Jinn, horror and suspense set in WWII. When the hero could hear the hiss of a cigarette thown into the water is stayed. But when GIs walking through the jungle cracking open coconuts on the trunks of trees I quit.
I didn’t make it past the chapter with the rape.
Misnomer: Okay, you were arguing what I thought you were arguing. Fair enough. Perhaps it would’ve been more believable if the killer had upped the stakes substantially, like “go to the cops: I’ll kill your parents” vs. “don’t go to the cops: I’ll kill six randomly chosen elementary school students” or something like that.
No. You continue to miss my point, but I’m not sure how else to try to explain it. I fear we might have to agree to disagree. 
Another mention for Jemima J - because shes carrying a Louis Vuitton makeup case shes changed from economy to first class on her flight.
:dubious:
Yeah, and with those three books you listed, you probably read his two best titles.
At least of those that he wrote up to 1991-92 or so… I kind of got tired of him after that.
Lord Foul’s Bane. And the reader is absolutely not meant to forgive him. It would violate the purpose of the entire series, which is to write a high fantasy novel featuring a character with absolutely no heroic qualities. It’s like Lord of the Rings told from Gollum’s point of view.
And Thomas Covenant was just a run-up to Angus Thermopyle in The Gap Cycle.
I picked up some supposed Tom Clancy book in an airport.
Not having read anything of his, I thought “hey, maybe it IS entertaining”. However I must have picked up some random strange edition, which was in some way associated with a video game that bears his name.
The story is supposedly about the sudden rise of China to super-world-powerdom. This pits them against the United States (in the Pacific Ocean). However, the whole narration depicts the life on an atomic submarine during that war. It was INCREDIBLY repetitive, with the captain of the boat constantly checking for sounds in the ocean, filling and emptying the ballast tanks, etc. etc.
I read it in horrid fascination, and couldn’t stop reading it, disbelieving every page. And honestly wondered how such crap could possibly be printed by ANY self-respecting printer.
Your objection to the book would be more convincing had you not tossed off that last, inaccurate, sentence in an apparent attempt to make the book seem worse.
Also worth noting that the magical horses show up long after the rape scene, have nothing to do with the rape scene (in that book, at least), and are in the book specifically to draw attention to play against the expected “hero aided by magical horses” trope of the genre.
That’s not quite what Donaldson was trying – or at least, that’s not all that he was trying. He wrote the book to turn all the standard, Tolkeinish tropes on their head; it’s sort of an anti-fantasy book dressed up in fantasy clothing. Except he wasn’t a very good writer, yet, with Lord Foul’s Bane.
But close enough.
My own personal favorite came upon reading this passage, from an L5R gaming fiction book:
Masochist that I am, I kept reading the entire book, even though the protagonist’s sword was more active than the main character. And, no, not because the main character was doing something with his sword – it was just prone to paragraphs-long magical displays of no apparent purpose.
Gaming fiction is bad, generally, but this made Rose Estes and Gary Gygax read well in comparison.
Reminds me of the first time I attempted to read a spy novel. I got to the end and still didn’t know who the spy was, the worst thing was, I didn’t care.
That would be SSN, and it is based on a submarine simulator program, only it has less of a plot than the game.
on preview, DrFidelius beat me to it, but oh well
I also had the misfortune of reading that book - it’s titled SSN. AFAIK, it isn’t just associated with a video game, it actually seems to be a running description of everything that happens in a (extremely crappy and boring) video game.
The submarine gets supplies at the submarine tender ship. They go on patrol and sight a few ships. They go back and get supplies. They go out and sink a ship or submarine. They go back and get supplies. They go out and sink two ships and/or submarines. They go back and get supplies. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
And I actually like some of Tom Clancy’s books, but only the Jack Ryan/John Clark books up until Rainbow Six (The Bear and The Dragon was so stupid I think my IQ dropped reading it, and I didn’t even attempt The Teeth of the Tiger after I heard the premise).
Tom Clancy’s spin-off series books that aren’t actually written by him, but are created solely to enlarge the piles of money he sleeps on, also appear to be crap. (The Op-Centre, Netforce, and Power Plays series).
For a time years ago when it was a new idea, I posted some reviews on a website of mine. The only two books to earn negative points were The Fires of Coventry by Rich Shelley, and Standing Wave by Howard V. Hendrix (both sci-fi books).
The first had a theme of ‘fire’, with the cover describing a fantastic weapon involving fire or the sun or something, but which never showed up. Instead, a heavily armed space force takes over a planet and goes around burning individual buildings, fields, dogs, etc. for no reason. The rest of the book was filled with the various stories of new characters fighting, and being alternately killed/triumphant, which was hard to get in to since nobody lasted more than a chapter.
The second I recommend if you want to hurt your brain:
Oh, and Misnomer’s right - that book sucked. 
Oh right, the third time someone had their house burned down, fought someone and then was never seen again, and when I read “generalized denial of the actuality of individual consciousness”, I knew those books had to go.
No, I get you. That’s why I had the victims for “going to the cops” be the hero’s parents. Threatening someone close to him/her would up the emotional bond and make the hero more likely to be understandably reluctant about risking the lives of someone he knows and cares about.
NO. For what feels like the millionth time, you are not getting my point. I have admitted that the problem is my inability to explain sufficiently, and have offered to agree to disagree. Why can’t you do that? Why repeatedly insist that you really do know what I mean, despite my assurances to the contrary? It’s just a book, one that you haven’t even read, and my opinion is that it sucked. Why isn’t that the end of it?
You’re actually starting to get on my nerves now, so I’m not going to engage any more on this subject. But rest assured, you do not “get” me.
Apparently not, if my revision doesn’t change things at all. Or else you don’t like your parents.
Oh well. It was turning into a hijack anyway.
What was innacurate about that sentence? There was a clan of women with magical horses, right? They wore ropes in their hair, if I’m not mistaken, and I never said they had anything to do with the rape. The rape pissed me off, but I just thought the whole female-only tribe with a magical connection to horses was dumb. Kind of a cross between Amazons and Ayla from “The Valley of Horses.”
Anyway, any book that makes me hate the main character by not giving him any redeeming qualities to the point that I don’t care if he redeems himself like crazy later is a sucky book. Bonus suck points for portraying leprosy like he did, too. And for using “Kevin” as a hero’s name.
Although, to Donaldson’s credit, I did think the “clingum” or whatever it was (the sticky stuff Covenant used to hide the ring on his chest with) sounded like a really useful and interesting item.
No. There was no “clan of women” with the magical horses. There were magical horses. There was a group of people with them. They were not all women.
The major character from that group who was in Lord Foul’s Bane was, in fact, a woman. Other characters from that group were men. They were not at all like the Amazons nor Ayla from “The Valley of Horses” – you’ve just projected that onto the book yourself. None of the subcultures of the Land were particularly matriarchal or feminist, and none of them were really too patriarchal, either (because Donaldson was playing up that they were fantasy cultures, and so, egalitarian).
Your inaccuracies in recounting one part of the book have great bearing on how your interpretation of another part of the book (i.e., the rape) is perceived by others.
Ah! The Gap Cycle - I barely made it through two books and decided I had wasted enough of my time.
At the risk of revealing my plebeian tastes, The Sun Also Rises had me seriously considering gouging out the parts of my brain that retained traces of this literary sleeping draught. I did, however, manage to plow through to the very end in the hope that it would have a point. If it had one, it completely escaped me.
I must have succeeded in repressing memories of it, since I don’t recall much now.