(Sometimes even the noble Homer nods.)
Even our favorite authors have books that sucketh greatly. I love Heinlein, but I Will Fear No Evil is garbage through and through. Larry Niven writes wonderful, thought-provoking tales of wonder, but I had the McGuffin in *Destiny’s Road * figured out by page 37. Forget recommending books to people - what book would you tell people to avoid at all costs, even though you like the author’s other works?
[B[silenus**, although it’s not his greatest (by far) I still liked I Will Fear No Evil. And even if you figured the McGuffin (and even if there are serious problems with the McGuffin), Destiny’s Road is sdtill a good book. There’s lots worse out there.
My pick: I love Frederick Forsyth’s thrillers. But whatever possessed him to write The Phantom of Manhattan, a sequel to Gaston Leroux’s the Phantom of the Opera, I do not know. It’s not only a severe departure for him, it’s terrible:
Larry Niven’s Fallen Angels. Although it is well-written and has his usual good attention to detail, unlike every other book he has written, there is not one single thing he writes about in this book that makes me think “wow, I really want to live in that world.” Bitter, downtrodden, failing society being crushed by an unstoppable ice age, with the bare possibility of a meager future for the human race in space colonies, but probably not. The End.
Ethilrist:
Fallen Angels was co-authored with Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, which might explain its being a departure. AFAIK, it’s the only team-up with Flynn. I liked it, myself, and Niven’s written other downbeat stuff, but to each his own:
Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, Desperation, and The Regulators are among the worst books ever written anywhere, by anyone. And I’m a King fan.
Oh, The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett. And I’m a rabid fan of TP, normally. I don’t have words to express how bad that book was.
I read a lot of “junk-food” novels. Some are a whole lot tastier than others.
I would advise fans of James Patterson to stay away from Cradle and All. Patterson is very good at writing twisty thrillers, and I love his Alex Cross series, but Cradle and All is a thudding ripoff of Rosemary’s Baby. Yick.
Worse than The Tommyknockers? 'Cause, that was…bad. Really bad. Me, stomping around angry for a week that I’d wasted my time reading it bad.
It’s worse than that?
/hijack
See, to me that’s not a prerequisite in reading SF or fantasy. Some of my favorite books are set in worlds I would never, ever want to live in. Would you like to live in the world of Gene Wolfe’s New Sun books? In the pseudo-Hindi world of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light? In Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash future? Those are all excellent books, and all are set in crappy worlds.
Utopias are boring. In fact, the comfortable, civilized world we live in today is a boring setting for the type of high drama and high adventure I look for in the genre. Why would I want to read a story set in a world that’s even nicer to live in?
Oh my word, yes. Not that I’m saying Tommyknockers was good. But at least there were some interesting scenes with the Gardner character, and it was possible to follow the plot. As for the books I named, I can think of nothing good to say.