Whew! If there’s one thing worse than godawful fanfiction, it’s godawful published fiction. If a hack like Newcomb can get this tripe printed, there’s hope for all the other misogynistic, perverted, bad writers out there.
She’s the Tupac Shakur of writing!
After this thread, curiosity got the best of me and I read some of the amazon reviews, which seem very polarized. However, the negative reviews are better written. But I have a question, many of the reviewers, positive and negative hail his new form of magic. Care to spoil it for us with a little summary ITR?
Apparently, neither you nor Avalonian have ever heard of L. Ron Hubbard . . .
Absolute nonsense. Dreck like this gets published because there’s a market for it.
Actually, its a reasonable question as to how an unknown like Robert Newcomb gets his debut put out in hardcover by DelRey – an imprint of the mighty Random House, which in turn is owned by the megaconglomerate Bertelsmann Group. None of which are known for taking chances on the little guy.
I mean sure, an original paperback I could see… but a 3-book hardcover deal? There has to be more to the story.
When you see a new Xanth novel on the shelves, the correct response is "HULK SMASH!!!
"
Of course I know about L.Ron… I was reading Mission Earth when he died (I was a kid at the time, give me a break. I’ve grown into better taste). However, V.C. Andrews is much more prolific post-mortem, writing some 15 books after her death in 1986.
OK, and I’m just going to stop looking this stuff up, because it’s really getting to me. 
It’s a standard white magic and black magic system with the names changed. The magic that the good guys used is called “The Vigors” (The Vigors?) and the magic used by the sorceresses is called “The Vagaries”. The only unusual part is that only people born with “endowed” blood are capable of practicing magic. At one point the bearded wizard mentor explains that when people have endowed blood, their blood is actually alive. Maybe it has mitochlorians or something.
If anyone is up for more punishment, I have not one but two copies of the second book in the series The Gates of Dawn to give away absolutely free. The only thing I ask is that you don’t sell them for profit. (Give em away, burn 'em in effigy, donate to an unsuspecting library, cherish in secret, I don’t care)
email me if you want one.
I’d like to add some more candidates for this “honor:”
Anything by Robert Stanek. I’ve never read his stuff, but I find it intriguing that his publicity campaign seemed to be nothing more than the carpet-bombing of Amazon.com with five-star reviews. If you do a search for his stuff, you’ll find that he has a ton of wonderful reviews, interspersed with the occasional “I bought this based on the reviews, and man, did it suck” comment.
A lot of the reviewers (Mr. Stanek’s buddies?) would also do brief reviews of Tolkien, Brooks, Martin, Pullman, etc., which would invariably say something like “On par with the works of Robert Stanek,” or even “almost at the level of Stanek.” Amazon has apparently pulled/edited most of those.
Another author which leaps to mind is David Eddings. He writes good characters, but nothing bad ever happens to them unless it’s forshadowed at least two or three books before, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Oh, and it has to be quickly reversed, preferrably within a chapter or two. (“man with two lives,” my ass…) As far as I can tell, Eddings’ body of work consists of the same story told three or four times over.
And finally, another one that’s fun to look up on Amazon: “The Legend of Rah and the Muggles,” by Nancy Stouffer. Oh, I’m sorry – that’s “N.K. Stouffer.” This book is notable because a) Ms. Stouffer actually had the nerve to sue J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers for plagiarism (what do the books have in common? The word muggle) and b) it’s incredibly bad. Take note of the fact that this book’s alleged intended audience is 4-8 year old children, and then read this paragraph:
The rest of the introduction, if you care to read it, can be found at http://www.realmuggles.com
I was at the bookstore yesterday, and noticed The Gates of Dawn on one of the front tables. I opened it at random and read just enough to see that it really is badly written, and many hundreds of pages long. In a way this gives me hope for getting published myself.
Instead of reading Gates of Dawn, just read the chapter “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” from The Wind in the Willows. That probably has more effective fantasy than Newcomb’s entire body of work.
Dunno if this counts as fantasy, but has anyone else read the original Tarzan and the Apes?
One wonders how Burroughs ever got it published. Gag, gag. AND I saw at least ten sequels on the shelf at the used bookstore! ::shakes head::
I reluctantly agree with the prevailing opinion of Mr. Jordan’s work. The first three books or so were pretty good, but he doesn’t know where to quit with the details and sub-plots! I bought Crossroads this last winter, discovered that I had completely forgotten who half the characters were, and the book’s been gathering dust on my shelf ever since.
Hey, I resent that remark!
But I’ll certainly agree that Anthony is a hack, and that most of his stuff is total dreck. Having never read the book the OP is complaining about, I can’t exactly make a fair comparison, but I have read Mercycle, Macroscope, and Race Against Time (no, I’m not sure why I read all three… I’ll plead youthful bad taste, here). I find it very difficult to believe that any other work of so-called literature can remotely approach any of those three in sheer stinkitude.
gotta add in another “exactly!” to godzillatemple’s remark on the magic of xanth series…
Oh, yeah! I’d forgotten about this one, or I too would have suggested it. I’ve actually read the entire book (what can I say–I’m a masochist Harry Potter fan, but we did have fun giving it the MST3K treatment while reading it aloud). If you don’t want to inflict the book on yourself but want to know what the book whose author sued J. K. Rowling and lost is all about, check out this summary I wrote after I finished reading it. It is a truly appalling book. :eek: