I just finished Clive Cussler’s Valhalla Rising - a one-dollar used bookstore purchase that got me through a red-eye from the west coast and the ensuing 5-hour layover very nicely.
Wow - is it horrible. So bad that I loved every page of it. I chuckled outloud the whole time.
It’s like listening to an 8-year-old boy tell a story…(um, and then this awesome submarine comes, and, um, then these vikings came and killed the evil guy, and then there was this teleportation device, and um this really beautiful lady with big boobies, and another submarine…).
Thank you, Clive Cussler, for making my day!
If you’ve got a favorite bad book of your own, please share. It just might save me on another late-night flight!
V.C. Andrews. These books are so bad but that’s why I love them. I NEVER read them in front of people though. EVER. Andrews’ books are a horrible addiction of mine that I’d like to keep secret in real-life.
And in Virginia’s defense, her stuff is much better than Neiderman’s (the ghostwriter). Plus, some of the sex scenes are kinda hot.
I haven’t read Da Vinci Code but Angels and Demons had me gasping for breath. I love the part where the dude rolls out on a wheelchair all slow and dramatic-like. I can almost see Dan Brown licking the charcoal tip of his #2 for that one.
I loved Battlefield Earth and read it non-stop over about two and a half days back in 1987. I thought it would make an awesome movie at the time. Of course, I was about 14 at the time…
My favorite bit of bad (published) fiction is Nancy Stouffer’s “The Legend of Rah and the Muggles”–the book that she claims J. K. Rowling and the “Harry Potter” series plagiarized.
It’s (and I’m not exaggerating here) the worst, most appallingly bad example of a published work of fiction that I’ve ever seen–the writing is terrible, the editing nonexistent, the plot absent…oh, I don’t even know where to begin.
Like “The Eye of Argon,” it’s fun to read aloud to see how long you can keep a straight face.
I’ve written an in-depth review of the “novel,” which is referenced on the book’s Wikipedia page, if anybody wants to see what I mean without having to waste the time of actually reading this seriously stinky book. Rowling had *nothing * to worry about.
Figaro, I couldn’t agree with you more about Clive Cussler.
I was really hyped up to read The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl when my sister described it to me – a thriller about a series of murders based on Dante’s Inferno. But what a pretentious mess! Sheesh! Lots of adjective-laden descriptions of murder scenes and the world’s biggest “WTF?!?” ending.
Apparently it’s part of a towering, thundering series or something like that, but this book is just a little ridiculous, even for a fantasy novel. The weirdest part for me was when the main character had his first meaningful sexual experience with his brother in a field of dewy grass. That was just . . . weird. I read the scene and it was pretty normal–just the two chatting in a field about some “heavy” stuff. Then all of the sudden, there was surging between thighs and racing heartbeats. Oh, and did I mention that they were psychic? And that before this there was no indication that incest was acceptable? In fact, the the opposite seemed to be indicated. The book incorporates clichés from three different genres: fantasy, romance, and “enlightened” chick lit. I just kept reading to figure out what weird shit would pop up next. Dewy, incestuous psychic sex. Just weird.
And now it’s being re-issued. So you too can enjoy the strange journey!
David Eddings Regina’s Song I have often considered starting a thread just to talk about how horrible that book was. It left me feeling strangely violated but I couldn’t stop reading it. It was so bad I wasn’t even MST3King it I was just in a dazed state turning pages. A full list of all the problems with it would be too long but here’s a few of the biggest ones. Warning plot spoilers ahead but really if you read this and don’t read the book I did you a huge favor.
The narrator is the worst case of Mary Sue I’ve ever seen in a published work. I often felt like the author was stroking himself while revealing yet again what an awesome hardworking intelligent yet down to earth guy he was. Ironically the more self love the author lavished on him the more I hated him. He seemed like a wussy that just did whatever anyone told him to do. It amused me greatly when he was looking for an apartment and found one run by three girls that had a series of rather restrictive rules for him to obey (no girls in his room, no alcohol, he has to work around the house fixing things up, etc etc) and if he causes any problems he’ll get bounced out by a large black man. I was like ‘wow if only they had a dungeon he’d have found his ideal sexual fantasy’
Almost all the early major plot points were told in a ‘oh by the way’ manner that had me screaming at the book. “Oh by the way one of the twins was horribly raped and murdered” “Oh by the way the main character’s parents just died” for the first 100 pages at least 95 were devoted to the aforementioned love of the narrator and less the 5 contained actual plot. This is not a joke when I hit page 100 I actually flipped back through counting pages where I felt the story actually moved forward and came up with about 9 most of them had less then a paragraph I considered important.
You’re always told what a character is instead of seeing them act that way. We’re told the twins were adorable. We’re told he lives with three crazy Pollack women (his words not mine). We’re told that the surviving twin (who renamed herself Twinkie…yes we have a main character named Twinkie in this book) is super fragile but only very very rarely (and in the in case of the crazy Pollack women we’re never given an example of them being crazy or what I’d consider ‘polish’ behavior) given examples of them actually doing anything like their descriptions.
The people in this book are freaking morons. There’s a series of murders in the park. Just before each murder the surviving twin has a horrible nightmare yet nobody seems to connect this until after like the 7th murder or something.
When the narrator figures this out his ONLY reaction is to feel sorry for the twin. He never once thinks “Gee she’s gone to elaborate lengths to conceal the fact she has a car, has come up with a way to immobilize people so she can torture them to death in the worst way she can come up with. She’s insanely dangerous” Considering I think the guy is a sucker I don’t really blame him but from here on out every character that finds out they have a serial killer in their midst reacts EXACTLY the same “Oh poor Twinkie! We better protect her in case some bad police officer tries to put her in jail.” Seriously. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever read.
I actually skipped a good deal of Twinkie’s trial (which all the main characters tried to get her out of but an evil officer called Belcher with the even more eye rolling nickname of Burpie for some reason wanted to arrest her) but afterward in order to avoid the media there was some oddball car switching scheme involving all the main characters so the news wouldn’t know what asylum she went to…Huh? Since when did cops allow friends of serial killers to get personally involved in prisoner transfers?
There was a supposed MAJOR TWIST at the end where someone points out that possibly instead of Regina being murdered it was Retina (or something like that) and this whole thing was an elaborate set up for her to get out and murder her twin’s murder without going to jail…what??? That’s not a twist dumbass unless we were ok with her going out and murdering people as long as we bought your ‘submissive twin vs dominate twin’ BS. There was a theme throughout the book to keep you ‘guessing’ at which twin survived but I can’t imagine anyone caring because we NEVER KNEW THE TWINS before one of them had died. There was roughly two pages talking about how adorable they were but since we never knew them there was no way to have any idea (or really care) which one died anyway or why that’d make a difference in how we viewed the story…
I could go on. There’s scenes in the book that are so absurd I think you’d refuse to believe me if I told them to you (like Twinkie’s ‘brilliant’ writing that shocks a psychologist in training because she suggests that patients sometimes lie to their doctors because they are bored or want a human connection…really? Jesus I could have told you that)
Whew I feel a little better. I can’t believe I read 99% of that book (minus the trial part which I had to skip for sanity) Please please people never read that book.
Just to keep the Clive pot stirring, I’ll note my favorite “Cusslerism”: the totally inappropriate lecherous moment.
[made up but very realistic example]…*.“surveying the churning sea around the sinking ship, Dirk noticed the body of a woman floating in the swells, clearly unconscious. Her tight bikini was nicely filled out, and her raven hair, though soaked, was full and luscious. Dirk dove in and saved her, stroking effortlessly as he carried her helpless form to safety.” *
Every time this happened in Valhalla Rising – which was a lot – I did a double take. “Did he actually interrupt an action sequence to totally check out a hot babe?”
Darkhold, your #2 point - the plot point told as an aside - reminded me of another odd thing about Valhalla Rising, which is that at least half of the plot points had nothing to do with the story, or had any effect on the outcome. The best example: our hero, “Dirk,” discovers in the last two pages that he has long lost children. Relevance to story: zero. Importance to character: [hah - trick question, there are no real characters!]
It’s as if Clive were sitting at his WP one night thinking, “I’m almost done with this novel, but I need one more zinger - one more twist…oooh, I know…long lost children!” He then cranked it out and fedexed it to his publisher.
I guess my favorite bad book is Illusions by Richard Bach. I look back on it now and see it as trite, but there have been times when it was powerful.
I remember when I was in college the second time. I was a non-traditional student and was working full time and going to school full time and I was feeling quite overwhelmed. Calc II was killing me.
I was watching the home of a friend and was rather depressed. I was thinking of dropping out. I sat down to have a good cry. I saw Illusions on their book shelf and opened it up at random and it said:
