Books You Wouldn't Wish On Your Worst Enemy

[Carol Elaine]

Taking my cue from this section's description, let's talk about books you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. What book would you like to warn every single person in this or any other universe not to read?

I've read some fairly bad books in my time, but the worst was Wild Animus by Rich Shapiro. I read it recently, so it's most on my mind, but my G-d, what an awful pretentious piece of tripe. I refuse to link to it, it's so bad. I got it free through BookCrossing.com a few years ago and finally read it a few weeks ago. I managed to hang on through the end, but there were whole swatches of the book I barely skimmed, as his main character was "writing" in the voice of The Ram with prose so purple it was almost black. It was only my extreme curiosity that got me through it with a minimum of vomiting.

Excuse me, but it's time to wash my brain out with lye.

[Ottawa Rob]

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. - Liked Apocalpse Now however I just could not read Conrad's novel. I tried multiple times to finish it when it was assigned in Grade 12 English. I've read thousands of novels and rarely fail to finish them. When assigned novels for school I usually read them in a day or 2. But this novel was so incredibly boring and I tried repeatedly but I could not get more than 1/3 into the book.

It is considered a classic but not to me!!!!

[Carol Elaine]

Ottawa Rob, I was like that with The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. It was assigned to me in high school and I couldn't get past the first chapter to save my life. I finally bought the Cliff Notes so I wouldn't fail the test, then promptly forgot everything about the book after that section was over.

And because I seem to be a masochist, I've got it sitting in my bookshelf now, waiting for me to read it. Another free book (which I found in a box of free books outside a used bookstore in my old neighborhood), I thought I'd give it a try again. It's been waiting for me for a year.

[Ottawa Rob]

I have read the first half of the first half of the first Harry Potter novel the last week or so. I am not very impressed. It has to go back to the Library tomorrow and I have no desire to finish it nor to read the rest of the series. Supposedly it gets better but the novel so far is so simplistic in character development - Characters are either completely horrible charactures of rotten people or plain good - There is not even a shade of grey - just black and white. And it is kind of hateful - Harry is treated so awful for the first third of the book it is sad. I can't even see why kids would enjoy it.

I mean it isn't bad enough not to wish it on my worst enemy but I just don't get the hype. I hope the series gets a lot better because if this is far and away the most popular fiction novel series of the last decade or maybe ever and this was as good as it gets then it is kind of sad.

Maybe I'll watch the movies (I haven't seen any of them).

[WinterIsComing]

Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Please, no, drink bleach instead. Really, a gallon of it. Much better than a dragon-laden ripoff of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and EVERYTHING ELSE.

[Janiece]

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, which was the topic of my senior english paper in H.S.. It was like the Bataan Death March.

[PixelFish]

Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon. I'm terrible at culling books from my library but I let this one go in no time flat. (Here be spoilers of a sort.)

The main character is a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue in all of her too-perfect glory. You could go down the Mary Sue checklist:

- Long, flowing tresses described fatuously, in this case, usually as molten gold, or glorious, etc. Check.
- Eyes of a remarkable colour, in this case, a vivid emerald green that flashes when she gets upset. Check.
- She is incredibly tiny and slender and of course, any man who runs across her realises that he could span her dainty waist with both hands.
- She was the only half-breed Lirin girl in her village growing up. This is almost as good as being the last of your kind. Check.
- She is known through most of the book by the name Rhapsody. Naturally this is not the name she is born with. Cutesy name. Check.
- Tragic events in her past. Check, check, check. She has a SHOPPING LIST of tragic events. Lost her first love. Check. Forced to prostitution. Check. Overcame it all and learned to value Truth with a capital T. Check.
- EVERYBODY loves her. Check. Barney the Barkeep loves her, sighs over her, makes sure that she is conveniently fed. Check. Barney's wife thinks of her as a daughter. Check. Evil villainy guy can't get enough of her cootchie. Check. Sidekicks, though initially rather gruff, mysteriously drawn to her. Check. Small children in abundance who want her to be their new mother. Check. Kings, Lords, Stewards, etc all lusting and panting after her. Check. And, of course, mysterious love interest from her past, whom she doesn't recognise (tragically, natch) and who doesn't recognise her as an adult, totally loves her, despite worrying that he might ironically be betraying his past love for her. CHECK!
- She can do ANYTHING. Instinctively, and precociously. I counted up years (this book suffers from too many inconsistancies in chronology) and she is obviously wise and skilled beyond those years. She should be 20 or 21, and yet, she has already been a skilled prostitute, moved past that life, and become a skilled bardic type, and already progressed to being a Namer. Being a Namer should apparently take years of experience and is, of course, the most revered level of her chosen profession. And somehow, despite losing her mentor (TRAGIC!) she has mastered the magics of Naming and breaks a bond created by a very powerful demon. In the second chapter! WOW! She also proceeds to defend her very tiny self against big mean men, picks up sword play right away, figures out magical things to hide her friends that she was never taught, and walks through the molten core of the earth. All before the first half of the book is over. Is there anything this girl can't do? Check off unbelievable powers.
- Despite being salivatingly beautiful already, after walking through the molten core, she becomes refined by the experience and becomes The Most Beautiful Woman Ever. And....get ready to bang your head against something....her body is renewed and she becomes a VIRGIN again! Check off the Madonna-Whore complex.
- Did I mention that she was stupifyingly beautiful? Yeah. Well, too bad, because this book mentions it EVERY OTHER PAGE. She removes her hood and wagoneers crash into stalls in the market.
- Oh, and she's modest. She has NO clue that she's beautiful. Even though everybody tells her so.
- She is wise. She is witty. She always has a comeback. She is intelligent or at least we are told so, even though it's obvious that she is really DUMB LIKE POST. But nobody notices this because she's so goddamn perfect. Check.
- She has bad nightmares about her mysterious past. Oh, and sometimes her nightmares tell the future too. As if magical singing powers and breaking demon bonds wasn't enough. Check.
- She "finds" a magical sword that has a name--the Clarion Daystar. Oooooo. Check for magical weapon.

[jeels]

Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon. I'm terrible at culling books from my library but I let this one go in no time flat. (Here be spoilers of a sort.)

The main character is a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue in all of her too-perfect glory. You could go down the Mary Sue checklist:

- Long, flowing tresses described fatuously, in this case, usually as molten gold, or glorious, etc. Check.
- Eyes of a remarkable colour, in this case, a vivid emerald green that flashes when she gets upset. Check.
- She is incredibly tiny and slender and of course, any man who runs across her realises that he could span her dainty waist with both hands.
- She was the only half-breed Lirin girl in her village growing up. This is almost as good as being the last of your kind. Check.
- She is known through most of the book by the name Rhapsody. Naturally this is not the name she is born with. Cutesy name. Check.
- Tragic events in her past. Check, check, check. She has a SHOPPING LIST of tragic events. Lost her first love. Check. Forced to prostitution. Check. Overcame it all and learned to value Truth with a capital T. Check.
- EVERYBODY loves her. Check. Barney the Barkeep loves her, sighs over her, makes sure that she is conveniently fed. Check. Barney's wife thinks of her as a daughter. Check. Evil villainy guy can't get enough of her cootchie. Check. Sidekicks, though initially rather gruff, mysteriously drawn to her. Check. Small children in abundance who want her to be their new mother. Check. Kings, Lords, Stewards, etc all lusting and panting after her. Check. And, of course, mysterious love interest from her past, whom she doesn't recognise (tragically, natch) and who doesn't recognise her as an adult, totally loves her, despite worrying that he might ironically be betraying his past love for her. CHECK!
- She can do ANYTHING. Instinctively, and precociously. I counted up years (this book suffers from too many inconsistancies in chronology) and she is obviously wise and skilled beyond those years. She should be 20 or 21, and yet, she has already been a skilled prostitute, moved past that life, and become a skilled bardic type, and already progressed to being a Namer. Being a Namer should apparently take years of experience and is, of course, the most revered level of her chosen profession. And somehow, despite losing her mentor (TRAGIC!) she has mastered the magics of Naming and breaks a bond created by a very powerful demon. In the second chapter! WOW! She also proceeds to defend her very tiny self against big mean men, picks up sword play right away, figures out magical things to hide her friends that she was never taught, and walks through the molten core of the earth. All before the first half of the book is over. Is there anything this girl can't do? Check off unbelievable powers.
- Despite being salivatingly beautiful already, after walking through the molten core, she becomes refined by the experience and becomes The Most Beautiful Woman Ever. And....get ready to bang your head against something....her body is renewed and she becomes a VIRGIN again! Check off the Madonna-Whore complex.
- Did I mention that she was stupifyingly beautiful? Yeah. Well, too bad, because this book mentions it EVERY OTHER PAGE. She removes her hood and wagoneers crash into stalls in the market.
- Oh, and she's modest. She has NO clue that she's beautiful. Even though everybody tells her so.
- She is wise. She is witty. She always has a comeback. She is intelligent or at least we are told so, even though it's obvious that she is really DUMB LIKE POST. But nobody notices this because she's so goddamn perfect. Check.
- She has bad nightmares about her mysterious past. Oh, and sometimes her nightmares tell the future too. As if magical singing powers and breaking demon bonds wasn't enough. Check.
- She "finds" a magical sword that has a name--the Clarion Daystar. Oooooo. Check for magical weapon.

PF,
LOL Your 'cover blurb' makes me want to rush out and buy this one ;-)

-Jeff

[kouredios]

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Heh. I teach Heart of Darkness, but I don't like it much either. It's just that it's an important novel for postcolonial writers to respond to, and so it's spawned lots of great intertexual discourse (which is a lot more interesting to read.)

As for me, the last book I threw across the room upon finishing was Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors. Self-congratulatory bullshit, badly written. Tries to be David Sedaris, and fails miserably. Bleh.

[david-de-beer]

Heart of Darkness came close, but my all time most Bah! book was Ulysses, by James Joyce. Greatest book of the 20th century my bee-hind! It's the most elaborate joke a writer ever pulled on readers - imagine peeling away an onion with a thousand odd layers, and what you end up with after all that is a hand of empty stinky and tears running down your cheeks like Niagara Falls.
And, to add insult to injury, when I had finally read the book and wanted to discuss it with all the people who had always raved about it...I discovered that they had not read the book itself, only the books about the book.

I liked Joyce's Dubliners, but Ulysses was much too self-indulgent and smug for my liking. And pointless. It is the God of pointlessness.

(actually, though, this is a book I would wish on my worst enemy..)

[Anne C.]

Pixelfish, your description alone made me want to retch. I've read (or attempted to read) unpublished novels of that ilk, but editors usually catch that tripe.

My entry, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, is a love it or hate it book. I could go on and on about how bogus the "genius" hero was (pretty near to a Mary Sue himself). I could go on about how off-putting the ersatz love-interest was. I could even go on about how one dimensional every single character was.
But I won't. It was mind-searingly horrible. And some people buy into the tripe and love it. Which makes me hate it more.

I agree that Eragon is pretty weak-ass. I finished it, but have no interest in seeing the movie or reading the sequels.
Ironically enough, Ottawa Rob, I think that one of Rowling's strengths is drawing characters that are grey, not just black and white and who go through great changes. The trouble is, she's always had her timeframe on the long game and the Harry Potter series is 7 books long. To get the full effect, you'd be best off reading them all. That being said, however, changes happen slowly (one of the reasons Book 5 is not well liked) and if you're not motivated to get through the slow parts, then don't worry about reading any of them. They're OK and have some truly interesting insights into good and bad and into the stages of child-to-young-adulthood, but they're not the Second Coming or anything. Your reading time is precious. Use it wisely.

[Adam Ziegler]

...the first Harry Potter novel ... is so simplistic in character development - Characters are either completely horrible charactures of rotten people or plain good - There is not even a shade of grey - just black and white.

I can see why you'd get that. The books aren't for everyone. I'm not a big fan of the writing style, but I did enjoy the books mainly for the plot. I can tell you that some of the characters are not what they seem, and by the end of the series it's made plain that there have been shades of grey all along. In a way, the rather cutesy presentation provide an interesting counterpoint to what is essentially a very dark story.

[PixelFish]

PF,
LOL Your 'cover blurb' makes me want to rush out and buy this one ;-)

-Jeff

You can't say I didn't warn you. Actually I thought about acquiring a second hand copy so I have something to point to when the conversation turns to Bad Books and Mary Sues. I'd place it lovingly on the shelf next to my copy of Helen B. Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood.

Speaking of which, Fascinating Womanhood is another book I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It's all about how to prove to your man that you need him to protect you. You must never challenge him in any arena that would hurt his male pride, you know....it's okay to be good at English and the social sciences, but maths and politics are right out. It was written in the 50s or 60s, based off of pamphlets from the 20s, and yet it still makes the rounds to this day. My favourite line, excised from later editions but not the one we found buried in our campus library, is that women should use spoons whenever possible, instead of forks, because the spoon is a rounded utensil, and appropriately feminine.

Other (paraphrased) gems from Fascinating Womanhood:

+ Never stare directly at a man. Be timorous and keep your gaze cast modestly down. Men like this.

+ Never talk about yourself. Ask your date all about himself. Compliment him on his achievements and make sure that he feels like the king of the world at all times.

+ Even if you can do something for yourself, don't. Let your husband do it. After all, he exists to protect you. If you can take care of yourself, you are treading on his domain, and making him feel unmanly. You should let him protect you from mice and strange noises, and cling to him so he can feel like he is truly taking care of you.

+ It is unwomanly to have a job and a career because this just shows the man that you can take care of yourself....see above.

+ You should strive to be a domestic goddess (like Dora from David Copperfield) and make your man happy. If he is not happy, it is probably because of you, and you should make every little effort to smooth out his life for him.

Exerpts here and Amazon reviews (so much fun to read)here.

[oldsma]

So many stinkers to choose from.

I would have to pick "anything by Jack Chalker in case it has an essentially-magically transformed hyper-female submissive nymphomaniac". Most of the other fetish books are straightforward slave-porn and go for it if that is your thing, but his have pretensions of having plot and character, so you can get sucked in before The Great Gazonga is created.

Also James Dobson's Solid Answers specifically and probably the rest of his catalog. A friend gave me this book on how to raise a good traditional Christian family and I was horrified. The Fifties would have been too liberal for him. I suspect that most Christians would be disturbed by his ideas, too.

[Janiece]

Other (paraphrased) gems from Fascinating Womanhood:

+ Never stare directly at a man. Be timorous and keep your gaze cast modestly down. Men like this.

+ Never talk about yourself. Ask your date all about himself. Compliment him on his achievements and make sure that he feels like the king of the world at all times.

+ Even if you can do something for yourself, don't. Let your husband do it. After all, he exists to protect you. If you can take care of yourself, you are treading on his domain, and making him feel unmanly. You should let him protect you from mice and strange noises, and cling to him so he can feel like he is truly taking care of you.

+ It is unwomanly to have a job and a career because this just shows the man that you can take care of yourself....see above.

+ You should strive to be a domestic goddess (like Dora from David Copperfield) and make your man happy. If he is not happy, it is probably because of you, and you should make every little effort to smooth out his life for him.

Exerpts here and Amazon reviews (so much fun to read)here.

*Gag, Choke, Puke.* Puh-lease. It would make me laugh hysterically if I didn't know for a fact there are men and women out there who genuinely believe in this way of life. Bleh.

[SirTomster]

My worst book, might just get me banned from here for implying it was bad.

But what the heck.

Lord of the Rings Tolkien

Yeah. I love the hobbit. I was able to read Fellowship but about 1/2 way through The Two Towers I had to put it down. I till have the 3 books but they just hang around for some reason.

I could not handle the point of view changing every 3 seconds. I'm Frodo, now I am Sam watching Frodo, No now I am 3rd person watching the whole group, no now I am someone else watching them. Now I am Frodo again.

I am grateful to the movies so I know what happened in the books (sorta)

It has probably been 10 years since I tried to read them. But I can still remember that. One of the few books I have ever not completed.

[Anne C.]

Geez, Pixelfish, you really come out with the doozys. That book sounds perfectly horrible. The scariest thing about it was all the good reviews it got. Women who believed it and who got good results from it. Which means there are an equal number of men who liked thier women like that. [shudder]

[Domini]

Hemmingway was my bane. Old Man and the Sea - going on and on and on (and on and on) about this stupid fish he's trying to catch. I don't care!

[mhr]

Sturgeon's Revelation pretty much assures that this thread is going to be one of shooting fish in a barrel.

I always find it interesting (in a perverse way) when a book is critically acclaimed yet I find it borderline-unreadable. (This is known as "Nebula Award Syndrome".)

I've noticed that a common thread in books I loathe is that nothing really happens in them. For instance, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: An 800-page yawner whose whole point is for Harry to convince everyone that You-Know-Who really has returned. Oh, and to whine a lot. In other words, the book is entirely superfluous to the series. (All of the books in the series after Prisoner of Azkaban were 200-400 pages too long, but this one's the worst of the lot.)

I guess I feel that a bigger crime than writing a lousy book is writing a book in which nothing happens. At least a basically lousy book has the potential for some Plan 9 From Outer Space-style snark.

[Natalie]

I had to review a mystery called The Gourdmother 18 months ago or so. It featured anal rape with a pine cone. That, amazingly, required no medical attention, despite causing the victim to scream so loudly that he was heard a mile away by the protagonist, who thought it was a cougar. Oh, and the protagonist was a total Mary Sue.

Blech.

[Zalandris]

The Bible.

I must be one of the few people out there who has read it from cover to cover, like a novel. I wouldn't recommend it.

[Janiece]

The Bible.

I must be one of the few people out there who has read it from cover to cover, like a novel. I wouldn't recommend it.

I've done the same, and I share you opinion. Parts of it are beautifully written, most of it is...not.

[Phil]

I actually wrote about this in a blog entry.

Matthew Reilly, The Seven Deadly Wonders, hands down. What crap. Where a more accomplished writer might use things like adjectives and carefully constructed sentences to describe a small hand launched missile arcing through the air, Matthew Reilly sees no need when the following will suffice:

Swoosh!

I swear to God, italics and all that is how missile launching is presented in his book. Oh, and he doesn’t limit the exclamation point to just missile launches. Now, having exclamations appear in the speech of a character who under stress or excited is OK. But he uses it in the narrator’s voice; a third-person voice that should be a detached, objective reporter of events (more or less). Exclamatory narrative is peppered quite regularly throughout his books. It’s like a bad high school creative writing assignment. Like this sentence/paragraph:

A giant square-shaped block of granite --its shape filling the slipway perfectly and its leading face covered in vicious spikes --was coming down the slipway, coming directly toward them!

See what I mean about the exclamation point? And what’s with the em dashes? Are they really necessary? Commas too mundane for you?

[PixelFish]

See what I mean about the exclamation point? And what’s with the em dashes? Are they really necessary? Commas too mundane for you?

I am actually a terrible terrible abuser of em dashes. But that gives me an idea for a post topic. *skibbles off to the writing section*

[Anne C.]

I am actually a terrible terrible abuser of em dashes. But that gives me an idea for a post topic. *skibbles off to the writing section*

Pixelfish, when you claim to be an "abuser" of dashes, you really should make an effort to use some dashes in your declaration. Show, not tell! ;)

[PixelFish]

I am a terrible--so terrible copyeditors fear me and tremble at my approach--abuser of em dashes.

(Is that better?)

[Anne C.]

Hee! Much better!

[theophylact]

The Silver Wolf, by [the late] Alice Borchardt. If you hate Anne Rice, you'll really hate her sister.

Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown. Utterly incompetent prose, wooden characterization, mistaken or naive on every point of fact, and infuriatingly compelling. I couldn't put it down until I finished, and then (as Dorothy Parker once said) I hurled it away with great force.

The Book of Mormon. Pseudo-Biblical pastiche of the worst kind. If you can't sleep, more effective than chloral hydrate. Should have used it on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; would have broken him in a fortnight.

[PixelFish]

Most of the Book of Mormon is quite dull, but there are exciting bits. When I was a kid, I was quite fond of the story of Ammon who disguised himself as a shepherd, saved the king's flocks from bandits, and cut off the arms of the bandits. I had a huge crush on Ammon. (I was also seven years old.)

But yeah, it's fan fic for the Bible.

[JJS]

When I was in high school, Fascinating Womanhood was a big hit with the women and girls in my home town. I heard one woman tell about how she had done such a wonderful thing for her husband one day. She got a flat tire, and although she was perfectly capable of changing it, she called him at work, got him to skip a meeting that he really had to attend, and come and "rescue" her from her flat tire. The book is crap, unless you really want to be a delicate Victorian damsel with no brain.

By the way, character development gets much better in the Harry Potter books. It just isn't obvious from the beginning.

I have read the whole bible, two different translations in English, and one in Spanish. Most of it is pretty good, once you get past Deuteronomy (or Deuteronomio).

My worst book of all time is Orn, by Piers Anthony. I read about 1/3 of it, then threw it out the window of my car one day as I drove over a bridge.

[Tania]

Two romance authors come immediately to mind, I'm still trying to think of who in SF/F makes me shudder and heave.

So, my authors that I would not wish on my worst enemy:
Dara Joy
Cassie Edwards

DO NOT WANT. Urrrgh.

[udarnik]

Two romance authors come immediately to mind, I'm still trying to think of who in SF/F makes me shudder and heave.

The founder of $cientology?

[PixelFish]

That would be L. Ron Hubbard.

But to be fair, I haven't read the Battlefield Earth dekalogy. (or whatever it is)

[Janiece]

That would be L. Ron Hubbard.

But to be fair, I haven't read the Battlefield Earth dekalogy. (or whatever it is)

The book Battlefield Earth was really pretty decent, in spite of the horrific monstrosity the movie turned out to be. The Mission Earth series was (I think) supposed to be fun, but ended up being banal and tedious.

In my opinion, his non-fiction can be categorized as the rantings of a freeze-dried whack-a-loon.

[Carol Elaine]

That would be L. Ron Hubbard.

But to be fair, I haven't read the Battlefield Earth dekalogy. (or whatever it is)

The book Battlefield Earth was really pretty decent, in spite of the horrific monstrosity the movie turned out to be. The Mission Earth series was (I think) supposed to be fun, but ended up being banal and tedious.

In my opinion, his non-fiction can be categorized as the rantings of a freeze-dried whack-a-loon.

In my opinion, his non-fiction is also fiction. But your description is pretty accurate as well.

Disclosure: I've not actually read any of Hubbard's books. $cientology offends me on so many levels that I can't bring myself to pick up one of his science fiction books just to check out the writing. Not even for one chapter. I tend to be live and let live when it comes to people's beliefs (hell, I'm fairly close to a combination of Pagan/Wicca/Buddhism with a healthy respect for the many atheists I know) but $cientology just gets under my skin. I think it's all the copyright lawsuits. And Xenu. And trying to take away my hard earned Thetans.

Back on topic: a book that a lot of people seem to love, but I just can't get past the first chapter - The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I am a huge Sherlock Holmes fan and have read a lot of pastiches, many of which I've enjoyed - even ones that everyone else hated (Exit Sherlock Holmes - nice bits of SF in there). But the little bit of The Beekeeper's Apprentice that I've read smacks of bad fan fiction with extreme Mary Sue-ism. From what I've heard, later books in the series compound the Mary-Sue crime, culminating in the ultimate in Mary-Sue actions. I'll not spoil it for others, but it annoyed the crap out of me when I read about it.

Gah.

(Also bad: The Last Sherlock Holmes Story. Double gah.)

[kiernen]

Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

I read this book in high school when I was a member of a BBYA (Best Books for Young Adults) book club. I then got to attend the YALSA preconference of the ALA convention where I was on a panel of teen readers. We were asked to be brutally honest and tell the several hundred folk present what the worst book ever was.

When I told them all that this book was the worst book in the history of books, well, everyone got really quiet and looked at this lady sitting in the front row. I still don't know if that was the author or publisher or agent, but hey, at least I was honest! All the other teens copped out with "I've never really 'hated' a book..." Liars.

[Randy Johnson]

All four of Dan Brown's novels are like that. What they remind of is a movie and it's sequels. I read them out of order of publication(4,2,3, and 1). By the time was finishing the third novel, I realized he was writing the same story(same scenes in different order) over and over. When i started the fourth book( first published), I decided to see if I could figure out the villain driving the action as early as I could. On page 25, I said, "This man is the villain." Lo and behold, I was correct. In all four novels, the villain is the last guy you would expect, the good guy. The only variation is that with Deception Point and The Da Vinci Code, he disappears halfway through the book and is presumed dead until he shows up for the final showdown at the end. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who hasn't read them and I'll never read another one by him. After The Da Vinci Code, he doesn't need any more bucks anyway.

[Tania]

I thought of another author: Sharon Green, writes John Norman-esque novels along the vein of "Ooh, I'm a competent woman that really needs to be dominated by a big strong man so I can realize just how incomplete my life has been". Barf.

[Laura W.]

I wouldn't wish any book by Laurell K. Hamilton on anyone. I'm a bit ashamed to say I read about 8 of her Anita Blake vampire romance novels before I couldn't take it anymore. A friend of mine kept giving me the next book in the series, and like a dummy, I kept reading them.
UGH!
I got sucked into those books with the premise that it was supposed to be horror. Its not. Its badly done erotica with a splash of chicken decapitations by a "Mary Sue" type of heroine. She was constantly surrounded by dozens of breathtakingly gorgeous men who all wanted her and only her, and she just couldn't say no.

[Nikitta]

I wouldn't wish any book by Laurell K. Hamilton on anyone. I'm a bit ashamed to say I read about 8 of her Anita Blake vampire romance novels before I couldn't take it anymore. A friend of mine kept giving me the next book in the series, and like a dummy, I kept reading them.

I've only read the first three of them and I think that those are fairly good. The reason why I'm not buying book four is that everyone says that it really goes downhill and gets bad from book four. I liked the first three, though.

Its badly done erotica with a splash of chicken decapitations by a "Mary Sue" type of heroine. She was constantly surrounded by dozens of breathtakingly gorgeous men who all wanted her and only her, and she just couldn't say no.

Not in the first three books; there isn't one single sex scene in those and I don't recall anyone having any kind of desire for her, apart from the master vampire guy (I'm terrible at remembering names, okay?).