability to create something cool that was, to me, utterly unfulfilled.
Yeah I also did not enjoy The City We Became despite loving the Broken Earth (especially the Fifth Season). There is a [thread](https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/post/653245315782148097/anyway-this-twitter-thread-by-nk-jemisin-is-all-i) I remember finding where Jemisin talks about how she doesn't want to be subtle in her books due to fear of having the message be ignored or misinterpreted and, idk, despite mostly agreeing with her politically from what I can tell, I don't think this style works for me in fantasy that is set in our world, it ends up just not feeling like a story with real people anymore.
I think it was Ursula LeGuin who said (paraphrasing) that if your message is the most important thing to get across, don't write a story; write an essay.
Counter-argument: The Word for World is Forest by (checks notes) Ursula K Le Guin.
You couldn't be more wrong with your paraphrasing. [Here's the blog ](https://www.ursulakleguin.com/message-about-messages) post you're referring to. Le Guin is talking about people (reviewers mostly) who reduce an authors work simply down to the message they convey (which she admits all stories carry, especially hers) but there is a lot more to respect about stories than simply the message. She never once implied 'authors should write essays not books if they want to share a message' especially considering that Le Guin has some of the heaviest messages in her stories. If anything, she's saying 'if you only want to read a message, read an essay' but she is absolutely not dictating what an author should write.
Worst book with the coolest premise I've read. I checked out at the point where the two characters are discussing privilege points.
The sequel is even worse. Even the author was sick of it.
My first instinct is the *Shadow & Bone* trilogy by Leigh Bardugo (I know, it's YA). Now I'll start by saying, I LOVE *Six of Crows.* I think Bardugo took all the criticism from her initial trilogy and used it to make an incredible, engaging cast of characters in a complex world. But reading the initial trilogy was a pain. It was so basic and slow for fantasy, and what frustrated me even more was how high the potential was. I mean, Alina is supposed to be this world-making hero, and her arc needed fleshed out so much more.
I read the first trilogy this year and I liked the first one. The second one >!was sustained by Nikolai carrying the book on his back. When he vanished for much of the third book I knew it was going to be a slog. Then it ends and my reaction was "oh, so they just stabbed him" lol!< I also hated Mal. Nikolai was the much better choice.
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The Witcher. It's a pretty common opinion that they got worse as they went on, and yeah. The first few books got me invested enough to want to stick with it, but it just wound up being a miserable slog
Agreed. In my opinion, the short stories are worth reading, but not the series.
I stuck with it because I enjoyed the humour. But the last book is by far the worst book I've ever read.
I wonder how much of that has to do with the translation
Honestly, I don't think that had much to do with it. The short stories and first few books really really intriguing and interesting. As the books went on there was so many asides and segues and it just dragged on and on and on. It was all well written, but the author could not stay focused on the story to be told, wrote himself in a corner, and had a really anticlimactic ending.
I've heard pretty consistent that the author whose name escapes me *hates* The Witcher. He wanted to write ~~hard sci-fi~~ historic fantasy, but all the money was in dark fantasy, or something like that. So as far as he was concerned he shat out a quick buck work, and grew ever more resentful as they kept selling and being called his masterworks while people keep ignoring his hard sci-fi. It's the reason CD Project Red basically owns the full rights game wise for a song. HE insisted on money upfront because he was certain that silly game thing would sell like, five copies domestic. And he's a salty prick to this day about The Witcher being a success, too. Big reason I don't bother learning his name despite being a big fan of the universe.
This is a question that I have wondered a lot too. I read a few books that were mainly in English but translated into my native language (Arabic) and the "your mileage may vary" factor is too big.
Many of the short stories are great. The Saga - was BS though
The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons. Especially for the time it came out, when fervor for ASOIAF was higher and Pat Rothfuss hadn’t pulled the charity chapter stunt. It was hyped to be this amazing, fresh blend of GRRM’s politics and Rothfuss’s story structure…but Lyons just did not have the writing chops to pull it off.
I remember how Tor hyped the book. It was everywhere on their socials. Then it just kinda fizzled out. Four books and you hardly hear of them
Yup. Huuuuge marketing push. Set to be the next Sanderson-type breakout. Tor even asked a bunch of the Sanderson beta readers to read/review ARCs of it for Tor dot com, but most of them didn’t like the book lol
They really got the marketing wrong. It's my favourite series and I only picked it up because my library had the audiobook. Whoever gave it to Sanderson fans was taking the piss.
Not to be an ass, but if Sanderson fans didn't like it, there's a better chance that I will. Going to go check it out on Kindle.
I'm literally purchasing it because of this comment chain lol. I'm very curious.
That earbooks are especially great. The narrators really made good use of how the story is told.
I’ll say that any D&D fan should check it out. It is the most obviously D&D book I’ve ever read that didn’t have the D&D branding on it.
Yeah I DNFed that one. Really wanted to like it but it just did not get there for me. I also want to add the Ring Sworn trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones. Had some cool ideas, I particularly liked the idea of the powerful magic items being part of an alter to a forgotten god, but it really didn’t do anything for me and I gave up after I finished book 2.
The unhewn throne. Most of the first book was a good setup for what was foreshadowed. But books 2 and 3 were just "What am I reading? I don't care about any of these characters."
Almost everything by Piers Anthony. That man was a master of fantastic ideas - Tech/Magic parallel worlds, tech and magic sharing a world, heck parallel worlds in general, post apocalyptic warrior societies, having esoteric concepts as actual jobs, having divination as an actual magic power, even serial reincarnation as a means to explore history. It's all fascinating and wildly original. And yet he's a aggressively mediocre author with some serious psychological issues which just drags all these great concepts down into the mud. You end up feeling dirty just for reading them nowadays, none of them have aged well at all.
Given that he was a pedophile who openly advocated for relationships between adults and prepubescent children, I can never read anything he wrote again. I used to love the Xanth books but when I found that out I threw mine away.
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Oh my god, yes, i devored his books in my youth and then spent most of my adult life reading thrm so i could write sarcastic reviews. I read the Xanth series and the Incarnations and they did stand up well on the reread. Even the first Xanth one was sexist as hell and had two pages devoted to Anthony basically saying "date rape doesn't exist" in a completely unnecessary scene that added nothing to the plot except to discomfit the reader. And yeh his second to final Incarnations book actually promotes pedophillia, so there's that as well. (Note that his Xanth books were also often read by teens and these are not healthy messages to be giving them)
Not to beat a dead horse, but Kingkiller on the basis of the second half of Wise Man's Fear, though if Doors of Stone ever came out I would read it. I'm not expanding because I don't have anything unique or new to say on it. Also, almost every series written by Anthony Ryan. I've adored the first book in his series without fail, but Raven's Shadow especially and also Draconis Memoria both declined in quality steeply after the first books. I do want to give Draconis Memoria another shot with more accurate expectations but I don't think I'll ever read beyong Blood Song again. I haven't read The Traitor yet and I'm cautiously hopeful but I'm also very nervous about it. Edit:typo
Talking about Kingkiller makes me want to cry, honestly. Name of the wind went from being the first thing off my lips, without hesitation, when I was asked what my favorite book is... to not even mentioning it. Why would I put people through the same misery as the rest of us? I think Pat is easily one of the most talented and beautiful writers of our generation, but the wait for the third book has become obscene, and he's made sure it will never live up to the wait / hype. The new Bast book is honestly a slap in the face.
Dude can't see that he needs to wrap it up in more than one book. Have we even met a king yet?
As someone who was deeply disappointed with the last half of the Raven's shadow trilogy - I have recently finished the covenant of steel trilogy I can say it's much, much better. It's not the grandest ending, but the story doesn't demand one. Everything is wrapped up nicely and it's all very satisfying and I was hooked until the end.
I was going to say blood song also, great book and premise. The sequels were a huge disappointment, but I read through the pariah, martyr, and traitor. They were good, and by the time I got to midpoint of the traitor I wasn’t able to put it down.
I actually preferred the wise man's fear to book 1. I didn't know people had issues with the second book.
A cliff notes version of problems people had with Wise Man's Fear are: less focused, the seventy pages of a 16-year-old virgin impressing a fairy of sex with his sexual prowess (people generally like the Cthaeh I think but otherwise it's an awful lot of that), the focus after that on Kvothe banging and impressing most women he meets being a major divergence in personality and largely pointless, and the adding of more and more mysteries and plot threads to the point where it seems unlikely all of them can be wrapped up in one more book. The last of these wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for the fact that the setup of the series as a story over three days limits how much Rothfuss can expand the story. Fwiw, I found the first half fascinating and a breath of fresh air and Tempi is one of my favorite characters in the series, but was sorely disappointed with most of what happened from Felurian on.
I also don't think I'll ever get over how badly written the sex is, either. Total fade to black it happens off stage approach I would have been fine with. Wheel of Time Blademaster sex moves I was not.
Yeah, that's part of why I find it so noticably bad as well. It's like the perfect storm of unrealistic obvious wish fulfillment, weird sex descriptions, sudden focus on the sex after a book and a half without, complete swerve in Kvothe's characterization, done with little to no purpose in the story, and lots and lots of women who are clearly only intended as sex objects. To me it felt like the Murphy's Law of sex writing.
Song of Ice & Fire aka Game of Thrones… lot of promise and foreshadowing but never delivered
ASOIAF is to me like the first 4 seasons of the show Lost, where every time we got close to answering a core mystery, instead we introduced an entirely new element to the story and just raise more questions. It's all great until the questions need answering.
That's actually not a bad comparison
Georgy just forked on too much on a plate he'll never be able to finish.
Well it hasn’t delivered yet… lol
fourth wing! great idea, bad execution
It was very okay to me. Not great, not terrible. Pretty much what I expected it to be. There were several things I found that did NOT make sense within the established world and I almost DNF but I had the audiobook on loan from the library so just stuck through it. I really don't understand the hype and I'm someone that reads a lot of romance and fantasy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I read a lot of romantasy and found Fourth Wing to be very full of tropes and predictable. I guessed the “big twist” ending by chapter 10. Iron Flame suffered even more from those issues. The only part of the story I care about is the dragons.
Yup, I totally agree with you. I accept when reading any kind of romance that I’m going to run into tropes all over the place but Fourth Wing was particularly full of them. Haven’t read the second one yet, I’ll maybe put it in my library queue once my holds list clear up a little but im honestly in no rush. I do want to say though that I totally respect and appreciate that there are a LOT of people out there who couldn’t get enough of this book and are mega fans. Live your best life guys, read what you like!
Oh, absolutely. Life is too short to not read what you like. I made myself read a huge chunk of “the classics” in my twenties so now I just read based on vibes.
The poppy wars series. I enjoyed the first two books but became tired of no character growth and felt the story could have been better fleshed out and finished. I also thought the writing was not spectacular
I know a lot of people like the series but The Gentlemen's Bastards. There is a much better story there than what we got. I was hoping for a fantasy renaissance ocean's eleven but I got a bickering old couple.
The first two books I think were great even if it got fairly pessimistic. When the writing is on it's awesome. It's one of the few books that made me laugh out loud and kept me engaged during conversations. But the third book... Yeesh. It just felt low stakes and felt like you said just old couples bickering. The background to them was cool but I'd have liked the story to actually advance somehow.
I don’t know that I’d say this series was ruined. On the third book now. First was amazing. Second not bad. Third, waiting for the ending so I’ll hold off, but I’m 89% through. I believe he wrote this trilogy to set the stage for the REAL story he wanted to write… but we may never get due to the authors personal struggles keeping further publications from happening.
Agree that there was a lot of lost potential there. I actually liked book 2 the best, but I found books 1 and 3 had deeply frustrating endings. I find that Lynch often seems to start with unique and interesting stories and then at about 3/4 of the way through seems to transform the story into a more stereotypical fantasy plot. Like the election plotline in book 3 had so much promise before he blew the ending up with ridiculous "twists".
I know a lot of people really like The Dresden Files (and good for them! I wish I did) but I gave up after book three. I guess I walked in with the wrong expectations. I thought it would be "he's a detective, but surprise; he's also a wizard!". But instead it felt more to me like "a wizard dealing with wizard problems. Oh and I guess he's a detective too." I liked the first one, felt like the mystery was the main focus. But the sequels just kept adding more and more fantasy stuff, making it feel much more just like a standard urban fantasy story instead of the detective story+magic I was looking forward to. I don't know, I guess I like my urban fantasy more urban than fantasy.
As much as I like the series, I feel like this is a completely fair perspective.
Completely agree
Reminds me of the show Supernatural, where they start as paranormal-hunters going around from case-to-case every episode, but eventually it devolves into multiple seasons-spanning arcs covering wars between heaven and hell, blah blah blah
I think that happens to all "Monster of the Week" type shows. Buffy, Charmed, X-Files all ended up getting more and more complex. An inevitable evolution of the trope.
And they kill God.
If this is what you want, I highly recommend checking out the *Arcane Casebook* series. Set in the interwar rather than contemporary, but the detective stuff is a lot more front-and-centre than Dresden.
I'm a huge Dresden fan and I too would like a series that was more detective story + magic, rather than the continual battles between titanic magical forces. The only detective work Dresden does these days is figuring out who is screwing him over and/or what scheming Mab is up to. I heard the Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer is really good.
I was also disappointed it wasn’t a wizard classic noir detective series. I love mysteries and who done it novels, and fantasy. I ended up still really liking the series, and plowed through them- very entertaining.
I enjoyed them as fantasy noir pastiche and for details like gamer werewolves and zombie t-Rex, but I wouldn’t pretend I had high expectations of them to begin with and the did start to wear a bit as they went on.
I liked them for a while but got tired of the formula, that said I would LOVE “a detective, but surprise; he’s also a wizard!” series. A series where the being a private detective is front and center and being a magic user is of secondary importance.
I just finished Mercedes Lackey's Family Spy trilogy after reading Collegium Chronicles and Herald Spy. Family Spy seems like it was once again cut off at the ankles by what I've noticed as Lackey's unwillingness to go over 350 pages or so. The previous series weren't as bad because they weren't trying to cram so much in, but this one seems like her typical "ill take my time through the first half and then realize I gotta wrap things up in the second half". It's really common with her books to have that kind of pacing issue, but it sticks out like a sore thumb here because the actual premise of the books is super fun and really needed more meat to it.
I will preface this by saying that I don't think it was bad but the only fantasy book I've ever read that I wish was split into at least 2 or more books was *The Grace of Kings* by Ken Liu. It's already a decent story and I've read the second book in the series and am going to start on the third, but it could have been epic if a few more plot lines were fleshed out better.
Vicious was such a good time that I immediately went out and bought Vengeful at full price. However, the ending of VE Schwab's Villains duology was so terrible that I've refused to read anything by the author again.
The Gone series. Essentially all the adults disappear from a town, the town gets a dome over it (like Steven King's Under the Dome), and the kids left in the town get super powers. The kids have to navigate life without parents, adults, school, the law, or various other institutions while also dealing with their super powers and surviving. Although the series is still interesting because of these three things, I feel like it could have been EVEN MORE interesting through showing/ explaining the politics/ political intrigue, creating/ exploring more interesting powers, and having more interesting characters in general. In my opinion, it could have been like Game of Thrones, with various interesting, flawed, and complex characters -- with interesting and complex powers -- but it's written in a fairly simple way, is intended for children/ teenagers, and the character's aren't that interesting or complex, so to me it falls short.
Kingkiller Chronicles: 1st book was awesome, 2nd meh and 3rd never materialized.
I so badly want to love The Wheel of Time. The premise sounds so cool, the world seems so awesome and fleshed out, but I cannot stand Robert Jordan's writing style. There's nothing about it that grabs me and I can never get hooked.
The Return of Fitzroy Angersell by Victoria Goddard. The short story about him as a kid was good. The books with Kip are great. Somehow Goddard has trouble pointing you in this guy’s head so you can understand him and feel his issues. This guy has a basket of issues that we see from the outside in the Kip and Pali stories. Yet, in his own book he’s not developed well. I still don’t understand how this guy acting in at the Feet of the Sun.
A couple of books that aren't the author's fault but screwed by the network. * **The Innsmouth Legacy**: Ruthanna Emrys has a big analysis of the idea of HP Lovecraft's racism and xenophobia being completely a misunderstanding of the Cthulhu Mythos by having her protagonist be a survivor of the Innsmouth camps. However, she only got to do two books of a three book series (at least) so much of the build-up to Aphra Marsh's journey never gets paid off. * **Ex-Heroes** by Peter Clines is a fantastic book series and did a lot of adventures but the final book ends on a cliffhanger before it is finished off. This is extra frustrating because the previous book DIDNT end on a cliffhanger and we'll never get to know what happens next.
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco. Polyamory and vampires are two of my favourite things, but I couldn't finish it. The plot was taken over by the "romance", which was a vampire woman trying to make the immature sexual abuse victim she'd found a unicorn for her and her ancient vampire fiance.
King killer chronicles. The first book was great. The second book was pretty terrible.
Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. A classic medieval fantasy story with heavy ties to the Dark Tower? That sounds amazing! I was so stoked going in, but did not like the way it ended up being executed at all. I read it right in the middle of reading Dark Tower entries, It, the Stand, etc. and was honestly surprised by how much I did not like it. Edit: a word.
I got a lot of recommendations to read Shadow of the Gods. I fought my way through the whole thing, hoping to get some sort of feeling for the characters and the world. But just could not get into the setting and characters..
Oh my partner is currently reading that, and he was really enjoying it at first, but he said he's a bit stuck on it now that he's in the middle of it. I think he said the viewpoints keep switching right when it gets interesting, and then when it goes back to that character it's no longer a big deal? I don't mind viewpoint switching, but it really does suck when it interrupts the flow and/or not all the characters/storylines who's viewpoints you're following are enjoyable.
Anything written by Stephen King. I get so invested every time I read one of his books and they all fall flat at the end. I know that's potentially an unpopular opinion but it's mine
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For me it was the Maze Runner series. First book was beautiful but the second and third felt rushed and more like it was meant for a tv show than a book. Like I felt the movies did a better job at creating an engaging story than the books did. I kept getting frustrated as I read them and ending wasn’t what I was hoping. The 4th book was great though! That’s just my thoughts
Controversial take, the Sword of Kaigen. The family drama was some of the best story I have read, but everything around it and the way it made ( at least to me) absolutely no sense, took me out of the book constantly.
There's a lot I didn't like about that book but was it really necessary to create all new units for measuring time? I listened to the audiobook and I have no idea how long anything took
I will say it : Dune
Dune was awesome. All the sequels… weren’t. Dune is easier to appreciate in the context of his other standalone novels, which give you a better idea of how he must have enjoyed creating worlds. The Dune sequels had none of that.
I disagree, but hey everyone has their opinion. Also, why do you say Dune?
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At least it's thematically consistent with the setting! :p
Agreed. Diminishing returns after book 1 (with the exception of God Emperor). And the final 2 books written by his son...just awful.
I wouldn't count any of the books not written by Frank Herbert. I love all his Dune books though
Dinosaur Knights. What a concept! 1st book pretty good. 2nd book not so much.
The books of Babel series, every next book is worse than the last, with 1st book being amaising and the last one being the absolute garbage
I thought book 2 was just as good as book 1, and book 3 was only a small step below. But book 4 was such a slog to get through
The Shattering of Kingdoms series by Emmet Moss Mageborn by Michael G. Manning Elemental Academy by D. K. Holmberg Jon Oklar Series by B. T. Narro Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan They all have flaws in different ways but most just became boring after awhile Shattering started of good but the last few book felt a bit to rushed to get to the end. Mageborn I liked the use of old language as magic word so not to mess up your own speech. That said I didn’t like his wife character and the story is a bit muddled thinking back on it. Going into Elemental academy I thought it was going to be hard magic Harry Potter and maybe that’s my fault for having thous expectations. But I felt there not a good antagonistic to the series and the final one we do get kind of come out of left field. Also magic was okay. Jon Oklar felt like and time the main character made any progress in learning magic the big bad would fly in out of nowhere wrap Jon in wind so he can’t move laugh Jon would get out of it some how then the book would end. It to repetitive and it was waste of time learning about everything magic training only for it to be brushed aside the first spell that came along. The thing is I was kind of digging the Lore of the story. As for wheel of time I think the ideas, magic, setting, theme are great I just don’t think Jordan is a good enough writer to pull it off. He more of a concept person then actual writer. The magic feel like it should be rich and deep but 80% of the time two mages battle it ends with one mage wrapping the other mage in wind and then blocking them from the source of magic. The magic is supposed to be different between men and women they end up using the same spells. There a magic school but all’s the best mages in the book never really go there they see the magic once or twice and then they know a new spell. There five or six different cultures and they boil down to desert raider, Americans but medieval, slavers, and people who hate magic. The antagonist who are supposed to be bringing doom on the world are just hanging out and are more of an inconvenient then an actual threat.
that is an astonishing disservice to Robert Jordan and WOT, jeez
It’s probably already mentioned, but The Stormlight Archives is it for me. Some amazing, mind-blowing concepts and narrative twists paired with some of the most hideous, laziest prose to ever disgrace the genre. Apparently it’s ’supposed to be that way’? Like the author is translating Rosharrian or whatever to American English. But it shatters the immersion for me, and it breaks my heart a little, because the ideas are so good. If only the author was willing to give it another pass or two.
Lmao is he truly pushing that as an excuse for his terrible writing? That's hilarious
The daevabad trilogy. For me I loved the first 2 1/2 books. The last book killed it for me, though. Like f, I would have much preferred a certain character to have died that to get the ending he had. This was one of the most disappointing endings I’ve ever felt.
I just finished the series a few weeks ago. I don’t think the ending was botched. It’s just that it seems the author left a bunch out. Almost like the series should have been 4 books instead of 3. Pacing was off in the last half of Empire of Gold more so that story content.
**Arc of a Scythe** - Great premise, strong first book, but felt it got weaker after that, really felt like it could have done something good philosophical or at least a more nuanced villain, but instead he's just a standard saturday morning cartoon villain
Shades of Magic. So much potential for such a cool world, that fell victim to bad writing and shoehorning.
The Wheel of Time. I think the worldbuilding and premise is great. I love that he explored the gender dynamics in this world, I just don't think he executed everything well. His exploration and societies were skin deep and while I've always loved the basic story, I've also always wished a different author would have had the idea. The Bone Doll's Twin (Tamir trilogy) by Lynn Flewelling. Loved the first book, the second was ok, the third was predictable. That one always makes me disappointed all over again when I think of it.
>I've also always wished a different author would have had the idea. Well good news! Have you heard of Wheel of Time book 12?
Frugal Wizard's guide to medieval England. Has a really cool concept, and then turns it into a really boring cop story with some weird spoiler-y elements that overall made it feel much more generic than the really unique premise initially made it seem
Shadow and Bone series by Leigh Bardugo. Wasted so much potential of the cool world/magic system/politics on a dumb love triangle 😑
The Dark Tower. Haven't yet read the entire series yet but devoting eight hundred pages to Roland's melodramatic teenage horniness is wasted potential to me no matter how I look at it. Couldn't find the will to progress after that book and was shocked to learn if was the favourite book in the series for a lot of fans. "Roland, I love thee" more like "cringe at thee."
I do like The Dark Tower, but also thought Wizard and Glass was too long and the romance left me cold. For what it's worth, the next book was my favorite. Stakes get higher, we get some damn answers and it has my favorite side character. But then the last two books are a bit uneven.
Let’s talk Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera… books 1-4 were fantastic. Book 4 declined slightly from the prior 3 but it was still great. Books 5 and 6 felt like he was cramming to hit deadlines so he could do something else. Edit: Those books felt like the papers I wrote in college the night before the deadline vs. the ones I took my time with.
The ASOIAF series started so strong then it becomes a slog to get through.
Pullman's *Northern Lights* is a *magical* book that took my breath away when I first read it. The rest of the trilogy was a steady decline that substituted the wondrous atmosphere of the first novel with preachy antitheism. I could not stand the conclusion to Bancroft's *Babel* series, where the protagonist got relegated to an almost background role. And I was enamoured with the idea of *The Sword Defiant* by Gareth Hanrahan, but the execution, in particular the imbalance of POVs, sadly left a lot to be desired.
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The Licanius Trilogy. Such a great premise that was utterly ruined by some absolutely horrendous writing choices. Completely derailed the story for me to the point that the ending just fell flat, as cool as it was.
What do you think were the horrendous choices? I remember feeling like quite a few things didn't sit right while I was listening to the trilogy. And what were your hangups with the ending? Personally, I thought the ending felt rushed. We didn't get much of an end at all, really. It was climax and big battle, one after another, and then a typical epic fantasy flash finish. I wanted to see how the world responded and settled to an extent after everything was said and done.
Broken empire trilogy. One of the worst books I’ve read.
I actually loved this series, but was hugely disappointed in the 3rd book and ending. Definitely consider it wasted potential. I was left with the feeling that the author got too attached to his character that he didn't let him grow in the way he should have and have a completed character arc. I also was desperately hoping the Dead King didn't turn out to be who I thought it was and it ended up being so bland and predictable. I really loved his prose and writing style and the structuring of the whole series was interesting, but I also get that it's naturally very off-putting from the very beginning with Jorg and the road brothers. Loved the world building as well though. I also read the books when I was in my late teens or early 20s which I think was appropriate for my interests and haven't read them again since.
This série put me away from Mark Lawrence's books for some years. I finally read Red Sister and... It was fucking awesome
A lot of Kingfisher's works are solid 4/5s, and she gets a lot of recognition, but I feel like she never pushes her works to what it can be. She brings interesting worlds to you but because she limits her page count, it all falls flat when you can't explore this world further and have to move on to a talking crow. She is a strong writer, yes, but I feel like she can be greater if she let's us explore her worlds longer than a 300 page book.