I’m pretty sure you’re think ing of Peter F Hamilton’s *Night’s Dawn * trilogy. Personally I liked it at first, but it did get a little ridiculous and the ending is the worse piece of Deus ex Machina I’ve seen in a long time.
If we go back to fifteen years ago…Sweet Valley High. There has to be SOMEONE here who knows what I’m talking about. 
Other than that, I’m pretty good at chucking books when I think they’re awful. I actually gave away my airport copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to a stranger on the plane. “I can’t read this.”
Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy. Which I think is actually six books, because they divided up each one into two parts. I think I picked up the first half of Reality Dysfunction at a library book sale but had no interest in picking up the rest.
The Shannara trilogy.
My mom bought it as a gift, buying the hype on the sleeve “it’s the next Tolkien”; I had to finish it.
Kathy Reichs’s “Temperance Brennan” series, on which the “Bones” TV show is based. I tried reading the first three and it just doesn’t work for me. I went into them with a clear mind, knowing the book and TV characters weren’t supposed to be similar, but the book’s character development wasn’t there for me.
Ugh. A friend highly recommended Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained to me, but the bookstore didn’t have those in, so I picked up Reality Dysfunction instead. When I got to the whole “dead souls possessing the living” part, my reaction was basically, “That can’t be what’s really going on. He’s going to tell us the real story soon, right? Right? …right?” I haven’t read any of the rest of the books in that series.
However, I did go back and read Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained and loved them, just as my friend had thought I would. Just goes to show that not every work by a good author is a gem, I guess.
After about book 4 or so, yes. I kept on to Path of daggers then gave up as i saw he was just drawing things out on purpose to sell more books.
I am with Finagle & aruvqan on Anita Blake when she was Anita Blake Vampire killer, fine, but when it turned into Vampire lover and got just nasty I gave up in disgust.
Clan of the Cave Bear.
I read fast, I was bored, there were like four of them, each of them was friggen immense, it was about prehistoric people and horses… what could go wrong?
Sigh.
I made it through about 20 pages of the first book. I much prefer the series.
Ah, Dexter. And Dresden Files. I have the first book of each series, they were Christmas presents. I don’t like the shows, and I don’t like the books.
Sweet jumping Jebus, yes. Ayla discovers everything. Does everything. Goes everywhere.
And Shardik - I read that back in 79 because it was highly recommended and they had it when I was in hospital and had nothing else to do.
Dresden is a bit like pTerry- the first few aren’t the best. In fact I thing Pratchett didnt hit his stride until fairly late, and just in the last couple are there signs of a decrease in enjoyment.
It took me two tries to get through Shardik. I found the beginning quite dull, but it really did pick up towards the last half of the book. In the end I enjoyed reading it.
Yep, that was the one.
I started that in similar circumstances and with the same recommendation. I stopped part way through the first book, and didn’t open another fantasy novel for many years.
Just about any book that came from TSR was a huge steaming pile of crap. Sharyn McCrumb had two mysteries published by TSR, I believe, and those books were very good indeed. But for the most part, TSR was churning out bad Tolkienesque fantasies as fast as their stable of hacks could write them.
I have a special hatred of kender, by the way.
I actually quite liked the first book. The story of solving a 60 year old murder was novel and interesting, even though the characters and the writing were terrible. The remaining two books though, had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Heh, I think I read that first book, but even then my spider sense was tingling. Managed to not get any further.
I found lots of really funny moments in Darths and Droids. I suppose it helps that I only recently came across it, so I read almost all of it at one sitting. I always like things better if there’s little to no waiting involved.
I don’t know if this is heresy around here, but I couldn’t even hack my way through Frank Herbert’s Dune sequels, let alone these other people. Although, I seem to remember a Star Wars X wing series written by Kevin Anderson that I found very good. Ok, no just checked, those were by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston.
I got introduced to Jasper Fforde by reading Shades of Grey, and I think it was easily one of the best books I read that year. Which is why I eagerly picked up the Thursday Next series only to find that while clever, it was just too..ramble-y for my taste. There’s too much in the books that he throws in because it must have sounded clever in his head, but which adds little or nothing to the story. As Wodehouse would put it, I could take the Thursday Next series, or I could leave it alone.
Interestingly, I’ve also read the first two Dresden files books before giving up on them. There was just no reason to keep reading them, so I didn’t. I see people have mentioned that it gets better with time. Maybe I’ll take it up again. With Harry Potter, you stopped at a great time. The remaining books are a load of crap.
As for Rothfuss, I’ve often complained no end about the second book and how atrocious it is(particularly in comparison to the first - the plotting and the story advancement were such a let down), but I don’t get the widespread hate for Denna. She seems like exactly the kind of girl a 15 year old would fall for - hard. Maybe you could help me understand what you(and thus perhaps people in general) don’t like about her?
If you’re referring to Twilight, note that the first Southern Vampire Mystery book was released in 2001, four years before Meier inflicted Twilight on the world.
They’re both crap, and yes, I’ve read them. All of them. 
I have a hard time recommending the series as a whole, because objectively speaking the first three are IMHO at best kinda tolerable variations on a theme with cliches a plenty. Not bad, just not all that great either ( some disagree with me of course ).
Starting with book four I believe they start steadily getting more interesting as the plots became a little less dominated by the classic-monster-of-the-week and more political and metaplotty. Unfortunately it is sorta necessary to slog through the first few to set the scene, hence my hesitation to recommend them wholeheartedly. But they do eventually get better, assuming you generally enjoy urban fantasy to begin with. If you don’t as a rule, then they are best avoided completely - they don’t transcend the genre.
But I liked The Colour of Magic …
But as a general rule I prefer monster of the week. Whether it is books or TV series.
I completely agree about TSR “fiction”.
But this wasn’t TSR though. After Dragonlance, Weis and Hickman went on to publish through runs off to look at bookshelf Bantam. I believe, this was their second or third attempt at a non-Dungeons and Dragons fantasy series.
I also recall enjoying some of Gary Gygax’s “Gord the Rogue” books. I know that Gygax was very inspired by non only Leiber, Moorcock, Vance et al. but also pulps from the 40’s to 60’s, and I think some of those sensibilities showed up in his writing. Then again, I read him when I was in university. I’m afraid to revisit his books in case they disappoint.
Yup yup. Checked 'em out on audiobooks, and OY, was the first book awful. No idea why I kept going, but I listened to the second. Meh. Got about a third of the way into the third book and realized, “This crap isn’t getting any better,” and just stopped.