Yes, and Quint doesn’t get eaten; he gets his foot tangled in one of the ropes holding a barrel and gets pulled under. So he can be even more obviously Captain Ahab.
The Assasin books, by Robin Hobb. I remember the exact moment where I realized that this series was never going to be worth my time. I had some bad premonitions earlier on, but my breaking poin was towards the end of the second book where…
Some background, first. It’s in a fantasy world. There’s a Good Prince who’s married to a Princess; the hero is his nephew. There’s also his brother, the Evil Prince. The Evil Prince is Evil. He has no redeeming qualities, no depth, not a lot of brains, and is so unsubtle in his machinations he might as well walk around twirling his mustasche (he is also reportedly highly charismatic, but there’s no evidence of this in the actual text). He has tried to kill the hero. He has tried to kill his brother, the Good Prince. He has succeeded in killing the Princess’s brother, the Prince of a neighboring country. All the characters mentioned above know he did these things; for reasons not adequitely explained (maybe because they all have the political instincts of moist bread) they have done nothing to stop him. In effect, the only reason he’s still alive is that he’s the only one doing any scemeing.
Now, the Good Prince has gone off on a quest, leaving the kingdom in the hands of his evil brother (the king being a total basket case), who immediately starts taking over. No-one, not least the Princess herself, lifts their finger to stop him. Eventually, after remaining completely passive for several months, the Princess suddenly rushes out Joan-of-Arc-style to lift a seige from a nearby city. However, upon her triumphant return, the Evil Prince decides to take full credit for the victory.
The Princess… is stuck speechless with shock. Shocked! Shocked, I tell you! Shocked by the fact that the man who KILLED HER BROTHER and TRIED TO KILL HER HUSBAND is stealing he thunder!
At that point I realized I cared nothing for any of thses idiots or for their moronic kingdom, and went to look for something better to read. I settled on reading A Game of Thrones for the sixth time. Tyrion Lannister would have made hamburger out of those people.
Nah, I’m thinking more “pay a fine and get probation.”
Walloon, do you have to hold books directly over your head in order to read them?
Daniel
Explain.
Me
by Katharine Hepburn.
Not that she’s a bad person, or that she doesn’t have great stories to tell, but the title gives you a good idea of her writing style. I went to Amazon and clicked “surprise me” to get a sample page, here is a typical paragraph.
I couldn’t read more than a page or two of this before deciding that ghostwriting can be a really good thing sometimes.
Well, if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for readers.
When I saw this thread’s title, the first book that came to my mind was also by Koontz.
Mind you, I’ve been a big Dean Koontz fan since I was an undergrad and read a copy of Cold Fire that someone left in the dorm bathroom. I have almost every book he’s ever published, including some rare early SF, and many in hardback. So when I say that I couldn’t finish the last Koontz book I picked up, you understand the significance.
It was Velocity, wherein mild-mannered bartender Billy Wiles “finds a note with a deadly, time-sensitive ultimatum: he must choose between the death of a young schoolteacher or an elderly humanitarian in six hours.” If he goes to the police the humanitarian dies, if he keeps mum it’s the schoolteacher. I knew I wasn’t going to like the book the moment Billy agonized over the note to the point of near inaction, instead of simply going to the police and letting them handle whatever happened next. Roughly halfway through, after reading about a series of similarly illogical decisions, I realized that I was having to force myself to finish the book and that there were plenty of other things I’d rather be reading.
It’s not like me to not finish a book, but in this case I felt that I had no choice.
I’m not the Koontz fan I once was but I’ll still give The Husband a chance, and I’m enjoying the Frankenstein series that he’s co-writing (and I just added Brother Odd to my wishlist).
Daniel
Believe it or not, many people who suck dick are literate. No, seriously!
That’s Wilde, man!
Daniel
Pardon if I’m misunderstanding you or the novel (which I haven’t read), but isn’t that the whole point of the story? If he does “go to the police and let them handle whatever happened next,” he’s making an affirmative decision, in a sense: killing the humanitarian.
Whatever the first Thomas Covenant book was. Covenant rapes a girl, and the reader is supposed to forgive him. Um, no. The depiction of leprosy was also ignorant and repugnant, and there was also a clan of women who were spiritually in tune with a herd of horses or something stupid like that.
I got about halfway through Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, but I was so screamingly bored I couldn’t trudge any further ahead. I just didn’t care that much about Roland’s past. I would have preferred that the story move forward rather than be essentially a book-length flashback. It was obviously just padding.
From what I’ve heard about the ending of that series, though, I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time pursuing it.
No, the killer is killing the humanitarian. That was my point. But you’re right about the point of the story, which is why I couldn’t finish the book. 
No, you’re misunderstanding me (although maybe you’re making the point I know you’re trying to make). From what I can tell, the killer is giving the protagonist two choices: the protagonist can go to the police, in which case the killer will kill the humanitarian; or, the protagonist can stay silent, in which case the killer will kill the teacher.
If the protagonist did as you suggested, go to the police, then given the choices the killer gives him, he’s making an affirmative decision on who lives (the teacher) and who dies (the humanitarian). THAT is why he doesn’t do it. THAT is why he agonizes.
I’m not sure if you (or I) misunderstand this, or if you’re trying to make some other point, but I hardly find it as cut and dried as you that he should just go to the cops, unless you have some grudge against elderly humanitarians…
This is the book that caused me to stop reading Follett. I really liked his early stuff, especially The Key to Rebecca and Eye of the Needle.
Alessan, I struggled with all the characters’ blindness and inaction with regard to Prince Regal in the Hobb’s Assassin books too. But his comeuppance almost made finishing them worthwhile.
Koontz lost me in From the Corner of His Eye, when he described a husband, solicitous of his pregnant wife, as “loitering in her vicinity”. They were standing in their kitchen. Those words were so poorly chosen, I’ve never forgotten them.
The thing about Koontz that pisses me off is I think he could be a good writer if he’d take some time between books. Polish the prose. Get rid of extraneous characters. He can’t need the money anymore.
Stephen R. Donaldson is an acquired taste, true, and the Covenant books are his most impenetrable writings. I don’t blame you for not getting into them.
Still, the man grew up in a leper’s colony. Treatment and attitude towards the disease may have changed over the years, but I don’t think he’s ignorant of the subject.
It’s a false dichotomy. A lot of people in this situation, for example me, would think the note was some sort of stupid prank, or that the person who wrote it was not as smart as he thought he was, and would therefore either go straight to the police or toss the note away without thinking about it further. (I’d call the police.) Now a good premise would have the protagonist doing one of these things, but the killer makes it plain somehow that he is observing the protagonist directly. Perhaps the killer warns the hero again not to go to the police, or perhaps there is a news report that an elderly humanitarian was murdered and the hero gets a new note with a new choice to make.
Funny, I thought this thread was a poll about when you realized that a certain book sucked, not a debate about whether said book actually sucked. How interesting that my opinion about a book is being challenged by someone who hasn’t read it.
I happen to think that I understand you perfectly, and that you’re misunderstanding me.
And my point is that he truly has no say over who lives or dies – it is the killer who will be responsible for a death, not the protagonist. By agonizing over “which one” he lets the killer give him that responsibility … he plays right into the killer’s hands in the most obvious, stupid way.
Then you’d probably like the book.
What, I should have a grudge against young schoolteachers? The only option is to go to the police. The note could be a fake, in which case there’s no harm done, but it could be real, in which case the cops have been alerted to the nut’s existence and they can handle things from there. It takes two to play a mind game, and the story never provided a good reason for why the protagonist played along (or maybe it did at the end, but I didn’t get that far because it sucked).
All of the above did, in fact, happen (and it’s my opinion that the news report and second note should have been treated exactly the same as the first note). But because I felt that the protagonist made a hugely, obviously bad choice at the very beginning, which could have helped him avoid much of the resulting drama, I had a hard time finding the story to be worthwhile.
Whatever. That shit pissed me off in the worst way. Covenant and his whole “I’m untouchable” neuorsis was completely pathetic. Shut up and see a therapist, loser.